Literary Fiction vs Genre Fiction

If there's one thing in the world of writing that really annoys me it is the people who distinguish "Genre" writing as some sort of opposite to "Literary" writing.

These people, quite rightly, specify that character-driven stories (one's where the nature of the individual characters create the story) as being superior to stories where the plot controls the actions of the characters.

Thus far we are in reasonable agreement, except to say character vs plot driven is not a "black/white" distinct split. There are shades of grey -- especially since even Literary novellists like to have a plan of where their story is going to go, occasionally a detailed plan, and the characters fit that plan.

The step they take next is to say that it is only in Literary Fiction (needs capitals, it's Very Important) that you have character-driven stories. And that all so-called Genre Fiction must, therefore, by definition, be plot-driven and thus inferior.

Which is a curious jump.

But what is Genre Fiction? Well, it's anything that has a definable genre, e.g. romantic, or involving magic (fantasy). But where does that leave the Literary Writer who wants his characters to be romantically involved? The key difference here is that Genre Fiction has rules and formulae. The Literary Author does not follow rules and formulae therefore he is not classified as Genre Author

I cannot deny that there is a lot of dross, written to rules and formulae, that is published within certain genres, romance is definitely the example to choose here. But does that mean that a story written to rules cannot be Literary? Cannot be character-driven? Of course it doesn't.

The real dsitinction is that there are good writers and there are bad writers: good writers write real characters who drive plots; bad writers write cardboard characters that conform to plots.

And that's all there is.