Thoughts for fiction writers: what and why do we write?
First, the ‘why’. We write to communicate our ideas. That means we write for readers. That begs the question: the ‘what’. What kind of novel should we write to find the readers we want?
From clay tablets to illuminated manuscripts, from parchment to print, the path from writer to reader is always changing. With the digital revolution, more books are published each year than ever before. It seems every second person wants to write a book and does so. It’s remarkably easy to self-publish a novel. In that ever-expanding universe, broadly speaking, the men write crime, thrillers and sci-fi; the women, gothic tales, fantasy and romance. A huge number of these novels are never read by anyone outside the writer’s immediate circle. The writers who are natural publicisers or trained in marketing may do well. The quality of the writing has no bearing on the quantity of sales. There is no filter.
Meanwhile, life in the traditional publishing world continues. Publishers have always been on the lookout for the next new trend while they publish what followed the last trend. Their best-selling titles subsidise their punts on new writers. Once you are an established name, you can go on writing the books that you are known for. You are as safe as any writer ever is, as long as you keep up your standard. Even when your standard slips or you write something that is outside your usual stamping ground, you may still be published on the strength of your name. However, if you have never been well-known, then you are in the publishers’ bran tub, with or without an agent. Your latest novel may get picked out of the sawdust and given the necessary marketing boost, or it may join the thousands of rejected titles. If you are entering the fray with your first novel, you are lucky if you are one of the very few who are taken on as a calculated risk.
Literary or genre? If you write genre, then you are more likely to be taken up. This is simply because the great mass of readers read fiction that can be easily classified: as in crime, romance, spy, thriller, war, sci-fi, fantasy. But trying to box novels into literary or genre is not easy. A literary novel may have content that can be categorized as belonging to a genre. Crime and Punishment comes to mind, as well as Anna Karenina and War and Peace from 19th century writers. In contemporary writing, The English Patient is a good example of a literary novel in the category or genre of war and romance.
Does the difference between literary and genre fiction lie in the quality of the writing? Sometimes, but not always. The quality of the writing is not a certain indicator of whether a novel is literary or genre. Genre can be well written. Literary novels can be poorly written. There are well written novels and badly written novels. Badly written novels will sell with the right marketing. A commercial success does not mean a book is well-written.
To justify the description ‘literary’, the novel should provoke thought. It should pay attention to human nature. The three elements of a novel – plot, character and context – should be balanced in such a way that each aspect illuminates the others. The theme may be concerned with a fundamental life dilemma. Literary novels have originality in ideas and style.
Discussing this with a friend, novelist, short-story writer and artist Marcus Campbell, he offered the following thoughts about literary fiction writing. “we write to explore and thus reveal a particular truth, which may, in the end, express some universal aspect of Truth”. He developed this further: “We write for the satisfaction of telling that truth in such a way that it convinces the mind and moves the heart of unknown readers, who may then experience our writing as a thing of value and beauty.”
Laudable aims, difficult to achieve in practice. Even if you write beautifully, convincingly, movingly, such work nowadays is unlikely to reach the readership you hope for. Where is the literary agent who will put time and energy on a long bet? What publisher will touch it?
To sum up:
For finding an agent, a publisher and commercial success, write genre.
For self-satisfaction, a faint chance of publication and critical acclaim, write literary fiction
Whatever we write, let’s write it as well as we can, and trust to luck.