Mary Anne Mohanraj on Genres

Poet and Erotic Writer Mary Anne Mohanraj on erotic fiction and genres:

part of the confusion comes from people thinking that erotica is a genre of content, when it’s really a genre of mood. (These are my definitions below, not generally accepted ones, but I stand by them. They work. 🙂 They are also not comprehensive lists of the various types.

GENRE TYPES
A. Genres of mood: comedy, tragedy, horror, erotica, romance
B. Genres of content: science fiction, fantasy, western, mystery, immigrant lit., mainstream
C. Genres of style/structure: surrealism, magical realism, minimalism, metafiction, myth, folktale, fairy tale

There is overlap, of course, among the genre types. But generally speaking, a story will participate in 2-3 of the genre types above. So you can have a comic fantasy told in the surrealist mode. Or an erotic western told in the minimalist mode. Or a tragic mainstream story told in metafictional style. Mix and match, have fun. 🙂

She now offers free mp3 downloads of her erotic stories and poetry. Besides being well-written, these are very well-produced and sound great! Her family saga/love stories, Bodies in Motion is due out in July.

Re Mohranraj’s thought on genre: This sounds very similar to the discussion of ontologies/folksonomy/metadata tagging going on in the web publishing industry. Will readers and viewers someday start tagging content with “genre tags” to help people wade through all the stuff out there? Or is this even a good thing? This sounds vaguely like the wretched Search by Fetish engine on ASSTR (not work safe).