What is Women's Fiction?

by Hana
(Canada)

Question: What is women's fiction ? I know it is a broad audience term, but I was wondering if it is dictated by heroine's age (and vice versa)? For instance, Young Adult novels portray heroines aged 13/14 to 18/19, and maybe 20.

Is women's fiction just female-focused fiction? That is, female-focused, and not-aged focused fiction?

And would the elusive and liminal New Adult genre (if marketed to females) fall under women's fiction?

Does paranormal romance fall under women's fiction?

What about erotic romances?

Sorry about the barrage of questions. Actually, I'm currently implementing your 8-step plotting process, and so far it's asking me the hard questions.

Thanks!

Answer: Taken very loosely, "women's fiction" can refer to fiction written for a female audience. More narrowly, it's a distinct genre.

Recently, people have taken to calling women's fiction "relationship fiction," in an effort to say it's not just for women. But I expect women are the main readers of women's fiction.

Women's fiction is fiction that concerns the issues and challenges women typically face in today's world in their quest to find personal fulfillment. Such issues may include inter-generational family conflicts, family relationships, problems balancing career and family, friendships, health challenges, healing emotional wounds, etc. Generally, the stories are about how the characters triumph over their challenges and manage to find fulfillment in the end. There may be romantic relationships in women's fiction, but the stories are not Romances. There may be suspense, but the stories do not fall into the Suspense genre.

Women's fiction features main characters their typical reader will find relatable characters. That means the main characters are almost always women who are middle-class and well-educated (the kind of women who would read books). Typically, they will have a small circle of supportive friends who are wrestling with similar issues in different ways. The main characters especially tend to be holistic thinkers. In other words, they are juggling a variety of competing demands and challenges in their lives, such as work, home, friends, and family, and trying to find the best balance.

The stories are almost always set in today's world (though there are women's fiction Westerns). They almost always have happy endings.

Women's fiction is often considered the most realistic type of fiction, because it deals with the everyday issues women face. (Again, we're speaking of middle-class women. Lower class women are rare in women's fiction, both as main characters and readers.)

Not surprisingly, the writers of women's fiction are almost always women themselves.

There are lots of sub-categories within women's fiction, some of which you mention, and age often separates the subgenres. Chicklit, for example, is women's fiction written for younger women -- those in their late 20s who usually are not married. New adult women's fiction is written for even younger (college-age women). And young adult (high-school age) books about female friendships is another subgenre, as is books for more mature women.

Other ways of defining women's fiction:

Some would say women's fiction means all stories that have a female protagonist. Others add the requirement that relationships are the primary focus. Still others say it must be about topics or themes of particular interest to contemporary women.

Dramatica theory argues that women tend to empathize more with characters who are running out of options, regardless of gender, while men empathize more with male characters who are running out of time. The idea that females care less about the main character's gender is one reason why, in the children's market, most girls will read boys' books but most boys won't read girls' books.

It also means that screenwriters, in order to create stories that appeal to both genders will often write about male main characters who are running out of options, or will make sure every action film includes a romance. (In theory, a main character who the fewest people can empathize with would be a woman running out of time. People might sympathize with her, but not empathize.)

But I digress.

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