I didn’t think of genre as a kid who liked to read, but looking back, I was drawn to a couple of distinct categories: Fantasy and adventure fiction. Redwall, Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped, and most importantly, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. If the book involved an alternative reality or featured lads engaging in various escapades and adventures, I was all in. Reading was fun. Books were adventures. Simple!
My undergraduate days as an English major involved a deeper look at the classics, from Homer, to Dante, Cervantes, Austen, and well into the 20th and 21st centuries with the works of Flannery O’Connor, Cormac McCarthy, and Marilynne Robinson. I was introduced also to the world of contemporary literary fiction, with its focus on style, character, and often untidy or even unsatisfactory endings. I enjoyed these works. The beauty of the prose, the penetrating insights imbued with the narrative, the expert balance of exposition, description, and action; there is much to be admired and much to try to imitate. And it certainly took some time, but eventually, these two “worlds” of so-called “genre fiction” and literary and classic literature started to contrast with each other, and like many aspiring writers, I became a bit torn. What to choose? Do I write the compressed, modern short stories in the tradition of Hemingway and Carver? Do I take note of the thickly layered Jonathan Franzen novel with its interrogation of domestic American life? Should I kick the adventure and speculative elements aside? Is there something essentially non-academic and nonliterary about the fantasy novel or the swashbuckling adventure tale?
This problem isn’t new, of course, and seems like something a lot of younger writers have to sort of contend with when they come of age, especially if they’re trying to build an audience. For a long time, I sort of figured I would just write both literary fiction and science fiction and fantasy, but am realizing that it is a bit hard to appeal to readers that way because they won’t really be able to associate me with any particular type of writing. This doesn’t, of course, mean writers can’t or even shouldn’t write both literary and genre fiction. In fact, I think there’s an argument to be made that these genre distinctions themselves are somewhat modern constructs, and that every work of fiction is, well fictional, imagined, artificial, a fantasy. It would be a bit odd, however, if Marilynne Robinson wrote a novel about goblins and magic swords, just like it would maybe catch readers a bit off-guard if Stephen King wrote a deeply meditative novel about a small-town pastor in the midwest. It doesn’t mean these authors can’t do such things, but they probably won’t. Their bodies of work have attracted different audiences.
I can only speak for myself, but I will say that when I was focused on writing more literary, “realistic” short stories during my MFA, it did feel like something was missing. I felt like I was trying too hard to make the stories sound serious or mean something profound. A lot of my efforts ended up coming across as heavy-handed. Many of them also lacked humor, which is one of the most underrated elements of interesting writing. Writing a good short story is hard, of course, so no one should expect it to be a cake walk. But I know that a lot of the frustration people have with contemporary literary fiction is its somewhat aimless plots, gloomy subtexts, and a sense that the characters are a bit helpless in the face of whatever situation they’re in. They can be serious and joyless. There’s a kind of defeatism in a lot of this stuff. And a lot of these stories, mine included, are just boring and/or unnecessarily confusing. I don’t want a reader to leave my story puzzled just because ambiguity is in vogue. Writers should puzzle readers by frustrating the things we take for granted, by alienating what’s familiar, and making it new. Sometimes it seems like a lot of literary fiction is no longer interested in this kind of imaginative project. Maybe we’ve gotten a bit lazy. I don’t know.
Tangents aside, though, this issue goes a little bit deeper than genre. Fantasy or other genre novels often get scorned for lack of literary style. If contemporary literary fiction often struggles with narrative direction, fantasy can devolve into formula, tired tropes, and really bad writing. In the end, the dichotomy is simple: Style vs. story. The literary folk love the former while the genre hacks love the latter.
Of course, when I spell it out in such a way, it’s easy to see how ridiculous this dichotomy is and how riddled both categories are with exceptions. As I already mentioned, literary fiction is full of beautiful, compelling storytelling. Perhaps it’s more “character focused,” or whatever, but often character is what truly drives plot. And conversely, many fantasy and science fiction writers are remarkable stylists. I think a mistake some people make is to assume that good prose is irrelevant when style is really a major part of the pleasure of reading for many people. On the other hand, everyone loves a great story (or just about everyone). I want aliens, monsters, werewolves, and wizards. I’m sorry, but I do. I want epic! I want adventure! I want magic!
If I have any advice for emerging writers who are maybe having this question, too, it’s that it’s good to have a season where you’re not sure. Write your novel about killer robots. Then turn around and write a quiet short story set in a small town about a struggling single mom and a pile of past due bill notices. Also, pay attention to what you enjoy reading. If you simply can’t get enough of Bradbury, Le Guin, Tolkien, L’Engle, Lewis, etc, then that’s probably a pretty good indicator that you’re more inclined toward speculative fiction. Or, if you love the quiet domestic novel, maybe think about adding to that fine tradition with your own voice. I sometimes felt pressured to enjoy certain authors or books simply because people told me they were great. I sort of lost sight of what I actually liked. That can be a killer. Of course, our interests often need to be guided and cultivated, and good teachers can often help with that.
If you’ve read The Screwtape Letters, though, you might remember a certain passage in which Uncle Screwtape excoriates his nephew Wormwood for letting his human patient read a book “he actually enjoyed.” This man had gotten caught up in certain intellectual circles where only certain books and ideas were regarded as legitimate. It’s easy to get sucked into that and lose touch with what you actually like and enjoy as a person and as a writer.
Style and story go together, are ideally one and the same, and it’s the task of the fiction writer to employ style in such a way that brings the reader fully into the imagined world. This is what John Gardner referred to as the “fictive dream,” and it should go uninterrupted. Stylists can get so self conscious of their prose that they forget that they’re actually trying to say something, while others might bypass good writing just to script a yarn. I’m still thinking through a lot of this in my own life, but it seems worth figuring out and exploring.
Speaking of genre, I recently made the choice to focus primarily on writing speculative fiction, and have a science fiction thriller novel and a fantasy novella coming out next summer to prove it! More details to come. Hopefully, though, more of us can continue to appreciate both great style and story and learn from all sorts of different writers along the way.
