Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Women's literary fiction - qu'est-ce que c'est?

How would you define women's literary fiction? Is it considered a genre? In your opinion, what would you consider roughly the appropriate word count? Would 70,000 words be considered too small?

The rapid-fire nature of your questions makes me feel slightly beaten-about-the-head-with-a-blunt-instrument, so I need a few seconds to recover ...

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Okay, let's continue.

I define women's literary fiction as genre-less fiction written for women (and we can identify that it's written for women mainly because there is a heroine rather than a hero, or a group of protagonists who are women). That's mainly because I don't really know what 'literary fiction' is so I tend to like to call it 'genre-less' fiction, mainly because the label 'literary fiction' is often applied to stories that can't be slotted into another genre. But please note that this is my definition and it may not be used against another other literary agent in a court of law. And let's not confound 'literary fiction' with 'literature'.

To answer your second question: given the above definition, it's a kind of non-genre (IMO only!).

Word count is as word count does, but to make the production of the physical book viable for a publisher (i.e. how much it costs to buy the paper, pay the printer etc due to economies of scale), anything less than 50 000 words won't really cut it. Anything over 90 000 words may make people nervous for similar reasons. So 70 000 words is just about right. NB: All this is moot in e-book land, where you have no trees to fell and ink to dry.






2 comments:

sally said...

"And let's not confound 'literary fiction' with 'literature'."
So tell me if I've got this right: literature is the all-embracing term, literary fiction is a branch on its tree. Or is there something else to the distinction?

Anonymous said...

I wouldn't describe literary fiction as genre-less. I see it as simply one of the many types of genre. The idea that 'literary ' fiction is somehow different from genre novels because it explores the human condition is in my opinion flawed because any good novel explores the human condition. It's just that so-called genre novels do it in a different or exotic setting - a made up world for fantasy, a different era for historical novels or among a particular group of people such as those searching for love in romance to give a few examples. All the usual human motivations and reactions appear because we wouldn't believe in the story or the characters if they didn't.