Into the Fire

The multiple categories for genre descriptions keep expanding into sub-genre classifications. And even with all the choices and new endeavors to keep defining types of literature, there remain some that just don’t fit the mold and are difficult to classify.

Let’s take the recent Christy Awards. You witnessed my consternation over Athol Dickson’s novel Lost Mission appearing in the Suspense category along with Terri Blackstock’s Intervention and Mark Mynheir’s Night Watchman. This is one of the rare times when I’d read all three novels in the category. Both Terri and Mark wrote definite, and outstanding, suspense novels belonging in the division. But Lost Mission? No. Limited to the categories in the Awards, it seemed far more likely to put Athol’s book in the Standalone category over Suspense. And “Standalone” isn’t a genre. It’s a category.

Recently over at Novel Matters (http://https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=6360410252358941163&postID=5945729340546222079), Bonnie Grove called Lisa Samson’s Christy Award winning novel The Passion of Mary-Margaret a romance novel. While it is a love story, I wouldn’t call it a romance novel. Written as a memoir, it recalls the life of an aging Sister, a touching story with the perfect voice and style of the woman writing it. Very seldom do I use the “profound” word when referring to works of fiction, but this novel warrants it.  

And it brings up another point: when is a love story not a romance? I think my second novel The Famous One qualifies as a love story written like a fictional biography, not a romance. But because it’s heavy on the romance during certain segments of the novel, it probably gets classified as a romance novel. I think a love story addresses the bigger picture(s) in the lives of the characters. Enhanced by the relationships of characters to the spiritual connections in their lives, the stories become a picture of God’s love for people and that element makes it more of a love story than a romance. Redeeming Love is a classic love story, not a romance. It seems a love story could conceivably be written without any romance if it’s a story about God’s pursuit of an individual.

Anyway, my point here is sometimes individual novels don’t adhere to the box-y categories and classifications where people choose to put them. And novels often don’t need to be defined by tried and true definitions of their formats and structures. If we can’t concede this, we get stuck in the logistics, definitions, and formulaic reasoning of writing fiction. Break out, people! Creativity awaits.

Lord, in spite of your order, you confound man’s structures, schedules, formats, and logic. And I love that about you, God. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.