Literary Fiction Definition - Complete List of Book Genres

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Literary Fiction Definition – What’s the best definition for Literary Fiction? Books in the Literary Fiction genre tend to be more “sophisticated” than books that are simply labeled as Commercial, Mainstream, or General Fiction. Examples of Literary Fiction authors include Barbara Kingsolver, John LeCarre, and Toni Morrison.

Literary Fiction often has several or all of the following characteristics: slower-paced, advanced vocabulary, poetic or flowery language, longer and more complex sentences, an unusual story structure and/or writing style, character-driven instead of plot-driven, complex themes, highly original and/or intellectual ideas, and not-so-simple and/or less-than-happy endings.

Unfortunately, some Literary Fiction authors put too much emphasis on their writing style. When that happens, the story suffers–and so does the reader. Most readers don’t want to read a sentence that’s half a page long. They don’t want to read a sentence five times and still be unsure what it means. And they don’t want to use a dictionary every five minutes.

Think of it this way…

A badly written literary novel is like a good-looking person without any character. That type of person and that type of book might be interesting for a few seconds, but that’s about it. If you’re an author and you want to write “smart” fiction, try to write a novel that straddles the commercial/literary boundary.

That’s the best of both worlds.

Scroll below now to see 25 literary fiction genre examples,
or click here to see all fiction genres.

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