I Write Literary Fiction…But What Is It?

At the heart of any type of fiction is storytelling. People love stories, they have since the beginning of time. Stories were recorded when we developed the ability to communicate.

Stories are captivating because we love to find ourselves in them, discover something we find relatable, and identify with something that makes us feel less alone, and more human.

I write literary fiction, but I often get asked what that means. Fiction comes in many genres, and there are particular characteristics to each type. Literary Fiction is a broad genre that includes anything that isn’t crime, fantasy, romance, horror, or science fiction. It tends to be more character-driven than plot-driven in that the focus of the writing is the protagonist’s journey rather than the sequence of events.

A character-driven plot means that the purpose is to create characters that are unexpected or unusual. Literary fiction usually works under the assumption that life isn’t always fair, that happiness is not something that is taken for granted, and that human life is mortal and ambiguous. Events are important, but not as crucial to the story line as in other types of fiction.

The most important element to any type of writing is the story. According to the book Writing Fiction; A Guide to Narrative Craft by Janet Burroway, “A story is a series of events recorded in their chronological order” (p. 142). She says that stories have characters, themes, setting, and incidents or events but they may or may not have significance.

Story is different from plot, and plot is what is essential to most types of fiction. Plot, according to Burroway, “is a series of events deliberately arranged so as to reveal their dramatic, thematic, and emotional significance” (p. 142). The events are organized in a way that is meaningful and purposeful, and the focus is on the “what, how, and why, with scenes ordered to highlight the workings of cause and effect” (p. 142).

When it is a character-driven plot, what takes precedence is the protagonist’s personal development or growth. This is the case with Lonely Dove where the purpose of the story is to showcase Anji, the protagonist, and her journey of self-discovery.

When I write, in the first draft, I write without care or concern over plot. I write to get the story out of me, and yes, sometimes, the series of events don’t have rhyme or reason. I am more focused on what is happening to the character internally. Who are they when the story starts? How do they progress? How have they changed at the end of the story?

When I edit, I ensure that I focus on the plot. I evaluate each scene to determine its purpose and to decide whether or not to keep it. If I do keep it, I then decide the order in which it has to appear to ensure that the story has value and meaning, to ensure that the plot makes sense.

The plot for Lonely Dove, was the result of a lot of rounds of edits and rewrites. The first time I wrote the novel, I wrote it as a letter from Anji to her soulmate where she started in the present day and flashed back to her childhood and then told her story in sequential order. In this way, I found it hard to portray how Anji evolved.

I thought it would be more effective if she was able to relay how she made sense of the past as an adult, and that it would work better if she were able to go back and forth between the past and the present to show how she had grown and matured. This seemed more realistic because as we go through life, we don’t often understand what the past means until we are later in life, looking back.

Then I felt that the letter narrative didn’t read well for a reader, so I rewrote the story in third person, as it is now. I felt it was easier to get a more objective view of Anji’s life in that way. I then mapped the relationships and the learning that Anji had from each, and reorganized them in a way that best showcased her evolution.

I found this was the most effective means for my storytelling. I wanted my readers to be captivated by Anji and her journey, and maybe find themself in her, discover something they could relate to, and perhaps feel less alone.