Is it true that literary novels are more premise than plot?

I would say no, unless you have the premise to beat all premises. Even literary novels have to show forward movement and direction; in fact, you may need to work even harder to prove to an agent that your literary novel is a page-turner too.

Is it true that literary novels are more premise than plot?

No.

Next question?

This obsession with the distinction between genre and literary is killing me.

Killing me.

James D. Macdonald said:

Is it true that literary novels are more premise than plot?

No.

Next question?

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What he said.

As for another question...eh...got me there.

Literary is a novel with a plot, yes, but it explores more into the human element, such as how the characters are effected by what happens. But the plot has to be there, it has to go somewhere or there would be no point at all. This is what I was told a while back, but I'm gathering that this isn't exactly right.

Literary is kind of an odd subject because I consider a lot of fiction literary that others don't.

ETA: And probably for the wrong reasons.

The way I understand it, you'd need to show the potential agent/publisher how interesting your main character is, which you can do by explaining how (s)he reacts to something (ie the plot). While the most important thing in literary fiction isn't the plot, you still need to throw your MC into situations so you can then explore his/her reactions. And while you are exploring the reactions, your MC carries on doing things, even if those actions might seem "light" compared to the actions found in thrillers, those are still actions and form a plot.

A premise isn't a story. It's a situation in which a story can occur. A premise novel is often one where the situation is what's important and the characters are there to illustrate a cool premise. They usually fail because there's no character with a problem driving the story. Just the writer saying "look, I have a cool idea."

The premise is the idea that lets you create the story. The story is about a person with a problem they need to solve. The plot is how they solve it.

Literary fiction is more about a character and the internal journey they take. Commercial/genre fiction is more about a character with outside forces causing change. (very bare bones definition here). Both can be a premise novel if the story isn't fully developed.

SPMiller said:

This obsession with the distinction between genre and literary is killing me.

Killing me.

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Me too. Especially since I read and write both.

:iz ded:

The only difference between a literary story and a genre one is that one is labeled "literary" and one is not.

This obsession with the distinction between genre and literary is killing me.

Killing me.

Click to expand...

I agree. Good stories are good stories. It's no different, whether genre or literary.

And premise novels or stories often come off as pretentious and preachy IMO. The writing itself isn't usually that good (in my experience), there's no strength in the plot, it's just an elongated "don't drink and drive" or "technology will one day kill us all!"

I don't know if these two fall under the "premise" category, but God's Debris and Call Me Ishmael are sooo pretentious and preachy (and not altogether wowing, linguistically speaking) that I really wish the authors, who both had something interesting to say, just wrote non-fic books about their thoughts.

This is another interesting thread on literary writing.

I agree with The Lonely One that sometimes writers can get too preachy in their premise and derail what could otherwise be a great story. Often I wonder if perhaps my current novel has too much premise and too little plot, but all I can do is write the best story I can and leave it to others to decide if it's any good or not.

A good story has plot.

A plotless story is just... ideas.


It doesn't matter if it's literary or science fiction or fantasy or graphic or ...

I usually start with a premise when toying with an idea for a character or book, in essence creating the bounds of the sandbox that I will then build my world within. Plot flows from there.

A good story has plot.

A plotless story is just... ideas.

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It would be pretty difficult to write a story without a plot, or else it would be just a sequence of events like a diary. E.M. Forster reckoned it was all down to causality: The King died and then the Queen died is a story; The King died and then the Queen died of grief is a plot.
There are nearly always plots, I think. They're more or less complicated or more or less plausible, that's all.

Plot is about action/reaction, events and consequences. Yes. But there are conceivably stories that have no apparent reactions, or consequences. Then indeed, you end up with a story that is just series of events. Stories purely about themes and ideas.

Or a story that is weak on these reactions and consequences -- thus a story with a weak plot.

Say, if you have a story about five people who sit around talking about books at a cafe every week. Then they go home and live their lives, but noting really happens. Then they go back to the cafe and muse about life again. Then they go home and live their lives -- rinse and repeat. You may have a philosophical story that involves these characters and their lives, but nothing is of consequences or resolutions. That's what I mean by "the story being the ideas."

If you have a story about the king who died, then the queen died, and then the people all got killed by a meteor. It's a story without plot. However, if you have a story about the king who died, then the queen died of grief, and because of that, the people elected a President who is too incompetent to realize a meteor is heading toward Earth, and then everyone died at the end -- that would be a story with a plot because there are events and consequences. The point is, there are, in fact, stories without consequences.