In literature, a work of fiction can refer to a flash narrative, short story, novella, and novel, the latter being the longest form of literary prose.
[2] According to Alastair Fowler, the following elements can define genres: organizational features (chapters, acts, scenes, stanzas); length; mood; style; the reader's role (e.g., in mystery works, readers are expected to interpret evidence); and the author's reason for writing (an epithalamion is a poem composed for marriage).
As such, genres are not wholly fixed categories of writing; rather, their content evolves according to social and cultural contexts and contemporary questions of morals and norms.
Aristotle's proscriptive analysis of tragedy, for example, as expressed in his Rhetoric and Poetics, saw it as having 6 parts (music, diction, plot, character, thought, and spectacle) working together in particular ways.
[5] Comedy (including comic novel, light poetry, and comedic journalism): usually a fiction full of fun, fancy, and excitement, meant to entertain and sometimes cause intended laughter; but can be contained in all genres.
The world of science fantasy, however, is laid out to be scientifically logical and often supplied with hard science-like explanations of any supernatural elements.
The genre primarily falls between hard fantasy and soft science fiction in the spectrum of scientific realism.
Romantic fiction primarily focuses on a love story between two people, usually with an optimistic, emotionally satisfying ending.