What is genre fiction?

What is genre fiction?

What is literary fiction?

What is the essential difference?

I don't know the definition, as I am not a dictionary, but you can recognize genre fiction very easily; as you read the book and you feel embarassed by doing so that may be THE genre fiction.

Fantasy, science fiction, horror, mystery, and romance are all genres because they all have their own emphases, tropes, and so on. The difference maybe is how much these aspects of genre are emphasized. For example Infinite Jest uses aspects of SF but it really wouldn't primarily be labeled as such

I don't think it's primarily a matter of whether a work has merit, since for example Lem is definitely SF but is of high literary merit

Literary fiction is character driven while genre fiction is plot driven.

genre fiction is written with the intent to fit into existing genres, to appeal to reader expectations. literary fiction is not

>What is genre fiction?
Literature as commodity.
>What is literary fiction?
Literature by people whose job doesn't consist of selling books.
>What is the essential difference?
Literary fiction is better.

whats he playing? looks comfy

genre fiction is more about story and plot. literary fiction is more about characters, ideas, prose, and being a naval-gazing useless fag

Let's see if I got it. Star Wars is genre fiction because it's fantasy masquerading as science fiction, and appeals to a very wide audience?

neil gaiman talks a lot about what genre means in "the view from the cheap seats" which is a collection of his essays and speeches and introductions. basically what i took away from it was that to fall within a genre, a story has certain benchmarks it has to meet. a western has to have gunfights, a damsel in distress, cowboys, etc. otherwise it's just a story in the west

the question that is asked from that is what it means to play around with the genre. if you meet all the criteria but then do other stuff, are you still in the genre or have you created something wholly different?

Star Wars is a space opera. I don't know why that makes it different. But I'm glad it is.

>unpopular things are better

Genre fiction is when disgusting people don't like a book because it's not like the other ones from the same "genre".

>commodity means popularity
>

...

Genre fiction is the reduction of writing to a commodity.
Literary fiction is the alteration of writing to paroxysm.

One is criticized by its appeal and marketability, the other defies criticism and so creates schools of possible criticisms--of varying size from a single individual to many individuals.

Nothing to do with being popular, you can have selling books as your job description and starve. Many, if not most genre fiction writers are precisely like that.

I wonder if there's some genre fiction that you lads think hold actual literally merit.

Horror is mostly pulp trash, but i find it hard to deny that Poe and Ligotti both have a lot of actual merit in their writings.

Science Fiction is even worse in the genre shit trash, with waves upon waves of trash written like hitting the store shelves, but again, i find it hard to deny that writers like PKD, Ellison and Ballard (as well as Burroughs' sci fi trilogy) all have merit.

I think the line between literary fiction and genre shit is blurrier than what this board makes it out to be.

You're not defining genre fiction correctly, IMO, user [1].

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1.

bra-vo
>saved

yeah, i'd say that's a good definition of it

This. Ah, semantics n shiet!

>What is the essential difference?

Literary merit.

>What is genre fiction?
Stuff that you don't like but sells more than your work

>What is literary fiction?
Stuff you like that sells less or the same as your work

>What is the essential difference?
Whether you like it and how much it sells

HOMM 3.

>implying most literary authors don't want to make money

op here, that old man is playing Ultima Online

I like that one. The only outlier might be those weird artsy sci-fis that are just people walking around moon stations and talking eat lunch or whatever. But sci-fi is weird and can be used like historical fiction as a framing device.

There's four axes (or two if you group them). The first is originality (following formula and tropes), and the other are aesthetic, emotional, and intellectual value, all grouped up.

When it comes to whether something is "literary" or not, it's a vague process of adding up qualities. We usually understand genre fiction has something unoriginal, but genre fiction can still be genre fiction even if it doesn't ever use tropes or formula because genre fiction usually has very low aesthetic and intellectual value, if any. All of that being said, I think the line people usually draw it on is intellectual value. Does the book have something to say and, if so, was it thought-provoking and worth saying?