9/06/2012

Fiction Novel Food Chain

Okay.  Something has really been chapping my hide lately.  Really been a burr under my saddle.  Really, really just...pissing me off, for lack of a better term.  So I've decided to make a hierarchical list of some of the more popular fiction novel sub-genres.  Maybe not for the general reading public and more for myself, but still something that needs to be sorted and dealt with.  The categories comprised are not necessarily put in order of profitability or popularity as the top four could most likely be interchanged with one another.

This list will be a sort of literary food chain, starting with what I believe to be the purest, most credible kind of fiction writing, and finally spiraling down to the lowest, cheapest form of fiction.  I have given book or author examples for some categories, but the latter categories are pretty much self-explanatory as you will see.  As a disclaimer, I just want to make it clear that although these are
my opinions concerning what makes good fiction and poor fiction, they are still 100% accurate and correct and cannot be disputed.

THE CHART


JUVENILE FICTION (a la Harry Potter, etc)

MYSTERY/ THRILLER (Koontz, Grisham, etc)
CONTEMPORARY FICTION (Patterson, King, etc)
HISTORICAL FICTION
SCIENCE FICTION
ROMANCE (Steel, etc)
FANTASY
HORROR
LITERARY FICTION
CHIC-LIT
COMIC BOOKS
ANIMAL/ PET FICTION
SINGLE CELL ORGANISM FICTION
EROTICA

And there you have it.  It looks like another victory for both JUVENILE FICTION and EROTICA.  It always perplexes me; how did EROTICA ever get its name?  Do people actually find smut in book form erotic?  Really?  It's more like porn on paper.  There is a reason why the porn industry is a multibillion-dollar business, and there is a reason why people buy EROTICA: sex sells.  Always has, always will.  Not because anything has been well written or well produced.


Congrats, all you EROTICA "writers" floating around out there; you must be extremely proud of yourselves.  Selling out for the easy buck.  I guess I shouldn’t be surprised—there are gravy-trainers in every industry.  I see that now.


Keep writing your "stories" and I suppose people will continue to purchase them.  Just know that it ain't your writing style or painstakingly crafted character development and storyline that are drawing them to your novel.  With that knowledge, how could you possibly continue to churn out such played, unimaginative, and uninspired drivel?

Oh, right.  Money talks.  To bad integrity doesn't talk.  Integrity really should make a concerted effort to talk much more regularly in society.  But that's for another blog.