What Is Genre? A Reflection
I am often asked what genre I
write. In response I either give a simple and not very useful answer or I turn
to the emotional direction of my writing. I honestly believe that genre, if it
exists at all, lies in the characters’ central emotions.
For me, a story begins not with a
plot but with a quandary. There is a character in a situation, perhaps one he
is sharing with another or perhaps a moment of isolation. In that moment the
character experiences an emotion and that inevitable question, “What must I do
about this feeling?” Perhaps it is a moment of hope, of attraction, or of
terror. The list goes on.
Unlike you or I, that is when a
character is created, not in passion and sexuality, not in physical arousal, not
in parental coitus, but in the predicament.
The author’s job is to share the
intense emotion of that moment with the reader, to make it come alive. As the
writing process goes forward, that quandary may not be the starting place of
the written story, but is always the starting place of its creation.
If the emotion of that moment is
terror, the author is writing horror. If it is love, the author is writing
romance. If it is a feeling of greed, we have crime, a desire to break the
rules. And on…
Once that initial moment is set,
there have to be others. After all, one instance will not sustain an entire
book. Still it is the defining moment, and as such, it — not some rules of
writing — defines the book’s genre.
Most of the protagonists in my
books start with intense feelings of aloneness. They struggle to find
themselves in the world. The genre that produces is what I call literary
fiction. If you have ever felt different, lonely, un-connected — and who has
not? — this is a genre that will speak to you.
Struggling to find themselves,
these isolated characters are then opened to a gamut of emotions and reactions.
Love is certainly one such feeling. Anger may be another. Sometimes a character
can delight in that separation and cling to their isolation. Whatever the
reaction, it provides the momentum to the plot. But always, the story starts
with that character and that emotional quandary.
In my latest book Broody New Englander I set three stories
in Maine, the area of the world where I was raised. In it, I move the reader
through three genres.
The first of the these pieces is a
novella, The Stylite. Putnam Williams
is a would-be writer who thinks of himself as independent and un-needful of
others. It is his self-obsessed loneliness that provides the force of what has
been described by one critic as “virtuoso writing.” The novella asks quite
simply, “Can there be real love, or is it all just deceit? Can there be real
romance or is love illusion?” The genre, literary fiction.
The second piece is a long short story,
Mothers’ Teat, which takes us inside
the smoldering rage of a dysfunctional family. The starting emotion is not
loneliness but fury, the kind of anger that leads to crime, perhaps to murder.
The story ends not with resolution but rather with that rage hanging over the
characters and the reader, leaving us all to wonder what darkness will come.
Finally, Hansom Dove is a short story which expresses that ultimate
darkness. It is a story that moves us towards the protagonists defining sense
of terror and thus into horror. His editor sends a lonely writer to an inn
situated off the Maine coast — ostensibly to work on his novel. There he
discovers the woman of his dreams. We must leave the summary there since you
certainly won’t want any spoilers before entering that strange place.
Sometimes Ken
Weene writes to exorcise demons. Sometimes he writes because the characters in
his head demand to be heard. Sometimes he writes because he thinks what he have
to say might amuse or even on occasion inform. Mostly, however, he writes
because it is a cheaper addiction than drugs, an easier exercise than going to
the gym, and a more sociable outlet than sitting at McDonald's drinking coffee
with other old farts: in brief because it keeps him just a bit younger and more
alive.
Ken’s stories
and poetry have appeared in numerous publications including Sol, Spirits,
Palo Verde Pages, Vox Poetica, Clutching at Straws, The
Word Place, Legendary, Sex and Murder Magazine, The New
Flesh Magazine, The Santa Fe Literary Review, Daily Flashes of
Erotica Quarterly, Bewildering Stories, A Word With You Press, Mirror
Dance, The Aurorean, Stymie, Empirical, Pirene’s Fountain, and ConNotations.
Three of Ken’s novels, Widow’s Walk, Memoirs From the Asylum,
and Tales From the Dew Drop Inne, are published by All Things That
Matter Press. His new book, Broody New Englander is through Red
Chameleon. In 2015 ATTMPress will be bringing out Times to Try the Soul of
Man.
