People who are interested in the Arts have come to classify them in several ways in order to best understand what they are in for before they consume information en-mass. As with most things there are layers of these, and in classic human form they are jumbled together in no particular idiot order.
In the case of stories, we are usually told what the plot line is, in general. Crime. Mystery. Romance. Adventure. So forth.
But this isn't the only way to classify a story, and is often a pretty daft way to classify them anyway because they blend together very quickly – crime usually only has value because it contains a mystery as a subtext, and Romance will almost invariably involve some sort of conflict based on misunderstanding or scheming – hence, mystery also.
The other 'better' way (opinion here) is not in telling the browser what the story is about, but rather how a story is told. Mostly that's what we are really concerned about anyway – the emotions we feel as a result of the experience, and whether we can extract any inspiration or knowledge through it.
Thus, we are left with a large number of evolving narrative forms which have become popular over the years.
Realism:
It may seem like an odd place to start, considering it only gained popularity as an artistic outlook in the past two-and-a-bit centuries, but Realism is the essential core of perception, because as an art form it aims to act in accordance with scientific perceptions. Realism, when achieved correctly, doesn't rely on 'fated' encounters or 'poetic' events. It deals with facts, clear and simple. It is immediately separable from most narrative styles because characters don't just run with their emotions – they fight against themselves, and at times logic or practicality can succeed over love or revenge. Check out your mental library – how often does that actually happen? Most of the time stories are about the successful actions of one driving emotion behind a character, and do not consider that not all people get swept up in a story and can act in ways that fight the limbic system. Consider the painful voyage to marriage taken by Elizabeth and Darcy in Pride & Prejudice; Darcy in particular falls prey to his sense of propriety on many occasions. In War & Peace we are given a host of characters whose actions are measured over the course of several years – because it is written from a Realistic perspective, 'love' is considered as a more fleeting emotion than it is generally described – intense, yes, but fleeting – and is oft bound up in the colder intentions of royalist Russia.
Dramaticism:
Drama is at least as old as the Greeks, and probably older. It originates on the stage – an early form of storytelling – and is by far the most popular of the three main groups of narrative perception.
In direct contrast to Realism, Drama is in the triumph of emotions over the strictures and laws of human behaviour. In Drama love conquers time, revenge overcomes reason and hilarity down casts propriety. The best and worst example of Drama (or rather the best example of the worst Drama – again, my opinion) is the work of the bloody bard, Billy Shakespeare. Shakespeare's works feed off the success of the Dramas that preceded him in Greece; The Illiad and Odyssey. While the overarching mechanism of 'emotion above logic' follows throughout, Dramaticism can be split into a variety of smaller groups:
Tragedy:
Tragedy is the success of 'negative' emotions; sorrow, anguish – even anger. All works of tragedy have victims, and it is through them that we extract the relevant emotions, but often their inclusion is merely a method of expressing the resultant action of someone who causes tragedy to exist: a villain. The villain is in fact the driving force of tragedy (whether visible or otherwise), and so their actions, whether driven through revenge or insanity, are doubtless inseparable from the tragedy itself.
Romance:
On the opposite side of the spectrum is romance (which you should note is now being used in a different sense of that which we might use to describe Pride & Prejudice. In that sense 'romance' deals with a relationship between two people, in this sense it does not). Romance is the success of 'positive' emotions like love and happiness and fulfillment. Someone with a 'Romantic' view on the world is one who sees the good in everything (not, to reiterate, someone who wishes to make love to everything). As a perspective and writing style, Romance brings out the beauty in the world – even that which is not generally considered beautiful, like murder.
Comedy:
Comedy is odd, or, as a pun, funny. It's chief intention is to bring about a feeling of mirth or hilarity in its audience. I've already done a post about comedy, so go read that quickly.
You're back? Good.
It's hard to describe what exactly makes something a comedy, except to say that it lacks restrictions. Sure, realism has humourous moments, but they are curtailed by the fact that comedy is not really a sustaining emotion and must be balanced by others, and must be acknowledged as a parody of a situation that holds other emotions such as pain or embarrassment. Comedy forgets these things, and pushes them out of the way so that only 'funny' things draw the observer's attention.
Horror:
Another latecomer to the stage, horror is the triumph of fear and antipathy in a story. In the earliest horror stories (Dante's Inferno, Milton's Paradise Lost) the primal dread of its readers and characters came from two sources: first, an encounter with a force that cannot be fought or defeated; and second, a narrative style that vilifies ordinary things and disgusts the observer. Here we see a clear break from tragedy, because tragedies can be beautiful, but horror cannot so long as the observer holds on to its humanity.
Perhaps horror developed so late because we only became interested in our primal emotions after travelling a certain distance from them. It is at times like these I wish I had a time machine.
Blends:
Over the years these have naturally blended into new forms like dramedy (Heightened emotions viewed in a comic light) and Tragicomedy ('Negative' events viewed in a comic light), and less clever names like 'Romantic Comedy' and 'Thriller' (which just confuses everybody, because it is a mix of horror and drama and just about everything has the capacity to 'thrill'). This is, of course, wonderful. It shows that there are all kinds of experiences out there waiting to be discovered, such as romantic horrors (Twilight) and Tragicomic Thrillers (A Series of Unfortunate Events)
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At the very beginning, I said there were three main groups of narrative perspectives, and we are coming to the point of the third and most troublesome one. As I said, Realism is when the laws of science and reason prevail as interpretations. Then I said that Dramaticism is the triumph of Emotion over the laws of science. Following logically on from that point, I can define the third group as a triumph of Sensation over the laws of science, because Sensation (a physical interpretation of the world) and Emotion (A spiritual interpretation of the world) are opposite interpretations.
Thus the third field of classification is a form of mental hallucination, best described as 'Surrealism'.
Surrealism:
As its basis, surrealism is lying about reality, or to be tactful, extrapolating upon a 'what if' or 'maybe'. At this point I need to enunciate that surrealism is not a plot form like 'mystery' or 'crime', because it is at heart an interpretation of a preexisting plot form.
For example:
1: Boy meets girl. Boy upset that girl is stolen by a dragon. Boy enlists the aid of a wizard. Boy learns to shoot icicles from his armpits. Boy uses his phenomenal power to slay dragon. Girl upset because she wanted to marry the dragon and have lots of scaly babies. Girl dumps boy.
Unlike dramaticism, the emotional value of the story does not need to change in any way:
2: Boy loves girl. Boy angered at losing girl to a rival. Boy seeks knowledge to get revenge. Boy learns to apply knowledge. Boy applies knowledge. Girl angered at losing the rival mate. Girl hates boy.
The second shows what we might experience under a state of Realism. The integrity of the plot remains the same, but the way in which we view it changes. To put too fine a point on it, here's the dramatic version:
3: Boy enthused with love for the girl past all comprehension. Boy distraught at losing girl to a rival. Boy devotes himself wholly to vengeance and justice in slaying the rival. Boy overjoyed at the triumph of finding a way to rescue the girl. Boy battles against the hate and fear of the rival with courage and guile. Girl is distraught, and reveals her hidden love for the rival. Girl swears herself wholly to vengeance and justice in slaying the Boy.
Okay, enough of that.
Surrealism primarily has its success through visual or symbolic association. In George Orwell's Animal Farm, we already have clear if not undeserved labels to associate with the animal characters; pigs are greedy, dogs are loyal and vicious, horses are swift and hardworking – all of these are elemental associations in which we bridge the gap between what we know to be real and what we are being told is real. This is how it is successful, but success isn't a requirement. Someone could just as easily tell a story about how a sock drawer wants to become a rollercoaster. It isn't exactly identifiable as particularly clever or refined, but I bet your boots someone out there will come up with the allegory to explain it.
Within Surrealism, there are elements like that of Dramaticism to separate it into minor forms:
Apocalyptic/Dystopian:
As the name implies, this is what occurs when a world takes on the physical characteristics of tragedy. It is either breaking or broken, either as a result of war or internal strife, or even just because it is the time for the world to 'go'. A lot of these stories are put under the heading of 'science fiction' because science is used as a method of symbolically linking the surreal world to the real world.
Rejuvenating/Utopian:
In contrast, the romantic equivalent of a world is one in which things come together perfectly. This could be through things like superior technology or society, and has symbolic representations in the triumph over evil or in the purveyance of a physical article of hope or immortality.
Chaotic:
There is very little that symbolises comedy better than chaos. This could be as simple as having an adorable society of talking turnips slowly being chewed to death by a gigantic fuchsia donkey or as complex as... well... Discworld.
Dark/Weird:
Horror has always had elements of surrealism, even though it does not require them to exist. In recent years the general mingling of the two has spawned a virulent and hellish facet called 'Weird' fiction, best represented by H.P Lovecraft in his Cthulhu Mythos. Much like earlier works, 'evil forces' take on fiendish facades, and beauty is eradicated in a wave of blood and tentacles – objects in which we can find immediate horror rather than having to 'look' for it.
Blends:
Uhg, I am not going through all the possibilities. They are all there, anyway. I'll even go through a few of them that concern Reltash at a later date.
Okay, mind map time:
As you can well imagine, there is nothing that stops people from blending Surrealism and Dramaticism, and so they often do, even to a lesser extent. Whenever an author deliberately inserts allegory into a story, they are removing their work from physical realism and entering surrealism. Equally, when a surreal character's emotions triumph against the odds they are becoming dramatic.
Goodness knows what you would call that combination. Given its total lapse from a plot's physical and emotional integrity, and thus the increasingly obscure social symbolism present in each, I'd venture to say it is close to dadaism and 'anti-art', though both do not describe the full spectrum of possibilities.
Ahem. Anyway. I'll get back to you on that.
Writers who pay attention to this sort of thing tend to have favourites. Herman started Moby Dick as the most awe-inspiring Realist novel, going into complex detail as to all things nautical and the cetology of Ahab's quarry. The real-life tragedy is that halfway through the book he discovered the Bloody Bard, and quickly descended into the world of drawn-out conflicts and eon-long passages about how Ahab was feeling. I think we all know how Ahab was feeling; friggin' psychotic after having his leg chomped off by a friggin' whale. This was made clear in the enjoyable first half of the book, and absolutely painful in the second half.
I'm not the only one who dislikes Shakespeare (join the queue, please). My Cossack in shining armour, Tolstoy, described his work as 'overdone' and 'silly', or something along those lines anyway. He believed that it was more valuable to display events as they actually were, and said 'only a fool romanticises poverty'. Of course Tolstoy went on to die in a train station after giving up his life as a wealthy land owner to make a fortune free from hereditary wealth, all at the gelding age of 80-something. His impetus wasn't to live a better life, but to live a 'truer' life. I like to think that in those last moments he got his wish.
I mentioned Orwell earlier, and as a man of learning as well as being English, he acts as a force of civility and mediation. He proposed that neither were 'better' for society as a whole, but rather that literature is intended to act upon an individual. Put simply, 'people like different things'.
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For interest's sake, here are a list of the books I have planned on Reltash and the genres of each. All of them can be considered surrealist 'High Fantasy' novels among everything else.
The Starfall Saga
Shadowolf ~ Drama. A 'travel' novel with various countries reflecting internal discovery.
Draconis ~ Romance. The union of two beings amidst the cultural rejuvenation of an empire.
Thane ~ Tragedy. The genocide of several peoples and the failure of their heroes.
Nex'Acron ~ Horror. A constant struggle against fear and death that turns the protagonist into a monster.
Exodus ~ Realism. A historical account of impetus and freewill acting within a limited environment.
Void ~ Drama. Features a desperate struggle and 'victory' against the Ultimate Enemy. [Elements of realism, but not enough to classify it as such]
Starfall I ~ Realism. [Essentially a non-representative reality with accurate emotional representations]
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The Fellwood ~ Drama. A desperate war between a superior army and a superior culture.
Hellborn ~ Horror. An attempt to make the disgusting beautiful, and the beautiful disgusting.
Astaria ~ Emotional Realism, Physical Surrealism. A novel that questions what is real, set in a city made of conjoined possibilities.
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