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Genre Fiction Strikes Back - The Open College of the Arts

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Genre Fiction Strikes Back

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Traditionally published versus self-published; agented versus non-agented; popular versus elite. The world of writing has always had its class system. The distinctions of ‘genre’ fiction or ‘literary’ fiction are often the benchmark by which we judge both writers and fellow readers.
It was interesting, therefore, to hear author and creative writing teacher Henry Sutton talking to Mariella Frostrup on Radio 4 recently about why his university has decided to offer a Masters degree in Crime Writing.
When writers embark on creative writing courses they often aspire to write in a genre that’s always been their favourite to read, and that may well be something like crime, sci-fi or romance. It’s a common complaint that tutors, when pushing for high standards of writing, appear resistant to students’ submissions from these genres.
Sutton’s argument was that so-called literary fiction can learn from the entertainment value of genre fiction such as crime. Crime writers too, though, are raising their game. They realise that in a saturated field such as this, they can no longer get away with the well-worn old stereotypes of the maverick cop with a range of personality defects or the increasingly implausible amateur sleuth, who beats the experienced and well-resourced police force to the truth.
In-depth characterisation and painstaking research are becoming hallmarks of the best crime fiction today. Protagonists are becoming more interesting, less predictable and in many cases, more relatable for many readers. Today’s fictional detectives are more likely to have functioning relationships, for example, including as parents, giving the author a chance to introduce some emotional depth into a plot-driven narrative.
This depth is essential in the over-crowded world of crime fiction, if writers are to avoid churning out more of the same. When writing my two crime novels, In Too Deep (2013) and This Little Piggy (October 2014) I decided not to have a police protagonist but to tell the story from a point of view I know all too well – that of the crime reporter. Nor did I go down the route of having the journalist solve the crime, a plotline which no longer seems feasible these days. But reporters are used to telling stories, so it felt like a natural device to use and I hoped I was approaching the well-trodden road of crime writing from a more unusual angle.
Sutton’s own latest novel, My Criminal World, is written from the perspective of the failing author who is being urged to beef up his work with ever more blood and gore – until he is implicated in a real-life murder. Multi-layered meta-fiction, it’s an example of precisely how the crime writing genre can start pulling itself out of a populist ghetto.
It does not seem to me incongruous that new writers are being offered the chance to work within genre fiction and yet still produce work worthy of a higher degree.
So, would courses in genre fiction help writers to raise their game? And are the ‘literary’ and ‘genre’ distinctions becoming outdated?


Posted by author: Barbara Henderson

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