What is the difference between literary fiction and genre fiction?

[Anonymous]

What's a difference between a story that is literary fiction and a story that is genre fiction?

[Anonymous]

It’s mostly marketing. Also how fun the story is.

[Anonymous]

The New Yorker did a piece on this awhile ago:

https://www.newyorker.com/books/joshua-rothman/better-way-think-genre-debate

[Anonymous]

Pretension and marketing.

[Anonymous]

I would also say structure. Genre fiction has standard plot structures (happily ever after for romance, murderer discovered and apprehended for mystery, Bildungsroman for fantasy, etc) that are either followed or engaged with. Literary fiction can be whatever it wants to be — sometimes this is great but sometimes it’s terrible.

[Anonymous]

There used to be more strictly genre fiction published. For instance, some publishers like St. Martin's Press published shorter length mysterys that featured a detective solving a crime. There were romance novels published by Harlequin and others that were of a certain length and had a predictable plot arc. Harlequin even had writer's guides for authors outlining what they wanted. Sci Fi was similar with some very prolific authors though some books, especially fantasy, tended to be longer. There was a clear distinction between genre and mainstream fiction, but nothing called literary fiction. So you had Edna Ferber and William Faulkner in the same category.

The writing workshop model produced literary fiction as a separate category and divided it away from an overarching category of mainstream fiction. At this point there was literary fiction and commercial fiction.

In the 90s there was a blurring and widening of genres so that genre fiction expanded and books got longer. Someone like Norah Roberts expanded her romances into longer books and started writing crime fiction. Most bestselling books were expanded plots of what would have once been genre mysteries.

There are also many, many subgenres now as well as YA, which was a very small category 40 years ago.

More people read literary fiction now and it tends to be written by and for women. Most of these authors are products of MFA workshop training. The training helpd writers learn to not only write but edit and is often a way into the business via connections

A long time ago people came up through journalism to fiction buy that's not the pipeline anymore.

[Anonymous]

The novel itself used to be a “genre.”

[Anonymous]

Boring versus interesting?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Pretension and marketing.

This.

I think it’s hilarious they new books are marketed as lit fic when that’s supposed to indicate a work of literary merit. It’s just fiction, people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Pretension and marketing.

This.

I think it’s hilarious they new books are marketed as lit fic when that’s supposed to indicate a work of literary merit. It’s just fiction, people.

This is incorrect. Genre fiction, as mentioned earlier, subscripts to certain expectations of that genre. Romance, Mystery, Cosy Mystery, Thriller, Romantasy, Sci-fi, Fantasy, Women's Fiction.

Women's fiction can be a crossover to Literary fiction, which should be good writing involving imagery, is generally not escapist and should not follow a recognizable pattern, as in genre.

There is plenty of really great genre fiction, just as there is plenty of terrible literary fiction.

I am curious what book you think is marketed as literary fiction and is not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Pretension and marketing.

This.

I think it’s hilarious they new books are marketed as lit fic when that’s supposed to indicate a work of literary merit. It’s just fiction, people.

This is incorrect. Genre fiction, as mentioned earlier, subscripts to certain expectations of that genre. Romance, Mystery, Cosy Mystery, Thriller, Romantasy, Sci-fi, Fantasy, Women's Fiction.

Women's fiction can be a crossover to Literary fiction, which should be good writing involving imagery, is generally not escapist and should not follow a recognizable pattern, as in genre.

There is plenty of really great genre fiction, just as there is plenty of terrible literary fiction.

I am curious what book you think is marketed as literary fiction and is not.

*subscribes

[Anonymous]

I see it as genre fiction-what happens to a person in their outside world and the descriptions of it, literary fiction-what happens to a person and their inside world and the descriptions of it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I see it as genre fiction-what happens to a person in their outside world and the descriptions of it, literary fiction-what happens to a person and their inside world and the descriptions of it.

Well that's limiting and also incorrect. Wildly incorrect.

[Anonymous]

Ok if you’re actually interested in this, I’d really suggest reading the New Yorker piece linked above or at least doing a little bit more reading of critique. There are a lot of grey areas and schools of thought and areas of disagreement, of course, but many of the posts here are just…not correct. The debate is way more complex than that. It’s very silly to say that literary fiction is just “fiction that got a bunch of high brow awards,” for instance. Or just a marketing scheme.

For instance, there’s one school of thought that breaks fiction into four schools (not just literary vs genre): novel, romance, anatomy, confession. Romances (which predate the novel!) are drive by character archetypes whereas novels are driven by plot…etc etc.

See the piece for more. It’s really interesting stuff!

[Anonymous]

Literary fiction has "luminous prose" and symbolism and other annoying things. Genre fiction just tells a good story that you enjoy reading.