     LaurieAnne Cruea | Tuesday, March 26, 2002 - 08:05 pm 
Somebody should probably color me stupid, but what is meant by "literary fiction"?
LA |
| C. E. Winterland | Tuesday, March 26, 2002 - 09:53 pm
HAHAHAHAHAHA!
At the writers conference I attended last september, someone had a very interesting definition of that...
It went something like this: "Literary fiction is any character driven story with no plot."
Ok... I think I murdered the quote, but it was pretty funny at the time.
CEW |
| LaurieAnne Cruea | Wednesday, March 27, 2002 - 06:47 am
No plot? What is the point of writing all of those sentences, paragraphs and pages if there is no plot? And why would so many agents look for pointless work to represent?
Everything is always questions with me.
LA |
| Nancy Marie | Wednesday, March 27, 2002 - 06:49 am
C.E. - sounds about as good a definition as I've ever heard. I detest literary fiction, boring, boring, boring.
smiles and blessings, Kitty |
| Nancy Mehl | Wednesday, March 27, 2002 - 07:05 am
Literary Fiction is a term used to describe a book that falls under no other category, Laurie.
Susan Vreeland wrote Girl in Hyacinth Blue and The Passion of Artemisia - both Literary Fiction - and neither one boring!
Literary Fiction would also describe books by Hemingway, Dickens, etc. They SHOULD have plots...(what have you guys been reading? LOL!) but generally deal with someone's life. Little Women would be Literary Fiction.
So, it isn't Mystery, Sci-Fi, Romance, etc.... Does that help?
Sometimes it's a catch-all phrase that says..."Couldn't figure out where to put this, so it's Literary Fiction!" LOL!
Hope that helps....
Nancy |
| C. E. Winterland - work | Wednesday, March 27, 2002 - 05:26 pm
Nancy (I just wrote your name "Mamcu"... hehehe)
The description you just gave sounds more like general or mainstream fiction to me... but I don't really know.
Actually let's just bust down all them barriers, stand on top of the paradigm and shout out for the world, "everything is literary fiction!"
Heh. |
| LaurieAnne Cruea | Wednesday, March 27, 2002 - 06:29 pm
I signed in tonight, saw the number of messages this thread had gained, and thought, "Crud! I worded that last one wrong." Thank goodness I was wrong on that assumption. I was half afraid to look at what had been added.
I vote for breaking down the barriers, too, but that's because I mix genres. I write mystery, but my main characters can/will be involved romantically. I write romance, but there will be adventure involved. How do these agents/publishers decide what category in which to place a book? Heck, James Patterson is listed as crime novels (mystery in my book), but he always has romantic liaisons occurring. Granted, he also kills off one of the romantically-involved individuals, thereby turning it into a drama...
You see what I'm getting at.
Break down the wall! Break down the wall! Break down the wall! .........
LA |
