American fiction encompasses any fictional story written by an American author or about America. It includes various genres such as western, horror, science fiction, fantasy, literary fiction, and general fiction. Westerns are the most well-known genre, focusing on early settlement years in the western states. Other genres developed throughout American history, including horror, science fiction, and fantasy. Literary fiction is a category that focuses on high-quality writing and relatable struggles. Genres often intersect, such as horror and science fiction or science fiction and fantasy.
American fiction is any type of published fictional story produced by an American author or an author from another country who writes about America or the idea of being American. That’s a fairly broad definition, meaning that the different genres of American fiction will also be broad in scope. An American writer may, for example, write science fiction and fantasy, horror, literary fiction, general fiction, family saga, western, historical fiction, and so on. These stories can take the form of novels, novellas, short stories, and flash fiction.
The genre perhaps best known as American fiction is the western. Westerns focus on the early settlement years of the western states of the United States and usually revolve around stories of cowboys, settlers, farmers, ranchers, Native Americans, and so on. Many Westerns feature themes of morality or immorality, battles of good versus evil, and the struggle to survive in rugged landscapes such as the Plains States and the deserts of the Southwest. This genre of American fiction is so ingrained in the themes commonly associated with America and being American because many of the leading writers of Western fiction were alive to witness the nation’s expansion and development firsthand. Westerns continue to live on in fiction, even though much of the realities of the Wild West have faded into oblivion.
The category of writing known as American fiction is a relatively new category that is as old as the nation itself, or slightly older. Genres that have developed throughout the nation’s history include horror, fantasy, and science fiction, which may have developed as a continuation of other countries’ fiction. Horror stories feature themes intended to scare the readers, while science fiction often focuses on futuristic themes, technology, and human development. Fantasy can take place in imaginary worlds very different from reality, and themes can therefore venture into the highly hypothetical.
Overarching fiction is a story that does not fit into a specific genre, but instead focuses on everyday stories and characters, common themes, and relatable struggles. The term “literary fiction” is often reserved for these books and others that focus on high-quality writing, new and revolutionary prose styles and themes, and so on. General fiction and literary fiction are more likely to cross over, more so than other genres. Horror and science fiction are likely to intersect, as are horror and fantasy, or science fiction and fantasy.
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