Ever since I found my interest in writing, I wanted to explore this new sector; starting from scratch as if a baby learns to crawl. I need to start learning some of the common terms or nouns used in the authors’ world.
(What?) There’s standard writing format that I need to apply to? And each contest has its own formatting requirements? (Okay… If that’s to facilitate the judge in reading the articles.)
Must use third-party as a character to tell the story? Fiction vs. Non-fiction. Should write the story in Past tense or Present tense? I’m confused. Flash fiction? What’s that? Totally, a new vocab to me.
“Oh, Gosh… What in the world…? Can’t I just write what I have in mind?” Already having so many rules laid in front of me before I even start to write the first word of the story that I have in mind.
My reading interest is quite vast. I read books that trigger my inquisitive to keep turning the next pages, just to know what comes after this. From fiction, non-fiction, children story book, even manga; but as a reader, I don’t focus much about the story genre or formatting. That, would have been well-handled by the editorial and proof reader team.
Acknowledging on all that new terms that I need to learn, there’s this one thing that really annoy me; i.e. the Genre. A story will be categorized as fiction, flash-fiction, non-fiction, literally fiction, biography, autobiography, memoirs, short story, long story, novels, and so on. I guess, ‘Poetry’ is the only genre that I could easily grasp as it is self-explained. Either Rhyme poem or Non-rhyme poem. But I was wrong again, there’s more to it. ‘Dictionary Poem’, what’s that? Scratching my head, and frustratingly throwing myself onto my bed. I have headache now.
“Can someone tell me why there’s so much categories?” Grumbling voice came from me, through my pillow.
Flipping over, I stare at the ceiling fan and think… If we could just take a step back and look at the development of literature world, authors and artists enthusiastically put down in words their creative masterpiece, and share it with the public. Many people fell in love with the beauty of literature and can’t wait to read the next art work from their favourite author(s). The famous story from William Shakespeare ‘lives’ in many readers’ minds, till this day, this century.
Authors – Let their creativities fly!
Yes, we want that, please do!
I guess this is when the so-called ‘genre’ or category starts to play their part. Those precious stories from the authors are then being categorized into several groups or types; just so to help and facilitate the readers in searching for their preferred types of stories.
One story could fall into several genres; depending on what storyline it was or what elements it contained; be it fiction or non-fiction, then horror, fiction, romance or something else.
The ‘genre’, to my opinion, literally, is to help readers in zooming into their preferred story types and find a story from the bucket that is overflow with variety stories. But looking at the ‘settings’ of our current 21st century, these genres and categories have evolved largely and even ‘outshine’ the work of authors.
How is that? Now, authors have to write story that falls under a particular genre. Even when they submit their story in the contest, they first need to have their story fulfilled the requirements. For instance, only flash fiction is acceptable; memoir is not accepted.
May I ask ‘why’ to the editors or publishers? “Why?” Since when we need to live within those small boxes and limit the creativities of authors?
Aren’t genres just to help categorizing the stories? Now, authors can only write something that fit the genres? What on earth are we doing? Isn’t the purpose of having genres being twisted? Aren’t such requirements, literally, limit the creativities in authors? Aren’t we (the readers) losing more interesting stories to read?
Please think again on my questions.
“What genre was for in the first place?”
“Why can’t authors write stories that could fit into multiple genres?”
“Why not?”
Nowadays, there are many ‘tend-to-just-follow’ community. It’s hard to have creative people who have the guts to share their creative work these days, so, don’t ‘kill’ them right of the bat, please.
I still want to read interesting masterpiece from various authors (i.e. amateur or experienced, young or old, man or woman, worldwide).
I love interesting stories!