What Counts as Literary Fiction, and Should You Be Writing It?

[@JDris08]

Commercial fiction is highly commercial. Literary speaks to a cannon, particularly around theme, the human condition, and what the message or question is. It’s just like music popular music is commercial and then you have niche in genres that is more high brow or really investigating the form. There are plenty of literary fiction examples that are masterclasses at plot

[@maryadkins]

Absolutely agree! :)

[@PinoyMN]

I disagree about literary fiction as being characterised by the absence of a plot; there may be a tendency of these kinds of writers to dwell on other features, such as character development, structure, voice, and "style". As an example, Toni Morrison and Louise Erdrich are among my favorite writers. Their work is not devoid of plot, but their "project" involves weaving in all the elements I mentioned, while integrating penetrating psychological and sociological analyses of racism, colonization, and oppression in America. Doing that well is a formiddable task, and they are rightly awarded their accolades. Still, I also read "genre" fiction and am in gratitude for the pleasure it provides.

[@ican384]

Absolutely, there are no rules in literary fiction…except that there’s no rules😂

[@StevenWilliams0302]

I've never really cared too much about plot. Must be why I prefer to read lit fiction.

[@kimjunejohnson]

Yes, I agree! Great video. (Also, I would loooooove to play that grand piano behind you!) Loving your new youtube channel, Mary. Thanks.

[@mp9336]

I respectfully disagree with your opinion that genre fiction = good plot, and literary fiction = bad plot/no plot. Based on my own research (particularly, from many verifiable sources, such as an actual literary novelist--a woman, Shaelin from Reedsy, in fact), this is the general consensus: Genre fiction = the plot often takes center stage & is the main object of appeal to readers; the story follows the typical structure/s, based on its genre or categories; and there are tropes, plot devices, etc., that qualifying stories are marketed as (AKA a mystery concerns a crime, usually whodunit, that is solved--a dystopian concerns a society that is corrupted in some way, and an attempt(s) to make it better). Literary fiction = the characters & their emotional journey take center stage & are the main object of appeal to readers; the story follows a different or alternate structure, or is unstructured; and there are few identifying tropes, but rather general characterizations such as experimental storytelling. (AKA anything can happen in lit fic!) We can all agree that there are bad genre/commercial novels--many of which have convoluted plots, which are arguably just as "bad" as "plots that don't exist". (TOO MUCH PLOT is a thing!) And if you do read a literary novel with a bad plot or no plot at all, chances are you picked up a bad book in general. There are bad books--and fantastic ones--on both sides.

[@saltychebs]

Holy heck, this deserves so many more views! I agree with most of this! I've learned a lot about good and bad storytelling mostly from anime and manga, which tends to be looked down upon but honestly has shaped a lot of my beliefs about good character writing, in the sense that characters need to be both entertaining and emotionally complex. Because I don't gravitate towards any specific genre and simply tend to focus more on characters and how they develop, I thought about how that translates to the American publishing industry and assumed that I'd probably like literary fiction the most. But now that I've done some research on what exactly Lit Fic actually is, I realized that it's not what I thought I liked, specifically because of the lack of plot. The concept of writing a story without any STORY just didn't make any sense to me. You can have both amazing characters and amazing plot! Who said it had to be either or! 😂 And how could a story without a plot possibly be considered superior to a story that has both amazing characters AND amazing plot? I watched another video before this one about the different categories and found out about Upmarket fic, which is more or less defined as you described, and I realized that was more the category I was looking for. Upmarket is supposed to have both well-written characters and plot and can include a wide variety of genres. And that's exactly what I love about some of my favorite stories from Japan and China. Thanks for helping me better understand and clarify all of this.

[@maryadkins]

I'm so glad it was helpful! Thank you for sharing your thoughts!

[@DejanOfRadic]

Strange that an industry based on words would choose a word so poorly. "Commercial" fiction......really? That sounds cynical and banal. What is wrong with "Popular"?

[@dcle944]

Which books belong in the UP market? Is GOT up market?

[@henrylangstaff624]

I think it's Annie Proulx and Jhumpa Lahiri.

[@j.elainefrancis3845]

I enjoyed your video. Could you do one where you mention the books you looked at that are considered "literary" as opposed to "commercial or genre"? I've been confused about this entire topic.