Classic vs Modern fiction, part 1

A conversation between two writers

You’re reading part 1 of a series. Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.

There are certain people who become giants to us. G.M. Baker is one of them. We’ve never met in person, but having interacted for several years via the magic of the internet, I can confidently say we share many opinions: a love of literature, a regard for beauty, and a desire to restore the values that stories used to uphold. More than anything, we both crave tales that esteem moral victory.

(For more on moral victory, see G.M. Baker’s own summary of the matter or a video analysis of this principle in The Lord of the Rings.)

For traditionalists like us, there’s an uncomfortable feeling that modern literature has lost the ability to speak deeply. There’s an equally uncomfortable feeling that we, as old-fashioned writers in a modern world, have lost the ability to be heard.

People can respond to that in different ways. The way I’ve chosen is to analyze, question, and dive headlong into modern literature in hopes of finding the secret to its success. My end goal, if I’m being honest, is not to become a good modern writer but to synthesize two competing systems. Said plainly: I want to steal what’s best about both worlds and bring them together.

This could very well be an impossible task. But I’ve come to see that there are great strengths to modern writing just as there are great weaknesses. One of the strengths is that people nowadays are used to modern writing, so you have immediate audience identification. But I believe there are also lessons for writers. Modernists have figured out how to tell some stories better than anyone has before.

This series will be a multi-part conversation between myself and G.M Baker. I’m representing modern writing and he will cover classic. We’ll post responses to each other’s essays on our own Substacks. If you haven’t already, head on over and subscribe to his.

Without further ado, let the conversation commence.

“Modern writing” is an ambiguous term, and it’s easier to feel than describe. But for me, it comes down to a few key factors:

• Accessibility

• Strict plot logic

• Spiritual and philosophical detachment

Accessibility is mostly a result of changing audience needs, including shorter attention spans. Modern books tend to use linear storylines rather than complex structures. They follow a small number of main characters, sharing their thoughts and feelings to the exclusion of anyone else’s. They dramatize more, deciding to show rather than tell. All of these changes have made books easier to pick up and get into, but they’ve also affected the potential breadth and depth of the story.

Strict plot logic is harder to define, and I suspect many readers would disagree with me. But writers have learned to “harden” the plot, to reduce plot holes and ensure every action has an explanation - one that gets communicated to the reader. Plots now are a strict chain of events, and we tend to rate an author on how competent they are at this particular skill. The upside of this is that stories make more logical sense; readers are given an explanation for most of what happens. Books are harder to pick apart on the internet (which may be part of why this evolution occurred). But to me, there’s something inherently inhuman about people acting in such a logical way. People aren’t like that. I crave stories that don’t offer complete explanations, but rather emotions and even fate itself which affect things in unexpected ways.

Spiritual and philosophical detachment is the result of a globalized world and our increasingly secularized society. It’s dangerous to make religious or moral assertions for the very simple reason that some people will disagree, and will feel bewildered, angered, or left out. You’ll lose readers, and that’s something every writer should care about to some degree. The loss of philosophical questioning, on the other hand, is probably more the result of Accessibility concerns. That sort of thing gets very dense very quickly, and not all readers are interested in the whys and wherefores. But to many readers (particularly those raised on the classics), stories without these elements feel soulless.

There are doubtless other things that define modern writing. I’d be curious to hear Baker’s thoughts on the matter. Did I miss anything big? Am I totally off the mark? For me, these are the defining elements.

I’ve already hinted at some of the reasons why these changes may have taken place. More than anything, I think two things are true: this has been a slow, subtle evolution, and it wasn’t a conscious effort by any one group, nor an agenda that someone was trying to enact. This happened organically.

Modernity is what I would call an epiphenomenon. It’s an entity arising from the accumulation of many small changes. Technology has affected the way we communicate, consume media, and the speed at which we live. It has opened our eyes to a wider world, rather than the small communities that used to encompass the whole of existence. No one could have predicted the opportunities and challenges this would bring, but all of us get to experience them, for good and ill.

But while it’s impossible to blame anyone for what’s happened, that doesn’t mean the changes themselves are above criticism. Millennials (my generation) and younger are known for our anger, loneliness, rampant depression (as well as some good things, too). The refrain I hear the most is that life feels meaningless.

We have always been a species that finds a way to draw meaning out of life, but we need a tool for doing so. Art is that tool. As long as we’ve been alive, stories have been one of the most powerful ways we find purpose.

I’m not sure what is correlation and what’s causation, but I firmly believe that hollow stories and hopeless culture go hand in hand. It is the job of writers to keep the lights on inside the human heart.

And in this way, I would say that modern storytelling offers unique challenges. It is not conducive to meaning-making, and the very things that make it resonant for one person may alienate another. Writers are navigating a constant tug-of-war between wanting everyone to read a story and wanting at least one person to love it.

But consider some breakout successes. Harry Potter is one of the best-selling series in history, noted for its moral complexity and for espousing virtues like friendship, love, and sacrifice. The Marvel films feature larger-than-life superheroes, but also delve into real problems and show characters changing for the better. The works of Pixar and George Lucas and Christopher Nolan are massive crowd pleasers while also reaching us on an emotional level.

All of these examples embrace the stylistic choices of modern storytelling. They utilize explosive action, tight pacing, and exuberant worldbuilding to weave something compelling on many levels.

And I think that’s the key innovation of modern writing. There’s an emphasis on the craft rather than just the idea. Many old books that I’ve read have a great premise, or lovable characters, or a satisfying ending, but show a lack of skill in the actual telling of the story.

I don’t think writers back then were lazy or stupid. But audiences may have been less demanding, the market less saturated, and competition less fierce. In some ways it’s sad to think of art as a competition, but that’s the way it has always been. Art has to justify its existence in some way, and notoriety is a factor that cannot be ignored.

If I had to compile a list of the strengths of modern storytelling, it would look like this:

• Pacing

• Consistency

• Visual storytelling

• New genres

Let’s briefly consider each one.

Pacing

Pacing is without a doubt the greatest strength of contemporary fiction. But to be honest, it’s difficult to prove that we do pacing “right” and they did it “wrong.” You could also make the opposite argument: readers now are distracted and thoughtless, so fiction has to pick up the slack for their deficient attention spans. Which is true?

I can’t say. But I do believe that stories now do a better job of condensing more content into fewer words. This is a natural change that occurs as an art form becomes ubiquitous. Readers are acclimatized to the peculiarities of how novels function, so you can skip some of the setup and trust that they will follow. An easy example comes from movies and shows which used to employ transition phrases like “Meanwhile, back at the ranch,” or “When last we saw our poor hero…” Film editors now use a jump cut, an establishing shot, or just a bit of sound bleed to transition between scenes. Viewers have gotten better at watching movies. So have readers with books.

Young people also have a “Just get to the good stuff” mentality, and I can’t really fault them. It’s true that writers have the increasingly hard task of crafting amazing opening chapters, pages, even sentences. But while this is more demanding, is it unfair? I don’t believe so. We’re asking more of our art form, pushing it to new limits. I believe we honor the discipline known as writing when we do so.

What gives me hope among all this is that you can still choose a non-mainstream style, writing for beauty and immersion instead of instant action, and make it work. Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See (from 2014) is my go-to example of a writerly, literary, slow, thoughtful, and dense book that grabbed my heart and wouldn’t let go. I read it 5 years ago and still think about it on a weekly basis. The thing this book does that many literary books don’t is presenting something to enjoy on every page, whether that be a heartfelt character moment or just a beautiful turn of phrase. The entertainment and emotion density is very high, which is why we’ll put up with a slower book.

Consistency

When I read A Tale of Two Cities some years ago, I enjoyed the story as a whole (especially that unforgettable last line). But the actual experience was jarring when reaching the halfway point, because Dickens organized the book into 2 sections: setup and execution (pardon the pun). There’s a skillful way to do this, and then there’s a haphazard way, and I believe he used the latter. The results aren’t catastrophic; perhaps a few minutes of confusion, or the feeling that this was a good stopping point and maybe I’ll take a break. But something serious did occur: the spell was temporarily broken.

Modern fiction prioritizes consistency and predictability. We use mostly linear plotlines, with carefully telegraphed jumps in time or location. If I had to summarize the difference, I would say that older fiction chooses thematic consistency while modern fiction chooses dramatic consistency. When reading a classic masterpiece, you’re often aware that the current scene will matter at some point, but you can’t make sense of it just yet. This is quite possibly a failure of storytelling.

I will say that I miss the adventurous nature and the sheer variety of older forms, the willingness to try something new. Contemporary writing has stagnated in this area, and now ignores many powerful literary devices. But the instinct behind this change is one I applaud. Instead of focusing on the genius of the storyteller, it focuses on the coherence of the experience.

Visual storytelling

Writers are constantly told “Show, don’t tell.” And while this is somewhat backward advice for a textual medium, I think it does accomplish one important thing: it forces writers to externalize the internal experiences of the characters, making them more visceral and freeing up additional word space for the truly important telling. Let’s be honest: showing is harder. And for that reason, many writers choose the lazy option far too often.

The problem with telling everything is that you lose the ability to emphasize information, instead creating homogeneity. And due to the lower skill requirement, it’s easy to fall back on artless telling whenever you need to explain someone’s backstory, a bit of lore, or the dangers of a situation. A book can function through pure telling, but it has to be done well. Showing, on the other hand, is by definition more demanding and therefore a little more foolproof.

New genres

I will fully admit my bias here. Fantasy is my first love, and that genre didn’t really exist before J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. He created something new by combining myth, folklore, and fairy tale. The reason this matters to me is that I’ve tried reading the precursors to fantasy and they don’t come close to scratching the itch. Fantasy is a specific combination I happen to enjoy. It’s also probably the most metaphorical genre existing today, giving the author freedom to explore concepts and ideas in a deeply thematic way. Despite being new, fantasy’s purposes and intentions are very old.

Other genres have been created or greatly altered in the modern world: thrillers, dystopian, and some forms of sci-fi. These are the fruits of our contemporary writing environment, and it would be a mistake to forget what is gained by that.

Much has changed, much has stayed the same. My hope is that we can come to appreciate the strengths of modern writing in addition to its weaknesses, and maybe even work toward a unification of old and new.

I eagerly await G.M. Baker’s response and our continued discussion. There’s so much more to say.

Head on over to his Substack for the next essay!

You’re reading part 1 of a series. Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.