Literary Fiction.

The Lonely One said:

I've always shied from the idea of genrizing my work in such a tight-knit little marketing device. Does everything have to fit in a fucking box? And if it does, let the box-makers figure it out (if possible).

I continue to REFUSE to divorce language from story. They're both components of the same thing. What you're saying is on par with how you say it; they work together. To me, all the reader has is your words, so yeah, all that sentence-level stuff has an effect, as does the use of plot archs and all that. Otherwise you'd just inject an image into their brains with a needle, and there'd be no use for language.

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I hate this question. My Creative Writing professor turned me on to "literary" novels and I haven't read any other thing since. But, as a writer, I prefer to have a plot in my sentence-level crafted fiction or else I may alienate some readers. Just a fact. A lot of people don't want to think when they read, they want to escape. It's a hard line to straddle. I don't know. I like me some literary eye candy. Sorry.

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maestrowork said:

I read Toni Morrison when I was in high school and English is my second language. No problem at all.

There are tons of literary writer that not only write great prose, but also great stories: Michael Chabon, for example. They win awards as well as selling tons of books.

Literary fiction does put the focus on other than the plot itself. It explores themes, ideas, structure, language, etc. and usually are very character-driven. But that doesn't mean there's no plot or the plot is weak. Just that getting from point A to point B is not the main focus.

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