What kind of Fiction should You write? 5.0! [Quiz game ]

[kitsubasa]

This was interesting to play through! I got Literature first run, and then I did a second and got Gothic-- which I found kind of ironic since I'm procrastinating on study for a gothic lit uni paper right now. It made me wish I was writing it at the moment instead of reading it...

All up, quite insightful, I really liked some of the options you had in there with regards to things like violence/themes/narration. And now I'm going to sit here for a little while going 'I'd be good at literature? What?'. Though, based on some of your commentary from earlier in the thread, this might just mean I'm just being too defiant of traditional genre to make my stories work. Who knows? I aim for a sort of gothic/action mix in most of what I write, since I like taking a bunch of dark characters and sticking them in scenarios where they'll end up having to fight for their lives-- I'm mostly inspired by stuff like Shadow Hearts, Chrono Crusade and Hellboy, and I try and use those as a mould for the tropes, scenarios and characters I throw around. But I think the thing that tipped me a bit on this quiz is that I prefer subverting traditional gender roles for those stories, so when I got to the hero/heroine question my inclination would've been something along the lines of 'hysteric trying to survive his externalised demons' for a hero and 'woman trying to violently destroy the manifestations of her personal failings' for the heroine... and the closest matches available were 'ordinary guy surviving' and whatever the 'strong, capable' descriptor was for heroines. I like to think that I make a decent gothic writer, since I'm big on exploring emotions and characterisation set against a key theme, but I'll have to wait and see whether my aspirations meet my reality.

Thanks for the neat experience, it was a good use of 20 minutes!

[OokamiKasumi]

This was interesting to play through! I got Literature first run, and then I did a second and got Gothic-- which I found kind of ironic since I'm procrastinating on study for a gothic lit uni paper right now. It made me wish I was writing it at the moment instead of reading it...

I'm glad you found my little quiz interesting. ♥

All up, quite insightful, I really liked some of the options you had in there with regards to things like violence/themes/narration. And now I'm going to sit here for a little while going 'I'd be good at literature? What?'. Though, based on some of your commentary from earlier in the thread, this might just mean I'm just being too defiant of traditional genre to make my stories work. Who knows?

'Literature,' as I defined it for this quiz, tends to mean that the answers chosen were author/imagination focused. As in, the author prefers to create from their raw imagination and specific personal feelings rather than from researched sources. This is also why Beginners at writing tend to get Literature. They have yet to learn how a story is structured, so they write purely what they feel, as they feel it, in the way they feel it.

I aim for a sort of gothic/action mix in most of what I write, since I like taking a bunch of dark characters and sticking them in scenarios where they'll end up having to fight for their lives--I'm mostly inspired by stuff like Shadow Hearts, Chrono Crusade and Hellboy, and I try and use those as a mould for the tropes, scenarios and characters I throw around.

Actually, that sounds like fun!

But I think the thing that tipped me a bit on this quiz is that I prefer subverting traditional gender roles for those stories, so when I got to the hero/heroine question my inclination would've been something along the lines of 'hysteric trying to survive his externalised demons' for a hero and 'woman trying to violently destroy the manifestations of her personal failings' for the heroine... and the closest matches available were 'ordinary guy surviving' and whatever the 'strong, capable' descriptor was for heroines.

Oh... I didn't even consider adding 'subverted characters' as an option! Sorry about that...

I like to think that I make a decent gothic writer, since I'm big on exploring emotions and characterisation set against a key theme, but I'll have to wait and see whether my aspirations meet my reality.

Actually, those sounds like excellent themes! However, Gothics are about a protagonists's battle with their Inner monster. However, this can also be a protagonist's battle against their outward transformation into a monster. Think: Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde and also Count of Monte Cristo. In both, the protagonist battles himself; the first outwardly and the other inwardly.
-- Fair warning:

They both end tragically.

Thanks for the neat experience, it was a good use of 20 minutes!

I'm glad you enjoyed it!

[kitsubasa]

I like to think that I make a decent gothic writer, since I'm big on exploring emotions and characterisation set against a key theme, but I'll have to wait and see whether my aspirations meet my reality.

Actually, those sounds like excellent themes! However, Gothics are about a protagonists's battle with their Inner monster. However, this can also be a protagonist's battle against their outward transformation into a monster. Think: Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde and also Count of Monte Cristo. In both, the protagonist battles himself; the first outwardly and the other inwardly.
-- Fair warning:

They both end tragically.

Ah, yeah, that's a way better way to define it-- you're absolutely right. Even dropping down to the specifics of gothic fiction as a genre though, that's my cup of tea. I mentioned briefly up above, I'm actually taking a paper on gothic lit at the moment and I have my final exam for it next week; I keep having brain farts on the wider definition of the genre because I'm too busy focusing on the narrower subgenres within it for essay purposes. I've got Dorian Grey and Frankenstein and Poe anthologies and things piled up around the place at the moment. Fun stuff, but there comes a point when your brain gives up and just says 'everyone's getting into emotional theatrics, everyone's a monster, and everyone is Freudian'. Especially you, Frankenstein. Especially you.

[OokamiKasumi]

...Gothics are about a protagonists's battle with their Inner monster. However, this can also be a protagonist's battle against their outward transformation into a monster. Think: Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde and also Count of Monte Cristo. In both, the protagonist battles himself; the first outwardly and the other inwardly.

Ah, yeah, that's a way better way to define it-- you're absolutely right. Even dropping down to the specifics of gothic fiction as a genre though, that's my cup of tea. I mentioned briefly up above, I'm actually taking a paper on gothic lit at the moment and I have my final exam for it next week; I keep having brain farts on the wider definition of the genre because I'm too busy focusing on the narrower subgenres within it for essay purposes. I've got Dorian Grey and Frankenstein and Poe anthologies and things piled up around the place at the moment. Fun stuff, but there comes a point when your brain gives up and just says 'everyone's getting into emotional theatrics, everyone's a monster, and everyone is Freudian'. Especially you, Frankenstein. Especially you.

Frankenstein is definitely Freudian. This is especially interesting considering that it was written long before Freud was born.
-- If you're looking for a bit of inspiration, I have a far more detailed outline of the Gothic here?
Writing Tip: Structure of the GOTHIC Tale

[HienFan]

Okay, just a note I don't live in the US so I didn't recognize some of the genre listed

On that some guides might not be reliable: Yeek I remember this guide on slash about softcore sex, the prose for it is so ridiculously hilarious for what the author perceive as sweet

[OokamiKasumi]

Okay, just a note I don't live in the US so I didn't recognize some of the genre listed.

Understood.
-- Unfortunately, I don't know what genres are used in non-English speaking countries. As an example, the only place I've seen the genre 'Slice of Life,' is in manga and game translations, so I suspect that it's a Japanese genre. I do know a few from Japanese literature, but I don't know their plot structures, characterization styles, or signature themes well enough to offer any sort of constructive advice about them.

On that some guides might not be reliable: Yeek I remember this guide on slash about softcore sex, the prose for it is so ridiculously hilarious for what the author perceive as sweet

Sadly, far too many slash tutorials are written by amateur writers whose only writing experience is from posting on fan-fiction sites. They mean well, but they only know what their equally amateur fellow writers and readers like or don't like.

To make matters worse, a lot of professionally written How-To books on writing add useless and often confusing technical crap just to add word-count (more pages) to their books. To someone who just wants to write a story, it can be a royal pain in the ass to sift through an entire book for roughly a paragraph's worth of something they can actually use. (I have a pair of bookshelves full of these books.)

Most of what I learned about writing was taught to me by my publishing editors, (read: brutally beaten into me,) after they accepted my manuscripts.