To write or not to write—that is the question...if you're wondering whether or not to write literary fiction. If you're a commercial fiction writer, the question is "To write in that second car chase scene after the main character bungee jumps from atop the Eiffel Tower or before."
Now, I'm making light of the notion that commercial fiction is all about action while literary fiction concerns deep philosophical musings—and while that's generally the main difference between the two genres, it's so much more complicated and undelineated than that. In an effort to untangle the highly touted genre known as literary fiction, one would have to include argumentative opinons, unclear guidelines, and examine a vague notion of superiority that surrounds it. In short, one would have to utilize literary non-fiction to write an article expounding upon literary fiction.
Literary fiction is considered a genre; commercial fiction is also called "genre fiction", which encompasses thriller, romance, horror, etc...but not literary fiction. Confusing, right?
Since I am a simple, straightforward editor who likes a place for everything and everything in its place, I'm not going in-depth in this post. I'm skimming the surface, if you will, collecting the lighter information and sharing it with you, and leaving the deep, sagacious, heavy details in the abyss. You can dive down and retrieve them yourself if you so desire.
What do I think is one of the main differences between commercial and literary fiction? Pressure. Specifically, the origin of pressure.
Pressure, in this context, refers to the force or motivation behind the main character(s) actions. Is the pressure external or internal? If the character is being motivated to do things absed upon external pressure (your character goes and robs a bank because his daughter has been kidnapped by the mob), then I'd say that your novel might be commercial fiction. If, on the other hand, your character is motivated by internal pressure (he/she robs a bank because of some deep-seated desire to buck the system), your novel might be classified as literary fiction.
Again, it's not a hard-and-fast rule. Internal pressures can drive commercial fiction; external pressure can drive literary fiction. It's an imperfect world.
As a reader, another major difference between literary and commercial fiction is how I feel during and after reading it. For me, the formula is easy. Again, I'm a simple person.
Happy = Commercial
Pensive = Literary
Commercial fiction are books you'd read at the beach, with half of your attention on the story and the other half on the group of shirtless fighter pilots playing volleyball. Looking for an escapist hour of mystery, fright, or edge of your seat excitement? Go commercial. Go to the library and pick up anything by Stephen King, James Patterson, or Clive Cussler—don't, though. Cussler and Patterson aren't what they used to be, and they were never good, in my opinion.
Literary fiction is what you'd pick up for a rainy day, when you want nothing but to curl up and lose yourself in a story that makes you think about your own life, makes you question the staus quo and the choices you've made. Have you ever felt like putting on Legends of the Fall just because you feel like crying for an hour and a half? Maybe pick up Where the Red Fern Grows, by Wilson Rawls (yes, I know they made a movie; books are always better). Anyway, you get the idea.
So now, you may be asking yourself "What should I write? I want to be taken seriously as an author, but I also want to sell a lot of books." The two aren't mutually exclusive, you know, though there are stereotypes associated with both literary and commercial fiction.
Literary fiction is thought of as being commercial fiction's doctor/lawyer/philospohy teacher older sibling. The member of the family that got all the brains and little of the brawn. And while it's hard to correctly characterize the stereotypes between the two writing styles because there are so many that would deny their very existence, they exist, nonetheless. At least, in my head.
I recently took an enforced break from my current WIP (thanks to a devestating computer malfunction that necessitated a whole new laptop) and wondered at my genre preferences. I've been feeling that I haven't been stretching myself as a writer with my current story, that I want to write something with an impact, something that will leave my readers frozen in time, just finished with the book but unwilling to move because they don't want to break the web I've woven around them.
I toyed with the idea of letting go of the twenty thousand words I had written already and starting over with a totally different premise—all based on the idea of any literary fiction being better than the historical thriller I was writing.
After sleeping on it, I realized that my story was fun to write. Sitting down and writing was pleasurable for me, something I looked forward to every morning. Would the same apply if I were to change my genre simply to "be taken more serious" as an author? And what about the character I had created? Mason had a story to tell, too. It was up to me as the author to tell Mason's story within the context he helped me create—which is just as hard as writing a tear-jerking emotionally draining novel. One is not better than the other. Just different.
I'm on chapter six, now, and so happy I stuck with MY story.
Write the story you want/need to write, the story that interests you the most. The story will ultimately decide its own genre. Literary fiction, commercial fiction, doesn't matter. Just write, and write well.
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