UPMARKET FICTION

 

If you’ve heard the term, you might have wondered what it is. There’s a good post on Upmarket Fiction here.

 

But this post is about what it is to me, personally.

 

Upmarket, the sort of fiction that holds supreme commercial potential while also manages to be literary, is what I aim for every time I sit down to write.

 

Upmarket is what most agents want to represent.

 

Upmarket is most publishers’ dream: strong sales potential while also gaining the prestige of literary awards and bragging rights of association.

 

Upmarket is this magical straddler that has one foot in the rarified and another in the common.

 

Upmarket may be the tallest order of them all.

 

I continue to work on it— never quite there on either mountain top, but not for lack of striving.

 

Let’s face it: upmarket must be simple linguistically (commercial) while elegant (literary). Plots must move in rapid clip (commercial) while layered (literary). Themes must be basic (commercial) while holding philosophical heft (literary).

 

Try climbing two mountains at once this way, one foot on either. It’s mechanically impossible.

 

 

But the word “impossible” is another to forget, because here I go again, always trying.

©Toni McCorkle

Literally Literary

I have a constitutional aversion to literalness.

In my teens, I discovered  the awesome power and wisdom of scriptures. I could only do that when I rejected the reading ways of those who interpret them literally. The same vertical growth happened, for me, as I began to understand words as allusion to the wordless.

This is why I would not become a lawyer, as my mother thought I was suited to be, but a writer, as my father encouraged.

The tools of storytellers are metaphors, similes, and language using words as building blocks to send the listeners minds out of their earthly sounds and onto places both wider, higher and deeper all at once.

But lest the above high falutin’ speechy paragraph makes me seem as one who thinkest herself above the rest, let me assure you I have cracks in my anti-literalism.
I was thinking the other day how literally I act on what should be a metaphor.

“Touch wood”— as in may-it-not-befall-us: I literally look for anything that could pass for wood and touch it.

“Stop and smell the roses”— as in take-a-moment-to-appreciate-the-moment: I try to never take a walk without stopping and smelling an actual rose.

“Piece of cake”—as in easy: you betcha!