Most writers I know write fantasy. Or science fiction, or gruesome murder mysteries where the killer rides a glider or haunts the sewers to gleefully kill again and again, which is another kind of fantasy. I hope.
There are great advantages to fantasy, or science fiction writing. Pretty much anything goes. And when it doesn’t go, God himself steps in, in the form of an angel or demon or ghost to resolve the issue. You aren’t going to run into too many plot snags with that kind of help.
Those who write dragons and maiden stories, or spaceship and alien stories, or coppers and creeps are considered “genre” writers. As opposed to “trade” writers, who involve themselves with the real world, with events that actually could happen. If you’re really good, or lucky, the reader thinks the novel did happen. This is very high praise for any writer. The highest.
I can hear some dissenters. Aren’t mysteries more trade than genre? Aren’t these dependent on a high level of reality?
Yes and no. It’s a matter of plot versus character. A mystery is plot dependent. In other words, the reader is engaged by What Will Happen Next. In trade fiction, the reader is far less concerned with What Will Happen Next. After all, something is always going to happen. The trade reader is focused on character. How will the character grow? What is their emotional state? In trade novels the character’s emotional state determines plot. With mystery novels it’s the other way around.
But wait! the genre writer says. My characters grow and change! Who do you think you are, you assuming S.O.B.
Leaving aside the insult, do they really grow? Do they change? The genre hero is typically static. He/she has that high level of caricature expected by the reader. The detective is tough and defiant. The maiden is resilient and spiritual. At the finish they are essentially the same character. Or caricature. The reader wouldn’t have it any other way. When I read for plot, don’t confuse me with some long-winded character study. Who cares if Max Henry is unsure his father really loved him? There’s three international terrorists out to destroy the world. Shoot someone, for Pete’s sake.
Occasionally, a genre novel will indeed attempt a complicated evolution in character, and some are successful, like Cormac McCarthy and Margaret Atwood. Or Poe, for that matter. This is very hard to pull off. And I would argue they don’t really pull it off. Their characters become so complicated the reader stops thinking of plot. This work is more akin to trade fiction.
Even worse, literary fiction.
Ugh, literary. That awful word.
Mystery writers don’t study much literary fiction. And literary writers don’t read a lot of mysteries. Or fantasy, or horror. This is good. These are separate worlds. I don’t want my dentist remodeling my bathroom. And I don’t want my plumber working on my teeth.
None of this has anything to do with quality, mind you. Quality is what sells. That’s the definition, anything else is foolishness. Write a good plot-driven mystery and you’re writing quality. Write a complex and deceptive character-driven novel, one so compelling the reader doesn’t care what happens next, and that’s quality.
What I want are books that don’t confuse me. A confused reader is an angry reader. And an angry reader is…
A writer.
Richard Donnelly lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Classic flyover land. Which makes us feel just a little… superior. He publishes a weekly column of essays on the writing life at richarddonnelly.substack.com