should we be thinking character? Or . . . something else?

In this bid to distinguish literary fiction from genre (or mainstream), fiction it is sometimes said that literary fiction is more concerned with character than plot. And that may sometimes be true. It is certainly true that it is as concerned with character as with plot. Character never takes a back seat to plot, but shines through the story at every point. As in the best stories of any sort, character and plot are inextricably and organically linked. One could not imagine this particular unfolding of events with any other character, nor any other character with this particular flavor and series of events. The choices that characters make, the choices perhaps that they are driven to make by virtue of who they are — these drive what happens.

And literary fiction prizes the manner of telling as much as what is being told. The language may be lush and rich, intricately styled. It may be swift and lean, trimmed bare. It may tumble to us all in a rush. It may unfurl languorously across the page, heavy with ripe words of delicious sense. Whatever the style, style there is. The words paint for us a time and a place, a mood, a meaning. Voice is preeminent.

Literary fiction is less predictable. It is more experimental, more individual. It is more a vision of the author’s art than the marketplace’s driving forces. Literary fiction doesn’t make any concessions. You, the audience, must come to it on its own terms. Nothing about it is boilerplate. Nothing about it is templated. Nothing about it is formula. Although if you step in close and analyze it, you will find the principles of great storytelling at work, in one way or another.

The best and most satisfying genre fiction often embraces these same values. A work that falls (by virtue of the world created, the concerns it addresses, the plot) into a particular category of fiction might also (by virtue of the art it embraces and the calibre of its writing) arch into the realm of literary.