3 Korean women transforming speculative fiction
Including recent Nobel Prize-winning Author Han Kang
These 3 South Korean women are revolutionizing the speculative fiction genre.
In this post, I will show you how they differentiate their work using the genre framework from legendary screenwriter John Truby's The Anatomy of Genres. The key to a successful writing career is to build an audience via word-of-mouth. This strategy takes superfans and a lot of time. But how do you get superfans?
By writing a transcendent story that leaves a lasting impression.
In this article we will explore:
Mixing plot beats from genres to create an original story
Using theme to express a life philosophy
Exploring the story forms unique to a specific genre
These 3 writers do well in all 3 categories, but excel in one. Combining an interesting premise with 1 of these 3 techniques is a guaranteed formula for success.
Writers of Speculative Fiction would do well to pay attention. It is a case-study on how to differentiate your writing in a saturated and competitive marketplace.
Bora Chung
Bora Chung has this incredible ability of taking high concept genre stories and elevating them.
In her short story collection Cursed Bunny, she writes across all the speculative fiction genres, even including the Mythic Epic. She blends and jumps between genres story-to-story, with acrobatic versatility.
The first story in the collection "The Head" is about a monster that comes out of the toilet, made from the blood, hair, and poop of the main character. Having a wild premise for a story is a major advantage in the internet age. It's what gets people to click. In the battle for attention, the premise has to instantly grab the reader.
The story "The Head" reads like a monster exploitation film from the 80s, setting horror firmly as the primary genre. Yet, in Bora Chung's hands the story becomes an extended analogy for motherhood and the unreasonable demands put on women. Motherhood can be a depersonalizing experience where the child's identity replaces the mother's.
By making the story's theme about freedom, it borrows from the fantasy genre. Where the essential question is: what does it mean to live a good life? How do we achieve freedom?
By combining fantasy and horror, we get a more original and interesting story.
Choi Eun-young
The novella Shoko's Smile is a perfect story.
Shoko's smile is a coming-of-age story that manages to transcend the genre by expressing a life philosophy through its theme. The coming-of-age story is about using the past to make sense of the present and future. While trying not to spoil anything, as we learn more about Shoko we are forced to reevaluate everything we thought we knew about our nameless protagonist and narrator.
Such is the nature of memory and relationships. As we learn more, we come to know how little we had actually understood, about ourselves, or each other.
Han Kang
I was first introduced to Han Kang in 2023 with her story "The Middle Voice" published in the The New Yorker.
This story really resonated with me. Unfortunately the novel the short story was excerpted from, Greek Lessons, had not yet been translated into English. So instead I read her most famous book The Vegetarian.
I was completely blown away.
The story is about a woman who decides to stop eating meat after having a nightmare about human cruelty. What makes the story rise above is its ability to explore the story form unique to the written word.
The story is told from the POV of everyone except the main character. The POV switches from her husband (who is a hilarious character, a voice I have tried to imitate since), her brother-in-law, and her sister. She is using the story form itself to explore the theme of how society uses familial expectations to force women into playing a part. When the main character is unable to meet those expectations, everything falls apart.
By choosing a POV separate from our protagonist, it elevates the themes of depersonalization, subjugation, and conformity. It also creates a dynamic tension baked into the voice itself.
I can't wait to start reading Greek Lessons. The ebook is currently on sale for $5 because Han Kang won the Nobel Prize for Literature this past week.
Historically, traditional publishing houses would exclusively publish genre fiction or literary fiction. They were considered separate entities, with different conventions and audiences.
As the influence of traditional publishing wanes, the difference between literary and genre fiction is a disappearing line. These 3 authors go beyond this distinction, by combining the best of both worlds.
So keep differentiating yourself out there and be so good they can't ignore you.
(Honorable mention to life ceremony to by Japanese author sayaka murata.)
Curious about the Vegetarian now!!