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April 5, 2021

How to Transcend Genre in Fiction

Literature, Writing

fiction, genre, guest post, Igor Livramento, literary fiction, literature

Today’s post on how to transcend genre in fiction is authored by Igor da Silva Livramento, friend and fellow writer, academic, and creative-writing advisor. He’s also a composer, music theorist, and producer. You can find him on LinkedIn, and also take a look at his blog and his page on Bandcamp.

In today’s entry, I will discuss (albeit quickly) something that has bothered me for a long time: The genre/literary fiction split. I’ll try to propose solutions for that, including some writing exercises to get those creative juices flowing on our way to transcending genreBy the way I phrased it, you may notice I consider literary fiction a genre too. Food for thought, eh?.

transcending genre
The light, the composition, and the colors of this photo, all point in specific directions in terms of affective response. Genre isn’t very different. But just as we can transcend the qualitative nature of affective responses in a photo, so we can transcend those of genre

How To Transcend Genre: a Necessary Introduction

Reading this blog entry, you must know me by now. I’m Brazilian, which means I chewed on the anglophone culture of the late nineties during the first decade of the 2000s (blame me, but I still enjoy nu-metal wholeheartedly). This is due to international political-economic relations that I do not intend to analyze here, but I recommend reflecting on the issue.

All that means I consumed my fair share of genre fiction. Importantly, it was never referred as such. It was merely fiction, no labels attached. If I wanted to know what a particular book was about, I had to read the back cover blurb or ask someone who read the book. We’ll see why the lack of labels matters.

Tiny Literary Autobiography

For a tiny literary biography, I took a historical route, starting with Sherlock Holmes – some of the best stories (according to the publishers’ preface to their own selections). From there I went on to nineteenth-century realism, early twentieth-century science fiction, and read some fantasy too, just to end up loving me a lot of noir.

When, as a teenager, I enjoyed all that written fiction beside videogames and superhero comics, I was experiencing an interesting artistic innovation but was unaware of it. I could instinctively notice something in the air, yet I was unable to elaborate what the heck was going on. That’s what I’m here for today.

What’s with the Genre/Literary Fiction Split Anyways?

As stated previously, I’m Latin American and, here, there’s no separation between genre fiction and literary fiction. Surprising, I know. Currently there have been discussions about this split, primarily fueled by English-language translators or publishing houses partially bought by Penguin/Random House (or other big international publishers).

When I say that there was no such divide, I mean we really grouped everything together.

The bookstores first spread books according to content, so technical books went to one side and fiction to another. Then they divided the technical books by subject: cuisine, law, dictionaries, philosophy, history, etc. Fiction was split fourfold: poetry or prose, national or international. Simple as that.

The Diversity of Experience

Our reading mirrored the absence of division of books. We read everything. Strange as it may seem, this made us versatile and voracious. If we liked the experience of reading a book, at any point of a quite long time interval (adolescence in its entirety), we looked for more books to read and we didn’t expect them all to be on the same subject, or with similar characters, or narrated in the same diction. The diversity of experiences was crucial to the adventure of reading.

I originally wrote in the previous paragraph: “We read everything indistinctly”, but that’d be incorrect. We noticed differences, we were young, not dumb! We so accurately grasped what differentiated this book from that one, that we actually compared reads very often. Kids have a propensity for comparative literature, see? Born genius or something of that sort.

Jokes aside, we read far and wide because the genre/literary fiction divide did not exist. We would compare novels to games to films all in one shot. Except for the obvious semiotic differences, all the relevant media could share elements: characters, sceneries, plots, emotions, etc. This leads to questioning…

how to transcend genre
Same as before, and yet not. To transcend genre is an exercise on interpretation without being limited by the direction of the interpretation

How to Transcend Genre: Why not the Best of Both Worlds?

To some extent, that’s the perfect solution we seek unknowingly. Great 21st century novels – like American Gods (by Neil Gaiman) and We Need to Talk About Kevin (by Lionel Shriver) – show this. The supposed barriers supposedly separating both sides of the divide just don’t exist in their own rights, they’re editorial artifices.

If we really think about the question, it is possible to make some bold but true statements. Firstly, literary fiction is a genre. Secondly, the best works have always transcended genres.

I know I need to explain myself, so let’s go. When I state that literary fiction is a genre, I am not making a reductionism, but intend to operate an expansion of the notion of fiction genre to include the literary. This way everybody wins: It will be possible to extend practices from one side to the other, benefiting everyone.

The Final Fantasy Series: Transcend Genre in Style

Games with memorable narratives, such as the great Japanese RPGs of the late 1990s and early 2000s, have moments of electrifying action in intensely fantastical settings, interspersed with scenes of extreme subtlety in character development, sharp dialogue and (intertextual?) referential playfulness.

An example: Final Fantasy VI discusses love and madness, lust for power and solidarity in the same breath it deploys a “world destruction via magic” plot and has an opera in it, with aria and everything, all the while an ecological crisis tone lurks underneath everything (recall it had a female protagonist for bonus points).

And I will not even get start on how Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is the most perfect example of transcending genre; or how the anglophone classification of Latin American novels as “magical realism” entirely misses the point of them ranging anywhere from realism to surrealism for us; or how gothic fiction was both genre and literary before it was cool.

Anyways, back to topic: To transcend genre, we can’t just admire the best works available, we also must get our hands dirty.

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A Bit of Advice

Let me preface this section by saying: All these masterpieces are of brutal honesty. I don’t mean here honesty with something given beforehand, but the authors’ honesty with themselves, with their artistic visions, with the flame that burns within.

It will only be possible to transcend genre – that is, to go far beyond just mixing genres or bending genres to their limits – if we are able to conquer our internal locks until we reach an honesty so brutally sincere with our aesthetic project that we will not even ask ourselves if anyone will read our text or if we are abiding by this or that genre’s conventions.

With that out of the way, let’s get to the practical side of things. Below are some guiding questions for creative writing exercises aimed at overcoming the infamous divide.

How to Transcend Genre: Questions to Ask Yourself

How to Transcend Genre: Doing Away with Weaknesses

How to Transcend Genre: Overcoming Structural Shortcomings

How to Transcend Genre: Expanding Horizons

That’s it for today’s lesson. Write away, kids!