I'm not sure if it would be considered urban fantasy, magical realism, religious fiction, or satire.
Genre lines are difficult.
As far as magical realism vs. urban fantasy goes, as I understand it magic realism is a manifestation of reality in a way differing from what is realistic. i.e., In Like Water For Chocolate, when Tita cries into the whatever it is she's making, the food proceeds to make those who eat sad. Like...super extended empathy. As for satire, I don't think that's an exclusive genre.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
I don't think it's technically possible to write "religious fiction" about a religion you don't believe in.
Yes, I believe it's called "inspirational fiction" but that's another Lit Fic sort of thing, so we'll stop that.
Well, if two people wrote identical stories and yet had different intentions...
edited 29th Jan '12 8:26:40 PM by chihuahua0
Not to mention the possibility of agnosticism, and that for the purposes of writing a story, one can hold the premise of God, spiritual redemption and the like to be true (whilst examining the ways people strive to attain a close relationship with Spirit).
edited 29th Jan '12 9:49:00 PM by QQQQQ
Fuzzy Orange Doomsayer
Hmm . . . I wonder if Godless
qualifies as religious fiction. (It's a flawed piece, but quite thought-provoking nonetheless.)
The future of warfare in UC.
It would not be terribly difficult for one of us to write a novel like Left Behind, although I'd hope we have the minimal shame to commit suicide after foisting such poor work on millions of readers. Religious fiction is often quite easy to write because it tends towards very scripted requirements regarding behavior and doctrinal orthodoxy. (This leads to a sort of chicken-and-egg question of whether you're dealing with a bad writer or a writer getting choked out by their theology with surprising regularity.)
Lots of people wrote fiction for the Soviet Union and didn't believe in it, some wrote fiction for it and did, but we still count both as a genre for their similarities. It's equally slanted towards scripted requirements of behavior and doctrinal orthodoxy.
Nous restons ici.
Fuzzy Orange Doomsayer
It depends on how you define it. I'd argue that Trigun qualifies as Christian fiction . . .
Wait, that's sci-fi. Off-topic, off-topic!
That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful
I mean, if you wrote something like Left Behind for a satirical religion, like Last Thursdayism, or Pastafarianism, or whatever... what would that be?
Fuzzy Orange Doomsayer
^ It'd be The Illuminatus Trilogy, that's what.
That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful
Wow - this thread mushroomed while my back was turned!
Not sure I can add very much to it (particularly to the Lit Fic debate - yes, OT, but interesting, nevertheless).
I think the long and the short of it is... if you write fiction, somebody is going to find something in what you've written that'll tempt them to place you in a classification or genre you never thought you were writing for.
I've tried for Historical... but... it kind of... became laughingly pathetic. Historical to Hysterical, as it were. But, I do fancy eventually trying to do what Lindsey Davis and Ellis Peters did: Crime - IN HISTORY!
I guess it's why it's so hard for modern writers to avoid the cross-borders thing. It's too easy to explore other genres within a single work. That's why we get bogged down with trying to disentangle the problems.
<giggles about that mess of a... body... of work.> Yuck. Started, gave up.
edited 30th Jan '12 12:34:37 PM by Euodiachloris
What "one story"?