Warriors Fanfics: Specialized Writing Guide

Literary Merit of Warriors fanfiction

February 2, 2021

This section details the differences between the genre fiction that is Warriors and typical literary fiction, how literary fiction has been and is viewed, and how to incorporate literary concepts into fanfics. As a Base section, it has little to no examples drawn from canon Warriors.

You may have heard a term thrown around certain writing circles, or writing forums and sites, or critical reviews of books: literary. Specifically, literary fiction and how it's supposed to be something different from genre fiction. Technically, it is. It's a particularly confusing topic because of how the idea of writing (and, more broadly, storytelling and how it's perceived) has evolved over the thousands of years it's been done. It's a term that holds plenty of weight or none at all depending on who you're talking to.

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WARRIORS IS GENRE FICTION

First thing's first: Warriors is genre fiction. Through and through. For those of you who don't know what that term means, genre fiction (formally known as popular fiction) is fiction written, filmed, animated, etc. into a particular genre. Genres might include crime, romance, sci-fi, fantasy, and many others with smaller subgenres within. Popular works include Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, the DC and Marvel universes, The Hunger Games, and Twilight. Animal fiction is also considered genre fiction by contemporary standards, and that's where Warriors fits in. Talking animals puts it squarely in this realm.

On the other hand, literary fiction is fiction created for the purpose of teaching something, portraying something, or telling the story of a subject or subjects. Its use of tropes to fit into one or more genres is an afterthought to the ideas being presented. It is deemed to have a certain artistic and/or literary merit (the root of its debated definition). Something that contributes to the collective experience of life, suffering, growth, or some other broad concept of existence, at least by literary standards. Well-received works include Lord of the Flies, A Clockwork Orange, Bojack Horseman, Animal Farm, Pride and Prejudice, and Nineteen Eighty-Four. The defining traits of literary fiction, from a contemporary standpoint, can come across as a bit presumptuous to readers who like what they like. Contemporary readers and writers often put an emphasis on the 'what' behind writing instead of the 'why', and this idea can narrow the use of certain tropes and themes to specific genres and audience expectations (ex. Political stories always remark about current events; Romance must either be a non-fiction lesson about love or be pure escapism; Everything in a story must have thematic or representative purpose or it is bad writing, etc). But there's a lot of older stories on this list, and some were very popular for their time. There is also a reason lists of "scholarly" books are always populated with old stories, as writing fiction purely in this way has fallen out of favor. Also note how much more difficult it is to quickly generalize the main idea of some of these stories compared to generalizing Warriors.

Going back to Warriors, themes in the series can still be found in literary fiction, despite it technically being genre fiction. Lord of the Flies has themes on authority, Pride and Prejudice has romance, Animal Farm uses anthropomorphized animals as characters. All of these subjects are found in Warriors. It's not like these two types of fiction can't blend together... Actually, whole papers are written about whether there's merit behind dividing or combining them. That high level discussion goes outside the scope of this guide. But relating to Warriors, there's something to be said.

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WHY CAN'T WARRIORS BE LITERARY FICTION?