Writing 21st Century Fiction

1. High-Impact Fiction Blends Literary & Commercial.

High-impact novels utilize what is best about literary and commercial fiction.

Changing landscape. The 21st century publishing market shows a shift, with literary fiction achieving blockbuster sales previously reserved for commercial genres. This indicates readers are responding to something beyond traditional category expectations. Success comes from novels that deliver both compelling stories and exceptional writing quality.

Literary/Commercial blend. Publishers now seek "literary/commercial fiction," which combines the strengths of both worlds. These novels are:

• Deeply personal yet universally appealing.
• Technically masterful in craft.
• Capable of generating powerful, sustained word-of-mouth.
• Embraced by diverse readers, reading groups, and media.

Beyond dogma. This approach rejects the snobbery of purely literary fiction and the formulaic constraints of strict genre. It encourages authors to find their authentic voice and push boundaries, regardless of their primary intent (to enlighten or entertain).

2. Transcending Genre Requires Personal Courage.

To write high-impact 21st century fiction, you must start by becoming highly personal.

Move beyond trends. Many manuscripts feel stuck in the past or merely follow current trends. High-impact fiction speaks to the present by reflecting human truths that resonate deeply, transcending clichés and tropes. This requires authors to be unafraid, independent, and true to their own hearts.

Personal truth is power. Out-of-category novels use genre conventions as a framework but express the author's deepest self – their fears, angers, griefs, and inspirations. This personal core is what gives fiction its unique power and influence.

• Generic pain has low impact.
• Personal pain is a wellspring of passion.
• Playing it safe keeps fiction earthbound.

Genre transcending. Blending genres is common, but true impact comes from transcending category limitations entirely. This means not obeying genre rules but summoning and bending them when useful, relying instead on universal techniques and an inner compass.

3. The Inner Journey: Map Emotions & Conflict.

To foster reader involvement, it is first critical to map an emotional landscape across which readers will travel.

Emotions drive connection. Stories are empty without emotional impact. While restraint and subtext can be artful, avoiding authentic emotions leaves readers feeling shortchanged. High impact requires mapping a rich emotional landscape, using fresh, genuine, and specific feelings.

Conflict is key. Beyond simple emotions, conflicting feelings and inner conflict (mutually exclusive desires) snare readers and create fascinating characters. This interior war is a dilemma, not mere indecision, and must escalate and become part of the plot.

• Inner conflict leads to unsettling actions.
• Downward descents into darker selves create dynamic arcs.

Healing and meaning. The inner journey often involves confronting the past, secrets, shame, and regret. This painful journey home to heal resonates deeply. Ultimately, the quest for meaning – understanding life's purpose and larger truths – is the ultimate inner journey, transforming both characters and readers.

4. The Outer Journey: Create Events That Transform.

Strong story events are surprising, emotional, and revealing, and enact permanent change.

Events must have impact. External events are necessary, but they must be more than just plot points. They need to be surprising, stir emotions, reveal character, and enact permanent change. Weak events are foreseeable, zipped up, and leave the status quo intact.

Engineering impact:

• Surprise: Counter reader expectations by building contrary assumptions.
• Emotional: Make events explosions at the end of long emotional fuses; go big with feelings, but make them specific and earned.
• Revealing: Actions must illuminate something about the character involved; even small acts have hidden psychological significance.
• Changing: Events should change both story circumstances and the focal character, inside and out.

Dramatic techniques. Turns (unexpected happenings), twists (unexpected people doing things), and deep dark secrets (especially when revealed at the worst time) add drama. Comeback and redemption arcs, built on prior failure and sacrifice, create powerful uplift. Ultimate events (climaxes) should involve enormous feats, worst fears, tremendous losses, or utter destruction.

5. Standout Characters: Earn Devotion Through Uniqueness.

Here’s a counter-intuitive principle for you to consider: the more unlike anyone else you make a character, the more universal that character will become.

Admiration, not just identification. Readers care about protagonists who quickly stir high admiration, showing something strong and good. Even heroes need to show humanity, dark characters a glimmer of hope, and ordinary characters a hint of the exceptional.

Standout qualities: Beyond looks and charm, characters captivate through:

• Quirks: Contradictory habits that beg questions.
• Special Abilities/Handicaps: Best when intrinsic to the action and reveal character.
• Unexpected Actions: Snap readers awake and intrigue.
• Selfless Focus: Melt hearts and warm readers.
• Serene Perspective: Offer a godlike, mature viewpoint.

Antagonists and secondary characters. Villains should be three-dimensional, with understandable motivations and even moments of good. This makes their wrongdoing more disturbing. Secondary characters come alive through contradictions and dynamic, changing relationships with the protagonist. Warmth (passionate engagement in life) conveyed through observation, opinions, and self-awareness makes any character gripping.

6. Master Story on Three Levels: Plot, Scene, Micro-Tension.

The truth is that only when all three levels of story are working all the time do novels genuinely keep readers under their spells.

Three essential levels:

1. Plot: The main problem or central conflict, providing the story's structure. Needs a high-horsepower premise with inherent, perhaps irresolvable, conflict. The middle must constantly escalate problems, making them worse and worse.
2. Scene: The building blocks of the story. Each scene must advance the story by changing both the circumstances (outer turning point) and the focal character (inner turning point). Avoid scenes where nothing changes.
3. Micro-Tension: Constant line-by-line apprehension that compels readers to turn pages. It's not just danger, but unconscious anxiety, worry, or uncertainty, often generated by conflicting emotions within the POV character.

Constant engagement. All three levels must work all the time. A strong premise isn't enough if the middle sags. Dramatic events are hollow without inner meaning. Action sequences are dull without micro-tension. Mastering these levels creates a multi-layered drive that keeps readers spellbound.

7. Beautiful Writing: Beyond Description to Resonance.

Beautiful writing also illuminates a story’s social world, its era, the passage of time, the story’s larger meaning, and even the profound puzzles of existence...

More than pretty prose. Beautiful writing creates resonance and meaning. It's not just description (which readers often skim), but a character's total, subjective experience of their world. It involves:

• Associations: Parallels, reversals, and symbols that link ideas and evoke meaning, often subconsciously.
• Story World: Brought alive through character perception, not objective detail; capturing intangible qualities like mood and atmosphere.
• Surprise: Planned moments that violate expectations, shaking up the reader's idea of the story.
• Sense of Self: Illuminating the protagonist's evolving self-understanding, their code, assumptions, and place in the world.

The Big Picture. High-impact novels address timeless questions and eternal mysteries, even within commercial genres. They illuminate the story's social context, capture the nuances of its era through character perspective, and grapple with cosmic significance (justice, destiny, meaning). Ducking these big questions results in low impact.

8. Embrace Your Writing Process & Personality.

Fortunately, working on what you’re not good at yields both better fiction and greater success.

Know your strengths and weaknesses. Novelists are naturally gifted in some areas (plotting, character, prose, etc.) but lack in others. Recognizing these gaps is crucial for growth and increasing impact. The most successful writers are humble students, eager to improve.

Process variations:

• Outliners: Efficient but can miss opportunities. Need to push into unknown story regions.
• Intuitionists (Pantsers): Explore widely but can lack focus. Need to commit to the story's core intent.
• Research vs. Observation: Heavily researched novels need more observation of ordinary people; realistic novels need research to make events distinctively detailed and credible.
• Deadlines vs. Spec: Deadlines force completion but limit exploration; freedom allows depth but can lead to aimless wandering.

Cool vs. Warm: Writing style ranges from restrained/showing (cool) to emotional/telling (warm). Cool writers benefit from warming up; warm writers benefit from restraint. Finding balance broadens appeal.

Baby vs. Business: While passion is vital, treating writing as a business requires detachment, accepting feedback, and revising. However, don't buckle too easily; stick to your core convictions. Courage is needed to step out of your comfort zone and try what you're not good at.

Last updated: May 19, 2025