G is for ... Genre
I was trying to find a good definition for genre fiction, but they mostly just say 'fiction written for a genre' which isn't much help.
So starting with wikipedia, genre fiction is what used to be called popular fiction. It's written to deliberately fall into a popular genre category and as such is expected to conform to the conventions of that genre. It is marketed based on its genre and focussed on a readership who tend to read mostly in that genre. You probably will also make more money writing genre fiction than literary fiction unless you luck out and come up with something so successful that it creates a new subgenre. So it's all very populist and focussed on entertaining people who like that genre. Being easy to read is a virtue.
nb. you could argue also that literary fiction is a genre.
Although genre fiction has a reputation for being 'worse' written that other more literary books, you'll find in practice that it's just as hard to write a good genre book as anything else :) The pros make it look easy.
Do you like to read or write genre fiction? If you write it, how aware are you of the conventions of your preferred genre? (ie. do you deliberately pick plots and character types because they're what people expect?) Can you think of any good examples where a writer has deliberately flouted the usual genre conventions?
Exercise: Write a short piece in a genre you don't usually write in (anything will do: romance, westerns, horror, chicklit, fantasy, etc). Don't make it a satire, do your best to actually write something that fans of the genre would enjoy.
So starting with wikipedia, genre fiction is what used to be called popular fiction. It's written to deliberately fall into a popular genre category and as such is expected to conform to the conventions of that genre. It is marketed based on its genre and focussed on a readership who tend to read mostly in that genre. You probably will also make more money writing genre fiction than literary fiction unless you luck out and come up with something so successful that it creates a new subgenre. So it's all very populist and focussed on entertaining people who like that genre. Being easy to read is a virtue.
nb. you could argue also that literary fiction is a genre.
Although genre fiction has a reputation for being 'worse' written that other more literary books, you'll find in practice that it's just as hard to write a good genre book as anything else :) The pros make it look easy.
Do you like to read or write genre fiction? If you write it, how aware are you of the conventions of your preferred genre? (ie. do you deliberately pick plots and character types because they're what people expect?) Can you think of any good examples where a writer has deliberately flouted the usual genre conventions?
Exercise: Write a short piece in a genre you don't usually write in (anything will do: romance, westerns, horror, chicklit, fantasy, etc). Don't make it a satire, do your best to actually write something that fans of the genre would enjoy.