Genre Fiction Should Be Taught More In English Classes

(Note: I originally wrote this essay for a dual-credit English 101 class.  It was later printed in a shortened form in my local newspaper under the High School Highlights section (I have about three, usually shorter, articles printed per month).  I'm counting it as a "writing post.")

           On my blog, Into The Ravenous Maw, I posted a list of writing concepts I learned outside of English class.  Most of them are staples of writing genre fiction that are never taught in high school.  English education is heavily skewed toward the literary side of writing, with little regard to the other half: genre fiction.  Genre fiction deserves to be taught alongside literary and mainstream fiction in English classes.  It helps to develop your voice as a writer, can be a massive freelance money-maker, is important to pop culture, teaches you some important terminology, and is a great way to express emotion and philosophy.

Writing genre fiction helps develop your voice as a writer.  This principle applies to both writing fiction and nonfiction.  Have you ever read an article in National Geographic?  While National Geographic is a highly regarded publication for scholars, it is far too dry for most readers.  It lacks voice and substance.  Literary fiction is generally poetic to some degree, which is a nice element of voice, yet genre fiction is where you will find the freshest, cleverest, and liveliest of writer voices.  If nothing else, writing genre fiction allows your voice to be found if it does not align with the voices of most writers of literary fiction.

Doing freelance genre fiction writing can earn you a pretty penny.  Some literary and mainstream fiction publishers pay as well, but the payment is often less.  The average seems to be about $50 for a short story.  Agni pays 1-4.9 cents per word, according to its website.  A story published in Ploughshares, a magazine out of Emerson College, will earn you a maximum of $250.  Very few journals and magazines pay more than that for non-genre works.  On the flip side, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction pays 7-11 cents per word.  Another major genre fiction magazine, Asimov’s Science Fiction, pays 7-9 cents per word for short stories.  Longer manuscripts average $5,000 in advance payment, plus royalties, regardless of genre.  Writers are much more likely to sell short fiction than novels, so that fact can be easily overlooked.

Genre fiction is substantial in pop culture.  Think of Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, and Twilight.  They have all made splashes on bookshelves and in cinemas.  Having basic knowledge of these series, better yet having read them, allows for intelligent conversation with your peers.  Do people talk about the non-genre classics?  Yes, sometimes, although when was the last time someone opened a conversation with, “Have you read The Prince and the Pauper”?  Genre fiction is big right now.  Do not isolate yourself from your friends by neglecting to read the latest craze, or at least the back cover.

While other genres can express emotion, genre fiction does it with the most potency.  If you want to make your readers squirm or scare them to death, Horror is the way to go.  Pure Romance allows for sweet or sensual passages unobtainable in a straight-literary story.  The main reason for the punch of emotion in genre fiction is its tendency to be character-driven.  Once you are in the viewpoint character’s head, getting you to feel what they feel is a lot easier.  Literary and mainstream writing tends to focus more on the beauty of the words and descriptions, a condition called stained-glass writing, rather than plot, setting, and characters, the main concern in translucent writing.  You may feel a sense of majesty when reading a classic; but if you want to feel something else, genre fiction is a better choice.

Orson Scott Card is a master of philosophical science-fiction.  If you want to present a philosophical dilemma, writing in his style is one of the best ways to do it.  The character-driven nature of genre fiction, especially of the softer science-fiction subgenres, allows you to make deep comments involving our world and the human condition.  This is not to be confused with “theme.”  While some genre fiction utilizes theme, literary and mainstream fiction use it far more.  Card’s books Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind ask philosophical questions without truly answering them; themes assert a correct answer to a question.  The same technique can be used when delving into a controversial topic.  Non-genre fiction tends to show bias, whereas genre fiction can create separation from the issue or topic being portrayed through the use of “alien” characters, concepts, etc.  Genre fiction can also create its own philosophical questions.  One of the main questions throughout the Enderverse books (Ender’s Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind) is whether eradicating another sentient species is ethical.  We have yet to discover any non-human species that is definitively self-aware; therefore, non-genre fiction cannot pose that question.  The question is still legitimate because it is possible.  Science-fiction is within a subset of genre fiction called “speculative fiction.”  Speculative fiction asks “What if?” inherently.  Other fiction genres have trouble doing the same.

There are many terms associated with genre fiction that are rarely used otherwise.  If they are never taught in school, trying to understand writers of genre fiction will be frustrating.  Take “M.I.C.E. Quotient” for example.  It is a reference to the four basic types of plot: milieu/setting, idea, character, and event.  When in conversation with someone who says they are writing an “idea story,” having a clue what that means will surely prove beneficial.  Many of these terms, while rarely taught alongside non-genre fiction, can apply there as well.  There are zero valid reasons to omit such terms in standard English education.

In order to post to my blog what I post, I have had to do my own research into writing genre fiction.  English class has helped me with my literary criticisms and flash fiction pieces in the literary and mainstream genres, to some degree, but has given me little support elsewhere.  If genre fiction was taught more in English class, I would have saved dozens of hours of research that could have been spent on writing.  Besides that, the writing ability of my peers is visibly lacking due to a one-sided English education.  A change needs to be made.On my blog, Into The Ravenous Maw, I posted a list of writing concepts I learned outside of English class.  Most of them are staples of writing genre fiction that are never taught in high school.  English education is heavily skewed toward the literary side of writing, with little regard to the other half: genre fiction.  Genre fiction deserves to be taught alongside literary and mainstream fiction in English classes.  It helps to develop your voice as a writer, can be a massive freelance money-maker, is important to pop culture, teaches you some important terminology, and is a great way to express emotion and philosophy.

Writing genre fiction helps develop your voice as a writer.  This principle applies to both writing fiction and nonfiction.  Have you ever read an article in National Geographic?  While National Geographic is a highly regarded publication for scholars, it is far too dry for most readers.  It lacks voice and substance.  Literary fiction is generally poetic to some degree, which is a nice element of voice, yet genre fiction is where you will find the freshest, cleverest, and liveliest of writer voices.  If nothing else, writing genre fiction allows your voice to be found if it does not align with the voices of most writers of literary fiction.

Doing freelance genre fiction writing can earn you a pretty penny.  Some literary and mainstream fiction publishers pay as well, but the payment is often less.  The average seems to be about $50 for a short story.  Agni pays 1-4.9 cents per word, according to its website.  A story published in Ploughshares, a magazine out of Emerson College, will earn you a maximum of $250.  Very few journals and magazines pay more than that for non-genre works.  On the flip side, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction pays 7-11 cents per word.  Another major genre fiction magazine, Asimov’s Science Fiction, pays 7-9 cents per word for short stories.  Longer manuscripts average $5,000 in advance payment, plus royalties, regardless of genre.  Writers are much more likely to sell short fiction than novels, so that fact can be easily overlooked.

Genre fiction is substantial in pop culture.  Think of Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, and Twilight.  They have all made splashes on bookshelves and in cinemas.  Having basic knowledge of these series, better yet having read them, allows for intelligent conversation with your peers.  Do people talk about the non-genre classics?  Yes, sometimes, although when was the last time someone opened a conversation with, “Have you read The Prince and the Pauper”?  Genre fiction is big right now.  Do not isolate yourself from your friends by neglecting to read the latest craze, or at least the back cover.

While other genres can express emotion, genre fiction does it with the most potency.  If you want to make your readers squirm or scare them to death, Horror is the way to go.  Pure Romance allows for sweet or sensual passages unobtainable in a straight-literary story.  The main reason for the punch of emotion in genre fiction is its tendency to be character-driven.  Once you are in the viewpoint character’s head, getting you to feel what they feel is a lot easier.  Literary and mainstream writing tends to focus more on the beauty of the words and descriptions, a condition called stained-glass writing, rather than plot, setting, and characters, the main concern in translucent writing.  You may feel a sense of majesty when reading a classic; but if you want to feel something else, genre fiction is a better choice.

Orson Scott Card is a master of philosophical science-fiction.  If you want to present a philosophical dilemma, writing in his style is one of the best ways to do it.  The character-driven nature of genre fiction, especially of the softer science-fiction subgenres, allows you to make deep comments involving our world and the human condition.  This is not to be confused with “theme.”  While some genre fiction utilizes theme, literary and mainstream fiction use it far more.  Card’s books Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind ask philosophical questions without truly answering them; themes assert a correct answer to a question.  The same technique can be used when delving into a controversial topic.  Non-genre fiction tends to show bias, whereas genre fiction can create separation from the issue or topic being portrayed through the use of “alien” characters, concepts, etc.  Genre fiction can also create its own philosophical questions.  One of the main questions throughout the Enderverse books (Ender’s Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind) is whether eradicating another sentient species is ethical.  We have yet to discover any non-human species that is definitively self-aware; therefore, non-genre fiction cannot pose that question.  The question is still legitimate because it is possible.  Science-fiction is within a subset of genre fiction called “speculative fiction.”  Speculative fiction asks “What if?” inherently.  Other fiction genres have trouble doing the same.

There are many terms associated with genre fiction that are rarely used otherwise.  If they are never taught in school, trying to understand writers of genre fiction will be frustrating.  Take “M.I.C.E. Quotient” for example.  It is a reference to the four basic types of plot: milieu/setting, idea, character, and event.  When in conversation with someone who says they are writing an “idea story,” having a clue what that means will surely prove beneficial.  Many of these terms, while rarely taught alongside non-genre fiction, can apply there as well.  There are zero valid reasons to omit such terms in standard English education.

In order to post to my blog what I post, I have had to do my own research into writing genre fiction.  English class has helped me with my literary criticisms and flash fiction pieces in the literary and mainstream genres, to some degree, but has given me little support elsewhere.  If genre fiction was taught more in English class, I would have saved dozens of hours of research that could have been spent on writing.  Besides that, the writing ability of my peers is visibly lacking due to a one-sided English education.  A change needs to be made.