Quote:
Originally Posted by Catlady
[...] You're being quite dismissive of genre fiction. [...]
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That was not my intention. It's what I write, and most of the time it's what I read.
Genres exist because certain standards/conventions/traditions have evolved that categorise the results - not perfectly but enough that most resellers use recognisably similar sets of genre names. In general, what doesn't fit into commonly recognised genres is either called a mash-up or gets lumped into "Literary" fiction.
My own definition of Literary fiction is fiction in which the rules of genre are set aside (or not followed as assiduously as normal). As I mentioned earlier, I think an author takes additional risks when choosing to write Literary fiction, because the rules of the various genres help to keep your work in a form that readers are familiar with and are prepared to enjoy.
None of this makes genre fiction necessarily easier to write or of a lesser quality than Literary fiction, but
by definition it does make it conventional (to a greater or lesser extent).