Why Modern Fiction Is So Uninteresting

Highlighting some of the worst writing advice I’ve seen online

A year ago, I wrote about some of the worst writing advice. Now I am seeing that too many writers are following that advice, so iteration and expansion are needed. Here goes.

A short story by Bill Adler stated that good fiction comes from feeling Death at your shoulder. Maybe, or maybe it’s something that can be learned. If the latter, whatever you do, do not go online and seek such edification. You will encounter some of the worst advice ever. I sure did, and I present some of it to explain why modern fiction is so uninteresting.

General Tips

The opening sentence has to grab the reader. Total B.S. I have read some great opening lines only to be led down an absolutely filthy alley of prose with a sewer pit at the end. How about focusing instead on a great story? Let the opening draw the reader in, certainly, but many writers seem to focus so much on that one aspect that the rest is trash. I like to open with some great scene to draw in the reader and have the story unfold from there, at least in my longer fiction. Tricky to do in short works.

Get to the point in your writing, avoiding prologues and backstories. This depends entirely on you and what you’re writing. If you can handle writing both prologues and backstories, do so. They can be more interesting than a straight sequential narrative.

Start your story in the middle. The companion to the two preceding items and supposedly a way to grab readers. More likely a way to confuse readers. And it contradicts the tip to present things sequentially, avoiding flashbacks and backstories. You must have both if your story starts in the middle. That is a problem with many of these writing advice sites. They contradict each other.

Start a story from the end and then write the middle and beginning. Another tipster contradicts the preceding tip. While knowing where you will end up can be helpful, it is not absolutely necessary. Even if you outline, be open to a different ending where the text leads you.

Read to get story ideas. Certainly you should read to get a feel for language and writing, but for ideas? No way! Let your ideas be your own. If you find yourself stuck, read some news. Plenty there to jolt your brain into action.

Other ways to get inspiration. Tipsters advise that you go to movies, stream them online, scroll through sites like this one, or eavesdrop on people in some public place such as a coffee shop. All you’re doing, as in the preceding tip, is soaking up someone else’s creativity.

Join a writing community. This is supposed to give you camaraderie, advice, and sanity. My personal experience has been being bored silly and getting attacked when I expressed my true opinion of something, even in the most congenial of terms. If I have to tiptoe around, why bother?

Don't go over your time limit to write. Bunk! If your ideas are flowing, carry on!

Don’t spend all your free time writing. And another tip says to write every chance you get. Again, this isn’t something about which to give advice. You, the writer, must work it out for yourself, especially if your free time is rare and precious.

Write about someone that you'd like to know. Very limiting. Frankly, I don’t think quite a few of the characters in my works are people I would like to know. But they are nevertheless rather entertaining to read about, especially when they get their comeuppance or a rather gruesome whacking.

Read your writing aloud to catch awkward phrasing. This tip is like kudzu. It’s spread everywhere. This can work, but the better tip is to set your writing aside. Give yourself a chance to view it with fresh eyes. Too much rushing to post or publish can embarrass you later. I speak from personal experience.

Vocabulary, Grammar, & Punctuation Tips

Treat your reader like a child. Well, that is not the exact wording of the tip, but it is the essence. Even if your reader is a child, this advice is unconscionable. My vocabulary in elementary school was at a high school level because I didn’t read books that were dumbed down. But this tip isn’t just about vocabulary. The tip goes on to say that you should avoid too much emotional stress, too much demand for the reader to stretch his imagination, or not giving your readers stopping places so they can eat and sleep. The reader will work that last one out for him/her self. You need to focus on the story.

Go for the simpler word. Kiss this tip goodbye. It is destroying modern literature, reducing fiction to the lowest common denominator. The tip says not to force your reader to keep a dictionary handy when reading your novel. Just the opposite. You will be helping your reader expand his vocabulary. And who says your reader is someone who is barely literate. As the preceding tip shows, this tip is treating your reader like a child. I always keep a dictionary nearby, no matter what I am reading.

Avoid adjectives and adverbs. This appears time and again on sites across the internet. Adverbs and prepositional phrases are called “unnecessary.” No wonder fiction is so blasé these days. “She smiled warmly” becomes “she smiled.” Ugh! And this goes with the following tip.

Stick with “said” for dialogue. Sheesh! People don’t exclaim, cry out, admonish, protest, or otherwise inject anything human into their speaking nowadays according to this tipster. Sadly, this tip has spread like wildfire and infected a lot of published works. Best to read some older fiction and get a feel for the more descriptive language used in them.

Eliminate exclamation points. The tip recommends a maximum of three in your novel. That depends on what you’re writing. And exclamation points are often quite necessary in dialogue.

Keep sentences short. Tipsters equate long sentence to wordiness. Far from it. While a sentence should be restricted to one thought or idea, it need not be short. This is another “dumbing down” of fiction, one that we writers should vehemently resist. Literature these days reads very choppily. However, there are times when short sentences work to create faster pacing, as shown in this story by Bridget Riley. Sadly, though, the tip doesn’t specify this, merely saying that all sentences should be short.

Write short paragraphs. This relates to the above tip. And it is as equally egregious (got your dictionary handy?). The tipster claims that lengthy paragraphs belong in academic writing, not literature. Again, I say bunk! Some of the greatest books written have paragraphs that dwarf those in scholarly writings. As in the preceding tip, short paragraphs can help quicken your story’s pacing (see link above). This tip also doesn’t specify this.

Final Note

Take writing tips from other authors, even me, with a large pinch of salt. After all, we are all individuals and have to approach writing our way.

Hope you found this helpful and have been inspired to start and/or continue writing! And, so you don’t think I have been succumbed to curmudgeonly thinking, the next article will be some of the best advice I’ve seen online. Don’t miss it!

See my article: Publisher Agent Fiction Genres Defined, with downloadable PDF.

Please check out my works in progress (WIPs). And thanks for reading.

NOTE: None of my text or images are AI-generated. You can rest assured that I pulled it all out of that stuff in my skull called a “brain.”

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