Five Things Make a Post

1. Am very taken with this distinction (in a discussion about Literary Fiction vs Genre.)

For me, kinetic writing is the sort that is libidinously exciting, and leaves you feeling almost physically bereft of the characters at the end of the book. The non-kinetic may be very intellectually and aesthetically stimulating, but it doesn't do that. Kinetic writing issues in the fan impulse, and the non-kinetic doesn't. This doesn't map onto literary / genre distinctions very well, but I think that "genre" writers more often aim to excite their readers in a kinetic sense, and "literary" types often self-consciously avoid it. But I don't think it's anything to do with quality as such. Scott is nearly always kinetic, and Nabokov hardly ever is; Joyce rarely is, Dickens quite often is.

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