The urge to edit subsiding, I turn to categorizing "Stranded" in search of a market. Having published mostly genre fiction so far, I'm looking into some basic definitions for the first time.
From the 2005 Novel and Short Story Writer's Market:
Contemporary. Material dealing with popular current trends, themes, or topics.
Experimental. Fiction that is innovative in subject matter and style, avant-garde, non-formulaic, usually literary material.
Juvenile. Fiction intended for children ages 2-12.
Literary fiction. The general category of fiction which employs more sophisticated technique, driven as much or more by character evolution than action in the plot.
Mainstream fiction. Fiction which appeals to a more general reading audience, versus literary or genre fiction. Mainstream is more plot-driven than literary fiction and less formulaic than genre fiction.
Slice-of-life. A presentation of characters in a seemingly mundane situation which offers the reader a flash of illumination about the characters or their situation.
My observations:
The word "formulaic" in reference to genre fiction should not be taken as a pejorative. Formulaic here means following the general direction of others in the same field. One convention of mysteries, for example, is to drop clues throughout the story and illustrate how they led to a solution in the end.
In mainstream or literary fiction the logical chain is still present, but stays in the background. Non-genre protagonists and antagonists are not so overtly heroic or villainous, so their thoughts and actions need not follow those more emphatic lines.
The word "contemporary" here is more specific than "set in modern times." The material itself must address specific, immediate issues such as the current Iraq war, how steroids taint sports, etc.
Based on my new knowledge of the categories and previous comments on the kind of story I'm going for, "Stranded" can best be described as mainstream.
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