She smiled impishly at me, then took the strawberry lollipop out of her mouth. The last of the warm August sun glinted on the tendril of saliva bowing between the pink head of the sweet and her slightly open mouth. It parted deliciously. A tiny swarm of shadows flitted across her tanned skin as insects intersected the space between her and the sky.

Time became honey, sweet and slow, as I sensed my friendship with Jayne was about to change. Nerves crackled and flutters teased my guts. The thoughtful mist over my eyes sharpened immediately upon her delighted laugh, half snorted through her freckled nose. 

She was looking at me in a new way. Into me. I watched her bright eyes taking me into her mind fully for the first time then down at the daisies threaded together that I’d just pushed softly into her sticky palm, and back up through the safety of her long lashes. 

Jayne sighed so deeply it heaved her recently budded chest. My stare followed her moistened tongue as it shined her plump lips. A bee bumbled by and the river babbled to my right and her left. No one else in the world existed.

Her head lifted from the slight yellow and white reflecting off the held daisies, and with her eyes, she absorbed this shy boy that sat in front of her, with a leg either side of hers; hers which were crossed with grass stained knees peeking over sock tops.

Have you ever kissed anyone, Paul? she breathed, pretending to be the confident girl she read about in stories in her teen magazines.

My pulse took my voice, until I coughed it back into action. No. Not really. I lied. Then, realising time had paused and was waiting for me to seize the moment, I added, but I’d like to. I immediately regretted the slight question mark I’d added to the end of the sentence meant to be as cool as The Fonz.

Her delighted giggle tinkled through heated air to tickle my heart, the one she now held in her pretty hands. I could see blushes creep up her neck to join their friends on her sunkissed cheeks. 

Then let’s help you out she barely whispered and sprang forward, trapping my sharp intake of surprised breath with a soft mouth that tasted of sugar and long summers. The ice of uncertainty that held me melted and instinct tilted my head so that noses no longer clashed, tongues touched then wrestled as confidence and nature took hold. I smelled the sun on her skin, her hair’s clean shampoo scent and the slight hint of sweat from a day playing together by the river.

Moving from her kneeling position, Jayne climbed onto my lap and straddled me and my young stiffness that was more sensitive than I’d ever remembered being before now. I glanced down as she started moving against me, her summer dress hitched up her thighs, showing her white knickers, a mound of secrecy I’d yet to see outside of magazines peaked in private. I saw a vertical line of darker material and a cleft, a wetter place, and my air was held prisoner in my chest.

She broke away from our kiss and huffed in my ear, her hips moving faster, her head down. My instinct was to lift my hips higher to increase the rubbing sensation through my shorts. Hair swayed in my face as she muttered oh god, oh god, almost hurting me with the urgency of her grinding, pushing material and rough seams against my aching erection.

I felt a wave build and rise through me, different to when it was just me touching myself, entirely new, making the hairs stand up all over and the world disappear around me; tunnel vision making this beautiful girl, my past friend, all that I saw. Then her bright blue eyes locked with mine, her upper lip twitched slightly on one side and then she began to judder, pushing her hot pudendum roughly against me. I tipped over the edge, and a long moan I couldn’t hold in escaped as I pumped hot wetness into my shorts. Her shaking increased then was replaced with trembles and hot, wet kisses full of spit and gleaming smiles.

She pulled her face away and held mine in her hand, squeezing my cheeks and staring into my dilated pupils, laughing as my body spasms quieted. Then she playfully slapped me. Oh, you naughty boy, Paul, uttered through a dazzling toothy grin. We held onto each other and what we had been, our sexual scents lazily rising between our interlocked bodies, and we knew everything had changed as dusk began to fall.

This is where I start. I move a bit forward and look back 10,000 times until I feel nothing. And I do this for a while until I start to picture you. And then my heart starts to race like broken glass on snowy evenings, crystal clear with ice, running fast. Present until the heat of summer makes it trickle down into a puddle of consciousness, and my eyes can't believe the mess. It's so nice. It's all I want. It's all I dream about. The moment when all the doubts of here and now fade into nothing and I can touch you without burning myself over and over and over. Running to the end of time. I am now just a vision in smoke. In the dreams that question existence and mindful decisions because conflict is our motivation. I am then only an image of prophecy, and how do you know it's real? You know because the haze of reality assures you. This is how you live. This is how I live in you. This is how you breathe. This is how I breathe in you. 

You are but my dream now, and fading faster than I ever did. And it makes me wish that endings would end, if that is possible. I can't help but disagree with the blueprint. And it makes me wonder if you ever feel the same. Of course you probably do, but I wonder. Yes, I wonder. Do you feel like me too? 

I am now waiting for you. Waiting for hours and minutes and seconds until you arrive. And when you do, I fall into the deepest sense of want and need. I want you now. I need you now. I want the meaning of life to carry me off into the blaze of the sun and the brilliance of the moon. I want to keep the last words of my innocence, but life told me no. So, I guess I failed to see beyond the mirrors today. What does that make me? Maybe a slave to standards. Maybe a figment of whatever the hell this place is. In any case, you're here and I am there and there's nothing else to it. Let us resume. 

The juxtaposition of two worlds was not a pleasant nor casual affair. The intersecting was more fucking as a means of torture than simple geometry. I believe that the lauded Harold Bloom once noted in "Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?" the best description of existentialism, whether threat or in an evolutionary philosophical sense, was that the war in man between the animal and the social mores and norms of our race were inherently incompatible, causing a rift in the actions, thoughts and instinct in mankind, a schism. This lines up, unfortunately, with Freud and his convoluted genius. It is impossible to leave Freud out of any academic discourse on the evolution of the science of motives, influence and bastardization but we'd all probably like to.

Be it the coke head’s ideas or Marxian or whatever, something divides us fundamentally. I think about it a lot but have formulated no substantive opinion other than money being but one occlusive factor and that education is no good if there is no moral form to fill with the schooling. Education, breeding, family, skin color, intelligence. Everyone I knew, knew that these are the factors that produce a actualized life full of meaning. Yet, as fundamental as these truths were laid out to me, as I moved about learning all facets of academia under the careful eyes of many who cared deeply for me; I was ethically and morally bankrupt, with no shore in sight. With that firm realization very young I knew I couldn’t stay around my family.

IT was always a trial to not be doing something. Stillness was foreign. The good thing about dope was that you were always doing something. Boredom was the worst. To Dean and the entire troupe the lived variously and haphazardly off the pier side of Elise running up and down Chartres, dope was spiritual and they were on top of Mt. Moriah. 

"Mt Moriah, you tepid and forlorn Jewish miscreant is not the analogy you would use."  I talk out loud sometimes.

"Not Zion, thats a colored church down on Ursuline but Mt.Moriah is in the Bible."

Bywater into the Quarter and back out. To many things that bite for me at night in the Quarter, some of the others spent time picking pockets and passing vitamins as Molly. My first trick was supposed to be a roll but before I got to the The Maison, picking my way through the Woldenberg, who do I see but Rachael.

You know the camera trick utilized by cinematographers in the 90’s where the background images grow hazy as the central image enlarges? There was everything and then only her.  I cannot express in clear terms the psychic blow it had on me. IT was as if God was real and prosperity gospel has been Biblically explained and I was now in the middle of Jehoshaphat Phat City. Lottery fucked by the Nobel Peace Prize with Cream Cheese Icing.

Now I had to get her not to want me dead and forgive me for her toe.

Lil man, if there's a nerve of mine you haven't gotten on, I don't know where it is, but I beg you to leave it alone. It's the only thing keeping me sane and, consequentially, you alive.

Bertis, you are unfair, obnoxious, overbearing, unreasonable, sophomoric and you take time out of your day to make yourself the sharpest, most incessant, longest-lingering, pain in my ass.

Being the baby, you were raised above the law. That, I can't blame you for, but my high blood pressure and anger issues? A massive "ROBERT" in red blotchy letters is scrawled all over that shit. 

At least twice a day, I blissfully daydream of a wayward meteor landing in our house and killing either you or me, instantly, and that is because of you.

But dammit, if I don't love you, Bertis. If I don't say it enough, know this, Robert: I love you.

In every eye roll and insult I send your way, you'll find my love. In every punch, kick, slap, and scratch, you'll find my love. In every deliberately soggy kiss you tried to wipe off your skin, you'll find my love.

I could burn, roast, and flame you every day of your life, but every angel in God's heaven couldn't help anyone foolish enough to send a dirty word your way.

I'll kick you black and blue, Bertis. I'll punch you til' your nose bleeds every red blood cell in your body, but I'll scalp the first person to harm a hair on your nappy head.

I might not say it enough, Robert, or as I call you, by your ugly nickname, "Bertis", but if you look closely enough, you'll find my love for you in everything I do.

One red block sat atop blue and one yellow beside them. There was violent then blue again, then orange atop blue. The construct towered with miniature possibility, a conduit, a channel, a limb enabling a broadcast of influence. Two pairs of hands tiny and pale with fingers like caterpillars but bald and smooth.

The basement walls of stone seeped earth agate as the void. The twins turned their heads of similar hue to the window above. They gazed beyond window to the night behind it, through denser velvet of darker shade. Sedan on highway hurtling through black glinting the grin of the crescent moon. The vehicle colourless yet black then white in curious tandem, not flashing, never flashing, but shifting like water, like conversation. The sky was archaic, the moon most tilted.

And the sedan hurtled still. The driver, his hands gripping the steering wheel at a certain time, was not drowsy but deadened by the monotony of the landscape. The crooked trees which painted the horizon like Stygian stencils, the forest thick, impenetrable, a world apart, within, without.

The driver felt the passenger to his right stir and whimper. He glanced over at her and, as if in response, she languidly opened her eyes and blinked. She blinked again. Yawned. Extended her limbs as far as possible and stretched them. The radio skittered in and out of frequency, out of phase, back again, and the wailing strains of steel guitars resumed.

"It was the strangest dream," she said softly to no one in particular.

"Oh?"

She nodded blearily. "You were in it."

He said nothing, continued to watch the licorice night.

"You were standing in the kitchen at home, it was midday." She rubbed her eyes. "It was like I was watching but you never acknowledged my presence."

He adjusted the temperature of the air conditioning.

"The doorbell sounds, you set down your coffee mug and go to the door. I follow you but cannot discern who it is because you're blocking the doorway. You return to the kitchen with a moderately sized cardboard box and set it on the counter."

He glances at her then just out of habit and her eyes are on him, fully awake. He smiles anxiously but she does not return it. Her fingertips massage her neck but this does not seem to ease her.

"I'm glad you woke me," she confessed.

"I didn't."

She frowned at this and looked away, sat straighter in her seat. She flicked the radio off with fingers dipped in scarlet polish and observed the darkness around them. The death of steel guitars reverberated in memory for a time until that too faded.

"So what was in the box?" he inquired at last.

She regarded him with confusion. "I don't know. You never opened it."

He smirked and looked at her with amusement. "A bit anticlimactic wouldn't you say?"

She returned a smile but the smile was forced. "You received a call on your mobile and moved to the patio outside. It was suddenly night and the neighborhood was alight with multi-coloured lights like it was Christmas but it wasn't Christmas. You end your phone call without saying goodbye and return to the kitchen but there is a presence in the room and only I can sense it. You wander the rooms of the house in darkness oblivious to the shadows and finally you turn to me..."

Neither of them saw it. The blur of brownish white, the explosion of hooves, the silent creature of taut muscle and modest coat. The sedan buckled, compressed, spewed glass and fur, metal and crimson, and halted in quiet. The vacuum of sound to mark an anomaly perhaps, a considerate pause in the machinery of consequence. Nothing moved but the sedan's engine sputtered.

The conclusion a palette of bleeding colours, mixed and entwined, fate and chance and foreign will alike. Red atop blue and yellow beside. Violent then blue, then orange atop blue. The sedan was fire, the moon was grinning, tree stenciled sky, and two pairs of eyes cloaked by feathery night.

It started off innocently enough. 

Just a glance, you caught my eye like something glinting in dull sand. 

Just a silent "Woah, that guy's hot," muttered to the inside of my head.

A kitten-like inquisitiveness; Just a "let's see where he goes".

"It started off, innocently, I swear." My words ambled about in my head, then stumbled out choppily, in a drunken lurch. "I-it just, I mean, it just got out of hand..."

You slipped from my fingers that first day. Never again, I vowed.

I stayed a decent distance from you, loitering outside the Starbucks you ordered an Americano from, wandering around the H&M you perused for a few fruitless minutes, and hovering by the bathrooms when that Americano caught up to you. Always, I kept you within eyes reach.

Then a loud noise, something like a crash or a screech caught my attention. For just a banana split second I stopped, I looked away. You bobbed, weaved, turned a corner and vanished.

 I searched that mall for another hour trying to find you again, but you were long gone.  I promised myself, then, I would never lose you, again.

"It-it was- you were like meth to a rehabilitated junkie, like-like chocolate to a diabetic! I had one taste of you and it was like...I couldn't get enough." My desperate words did nothing to influence the barrel of the gun, which was tucked firmly underneath my chin. The cold metal, that could never seem to warm to my skin, dug farther into my flesh. I swallowed hard.

"I-I don't know why, I justcouldn't wait to see you again."

I waited outside that same mall for three weeks straight,wishing on every fuzzy dandelion seed that I would see you again. Each day that passed only fed my interest until it grew to what one might call an "obsession". I did my best to look casual, hanging off to the side of the entrance, hiding behind my phone like a disinterested teen, but all along I stayed silently alert until you finally strode through those sliding glass doors, completely unconscious to my vigilant efforts.

I took off after you, desperate and bursting with joy, I dangerously breached the twenty-foot zone I allowed between us at all times and risked my chance of detection. I skated along undetected for a while. I got cockier and bolder still, eventually following your path so closely I could smell the shadows of the musky cologne in your wake.

I was nearly stepping on your heels when, in an instant you turned around, mid-gait, and peered straight into my soul with your huge, milk chocolate, doe eyes. Ironically, I was the one caught looking like a deer in headlights.

Only allowing a few micro-moments to pass, I quickly regained my composure and gave you a soft smile. Your face broke into a warm, honey-sweet grin, that popped your child-like dimples and exposed the very tips of your white teeth against your dark, full lips. 

It was an eternity composed of seconds, bathing in the warm, radiant glow of your smile. In the blink of an eye, you were off again, cutting through masses of shopping bags, strollers, and wayward limbs.

After that heavenly near-death experience I pulled way back, only allowing myself the view of your bobbing head of long, blue-black waves off in the distance to guide my way.

I screamed internally, the corners of my mouth refusing to relax. He smiled at me! Not just an awkward stranger smile, a smile that would put Kelly Ripa and her Colgate commercials to shame. 

And like the maraschino cherry on top of his perfect peanut butter chocolate sundae, after two and a half hours of trailing him through Olive Terrace Mall, I found his car parked only a few spaces from mine! That had to be planned. He must have known my car was there and he got as close to it as possible to show me he felt the same way! He knew I wanted him and he wanted me too! It was a clear sign!

And here I was beginning to think this entire relationship was one-sided.

"I can't believe how quickly this new personality took me, but it was who I was. You were who I was. You don't understand!" Desperate cries were lost on deaf ears. The weapon stayed solidly in its new dwelling along my jawline.

"I-I remember watching late-night Dateline specials about crazy chicks that devoted their lives to hunting down people they'd never even met!

 I couldn't conceive how regular people could just completely lose their way, lose their minds over complete strangers!" I heard the cold apathetic click of the pistol cocking against my throat and chuckled a little. It was strangled, more like a jagged bark than anything happy or humorous. "I told myself that could never be me...It-It's amazing how fast words can burn in the heat of the moment..."

I was just about sweating, he was so hot. Through the focused eyes of the extremely expensive pair of binoculars, I could easily see the smooth, cut planes of his dark chest from a neighbors thick, all-concealing shrubbery.

"What kind of fool," I mused to myself, "would leave a crack in his bedroom window drapes?" Any pervert could easily spy on him!

He yawned, adorably, stretching out his trim body one last time before collapsing onto his mattress and falling out of sight.

"Good night, handsome." I sighed before retreating to my car, parked a few blocks down the suburban street. It had not-so-recently become my home a couple months after he gave me the sign that confirmed his mutual feelings. 

I realized that my job was affecting our relationship, so I handed in a hasty and vague resignation to my data analyst job and soon after, was kicked out of my apartment and relocated to the car that was now only weeks away from being repossessed. 

As our courtship grew and deepened, parked just outside his house's range of visibility, my hips bones started to suck the surrounding skin into them, pulling my graying flesh taut. My ribs gained individual shadows, my hair grew thin, and my eyes sunk, darkened and dulled. It was okay, though.

 I was willing to make sacrifices for us.

After all, you and I had been together for months by then, the better part of a year! I rose with you in the mornings, I followed you to work, and bid you good night every night for eight months, one week, and four days! It was all going amazing! 

Until, until, of course, you decided to leave.

 I just woke up alone one day. My binoculars could not find you stirring under your sheets, though, not for lack of trying. Without warning, you packed your furniture, clothes, and our entire life into a mid-size U-Haul and said Sayonara! 

Except, you didn't. After all we'd been through, you couldn't be bothered for a measly "bye" tossed over your shoulder!

For weeks I tirelessly searched for clues, anything that could tell me where you possibly could have went and for weeks I was left grasping at the tails of tendrils of smoke. Without even having your first initial, I couldn't get very far asking questions, and I was didn't know any of your friends or co-workers to ask them. So when the "For Lease" sign that was buried into your lawn for months was finally removed, a new family moving in, I finally came to accept that you were gone. You left me.

"How could you?" Tears of fear and desperation gave way to those of betrayal and hurt. For the first time, I peered up into the near darkness to meet two frigid eyes glaring down at me from behind the loaded firearm.

"I mean, even if I did escape this..." I reasoned aloud, "what would there be left for me? My life wasn't anything before you, I realize that now, and after you? Worthless!

They'll call it a suicide for the papers but you, you pulled this trigger long before now! 

"You were my food, my water, my air! You were my entire life! And you took it away from me when you left! You've already killed me in every single way but the physical so just do it."  I closed my eyes. My fate was sealed from the moment I caught him in that mall. The second that gun touched my skin, I fell in love with the sensation. It was only now that I finally realized and accepted it.

There was hesitation. A short, insanely tense moment of plainly cruel indecision. 

"JUST DO IT!" I screamed hoarsely through angry tears into the void of empty darkness. No one was ever here in the first place. You were never here in the first place.

I pulled the trigger. 

A flash. 

A bang.

Then whatever dismal afterlife came to "stalkers" like me.

"He ate too much butter, and that's how he died," I said with a tear in my eye, my whole class looking at me, their mouths wide open. Then I put in my cassette tape, Hound Dog blared from my portable radio, and I swiveled my hips while busting out the lyrics.

That was my first biographical presentation in elementary school and it landed me in the principal's office. "Too much butter?! I'll have you know, Pippa's gone and scared half the third grade class! Their parents are calling me every day and none of them will eat butter," Mrs. Pulaski growled at my parents. From the corner of my eye, I saw my mother stifle a giggle, the veins in my father's neck bulging as he contained his anger. They glanced at one another and I saw my father mouth the words "Charlie." 

It wasn't really his fault that I believed every single word that came out of his mouth. Throughout elementary school, I spouted off all the things he told me to my classmates and teachers: "the skull mom uses every Halloween is from our sister who died before I was born"; "beanie babies are made out from salvaged roadkill"; "don't whistle in front of your Furby or it'll steal your soul"; "if you melt dog poo in the microwave, it'll turn into chocolate."

And that's how I always landed in the principal's office, thanking my brother along the way. They took away his Nintendo, and sent Charlie to his room whenever I was sent to detention for fibbing. So he spent middle school in his room and I spent elementary school in Mrs. Pulaski's office. I wonder if they ever realized that was my sweet revenge. 

I bumped into this out in Googleland and thought it might benefit others.  I am sharing it one time only here for educational purposes.  

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What Is Literary Fiction (and What Sets It Apart)?

By Harvey Chapman

http://www.novel-writing-help.com/literary-fiction.html

Literary fiction is also known as "serious fiction," though personally I dislike both of those terms. They imply, at least to my ear, that all other types of fiction (genre fiction, in particular) is somehow less literate and less serious.

Still, literary fiction is the term that the book-selling business uses, so I guess we're stuck with it!

If you go into a bookstore, you can usually tell the genre novels from the literary ones instantly. Here's how...

1. The covers will be different

Whereas the genre novels have eye-catching covers – handsome men on the romances, dripping blood on the horror novels – literary novels are more subtle, more "arty."

Literary novel sometimes have stickers on the cover, too, saying that the book was short listed for the Booker Prize or won the Orange Prize (or something similar).

2. The two types of novel might be sold in a different format

Genre fiction is usually sold in the "mass-market paperback" format (unless you happen to be one of the big, household names and have a bestseller on your hands every time you write a novel).

Literary fiction, on the other hand, usually appears in hardback form first (or else as a "trade paperback," which is the same size as a hardback but has a soft cover)... and then in standard paperback a year later.

Of course, these old rules are rapidly flying out of the window as e-books (Kindle books, in particular) continue to gain in popularity.

Even for physical books, the old ways of doing things no longer apply... particularly as more and more authors publish their novels independently and are free to choose whatever format they like.

3. The titles will be different

The titles of commercial fiction tend to be more direct and encapsulate perfectly what the novel is about...

Beastchild by Dean Koontz

The Lake of Darkness by Ruth Rendell.

Literary titles are more offbeat, more "arty" again, but just as eye-catching in their way...

The Alchemy of Desire by Tarun J Tejpal

Instances of the Number 3 by Salley Vickers

4. You'll find them in different sections of the bookstore

Genre fiction will have areas of shelving all to itself (one area for crime novels, one for romances, and so on). Literary fiction will appear in the "General A-Z" section, along with mainstream fiction.

One last point...

"Serious" novels generally sell in smaller quantities than genre novels or mainstream novels, meaning publishers are less likely to take a gamble on them - though you shouldn't let that put you off writing them...

You must always write the type of book that you want to write.

And as publishing your novel independently has become not just viable but (arguably) preferable, what the publishing houses are "likely" or "not likely" to do becomes increasingly irrelevant.

True, the book-buying public still buys fewer literary novels, whether they're shopping at Amazon or in a bricks-and-mortar bookstore. But if a literary novel receives some positive word-of-mouth buzz on social networks, or even wins a prestigious award, sales can still be huge.

What Else Sets Literary Fiction Apart?

Apart from looking different to genre fiction, and being shelved in a different location in the bookstore, what else sets a "serious" book apart? In a nutshell, it is this: Literary fiction is more character-driven and less concerned with a fast-paced plot than genre fiction.

Depending on your point of view, this either makes a great work of literature moving and profound... or as dull as reading the dictionary (because "nothing exciting happens").

But here's the thing...

Just as the best genre novels are populated by well-crafted fictional characters, so the best literary novels have page-turning plots. (Admittedly, this plot is not very likely to consist of car chases and explosions... but things still "happen" nonetheless.)

So it's really just a difference of emphasis. If writing a gripping plot is important in genre fiction, in a literary work the plot can be less momentous, more subtle, less frenetically-paced, more beneath the surface... but it still needs to be there.

"Sooooooooo much literary fiction I get in the old query inbox is plotless. It's just a character musing about the vagaries and eccentricities of everyday existence. The prose is lush, the character detailed, but one problem – absolutely nothing is happening and thus it's (forgive me) extremely boring. Good literary fiction has a plot."

- Nathan Bransford (literary agent)

Fans of literature might consider genre novels to have less artistic merit, to be formulaic, melodramatic, and so on. And fans of genre fiction might consider literary novels to be boring books in which nothing much happens. But...

Both views would be wrong.

"Serious" fiction isn't better than genre fiction in the same way that a table isn't better than a wheelbarrow – they are simply different products serving different needs.

Think of it like this: each of the fictional genres is aimed at a specific group of readers who take pleasure from reading those types of books...

Horror fans like horror novels

Romance fans like romantic novels

And so on

In that respect, literary fiction can be seen as just another genre – it is simply fiction aimed at a specific group of readers who like what literary novels have to offer.

But what do they have to offer, exactly?

I've talked generally about literary novels having a concern for the exploration of character, and less concern for a page-turning plot. But there are other important factors which set "serious novels" apart. Let's take a more in-depth look at...

The Four Characteristics of Literary Fiction

1. Character Comes Before Plot

This isn't to say that genre novelists aren't concerned with deep characterization. I'm sure that Stephen King, for example, cares deeply about his characters and tries to make the most fully-rounded characters that he can.

It is just that he has a lot less space to do it in than his literary counterparts. Why?...

Part of characterization is about what characters do and what they say, and the genre novelist can manage both of these things without holding up the plot. (Indeed, what characters do and say is the plot!)

But another part of bringing fictional characters to life is concerned with what they think and what they feel and what their childhood was like (and so on), and characterizing in this way does slow down the story's pace.

Fans of genre fiction are essentially after a "good read," and that means a concrete plot with a lively pace and plenty of twists and turns along the way.

Disrupting the flow for a few pages to describe in detail a character's mental anguish, or an incident from their past, is therefore risky in a genre novel. But it's exactly what the reader of a literary novel expects.

The danger for the literary novelist is to go to the other extreme....

Yes, readers of literature will be tolerant of those "slower bits" in between the scenes (where the character and what makes him or her tick is explored in more depth).

But they want to be entertained, too - and that requires a gripping plot.

2. Literary Novels Are More "Meaningful"

All good novels, whatever the genre, should have a theme. A theme runs beneath the surface and is essentially what the novel is "about."

As readers of fiction, we like to be entertained by the surface plot. But we also like a deeper experience, one in which the novel's events "say" something about what it means to be a human and what it takes to get by in this world.

(We might not notice this happening explicitly, but we'll sense that we're having a richer and more rewarding reading experience, even if we can't quite put our finger on why we are.)

Anyway...

Just as a literary novelist has more time at his or her disposal to characterize in depth, so they have more time to explore the "philosophical" issues and ideas and insights running through their novel.

This philosophical exploration won't take place literally (literary novels are still novels, not academic papers). Instead, it will run "beneath the surface" of conversations, of a character's thoughts, or of the events themselves.

The theme will form a kind of subtext to the entire novel, if you like, but one which the novelist still needs time and space to bring to the surface occasionally. (And genre novelists, remember, don't have the luxury of much time and space, because that slows down the plot.)

Don't worry if you don't understand all that right now. It will make more sense once you have read the article defining theme.

All you need to understand here is that literary novels have more space in which to explore theme than genre novels do.

3. "Fine Writing" Is Essential

Fans of literary fiction are perfectly willing to read a novel in which deep characterization and the exploration of ideas (i.e. theme) is placed above the forward momentum of the plot. As a matter of fact, they expect it.

And what they (and a publisher) also expect is that the writing itself be of excellent quality...

Not poetic, exactly (though it can be).

Not lush and sensual and vivid with imagery (though it can be).

Not "difficult" (though some literary novels don't exactly make for great beach reading).

Instead, literary writers simply need to possess a masterful way with words. Their style can be simple or more ornate, but the prose must always be rich and finely-crafted and a pleasure to read.

Does that mean the genre novelist can afford to be sloppy in their writing? No, of course not. But because fans of genre fiction are mainly after a page-turning plot, the genre writer can get away with more "workmanlike" prose.

4. In Literary Fiction, Anything Goes

The genre novelist is confined by the conventions (or "rules") of their chosen category of fiction. If readers of crime novels, for example, expect a body to appear within the first three chapters, your own crime novel had better not disappoint them.

Of course, the rules can be bent and boundaries can be pushed. But bend or push them too far and your genre novel may no longer be recognizable as belonging to its category - which means that a fan of that category of fiction is unlikely to find it satifying.

In literary novels, there are no such things as rules.

You are free to tackle any subject matter and any theme you choose, and to structure the story however you wish.

You could write a novel which wouldn't fit into any of the regular fiction genres – so instead of writing about horror or crime or romance, you write a novel about everyday suburban life, for example.

Or you could write a novel which would fit into a genre but follows none of the conventions of that category – a crime novel in which the body doesn't appear until the final chapter, say, or one which isn't about the investigation of the murder but the romantic relationship between the detective and the chief suspect.

Literary fiction is more likely to break the wider fictional rules, too – the ones about how to create characters, how to plot fiction, and so on.

All novelists should be willing to break some of the rules some of the time. But writers of literary fiction have more freedom than most.

So if your dialogue isn't in conflict (which is one of the golden rules) but it still somehow works, go with it.

And if a scene doesn't involve a character trying to achieve a specific goal in the face of opposition (which is one of the fundamental principles of plotting a novel) but the scene nevertheless feels right, keep it in.

In literary fiction, anything goes – just so long as it works.

The great actor collapsed, magnificent black hair plumed about his gaunt face, a thousand spider legs on luminescent flesh. His long-lashed eyes gazed to the bowed ceiling of the auditorium, into the lights, beyond it, into the unknown. His olive green mantle rumpled betwixt stage and his carefully costumed form, limbs contorted about his meager torso, sharp knuckled hands extending from maroon sleeves, pointed black boots pointing to god's apartment and the burning spotlight cascaded upon him illuminating a bright oval of existence. It was always said his life was his art and so he did not even perspire, his shell did not reflect barbarically, did not require dabbing for his makeup never ran, didn't clump. Even now, he was perfectly composed.

The audience said little. No one screamed but some rose for a better look. Perhaps they were awaiting him to rise with a knowing smirk and elegant bow, a flash of finely tuned teeth and gums as scarlet as Merlot, a skeletal hand at his mantle to draw it aside and back again, a polished boot to tap with upturned heel to stage. They waited, their eyes riveted to the stage. The band in the recess were quiet, perhaps they were waiting too. No one ran from behind the curtain calling for a doctor, no one moved at all.

What was it he had said just before the collapse? "I would rather that you remember me as..." Was that it? Everyone in the audience seemed to be thinking collectively, they turned to each other but no one voiced the inquiry. They then pondered his words, what they must have been. There was the scandal in the local newspaper several months ago about his infidelities, he was interviewed on tele a week ago and confessed he was practically skint. This was all public knowledge. His previous role was ill-received and it had been nearly a decade since his breakthrough - he certainly didn't look forty. In fact, he resembled a child, especially now, an entanglement of body parts and expressionless face with mouth partly open, as if he was devoid of premeditation. He was always improvisational.

All eyes remained on his prostrate form. Was that movement? Did he blink? Did that chest heave ever so slightly or was it a trick of the light? Surely, a finger twitched? Or a repressed smile waited in the wings? Or at least the hair about his face bellowed with faint breathing? They watched him and waited. Not a word was spoken, not a cry was heard. They looked at each other and back at him, the great actor folded into a dramatic contortion of limbs and torso with eyes trained not to blink, lungs daring not to breathe, a repressed smile waiting in the wings.