Why modern fiction is soulless and what I’m doing about it
There’s something deeply wrong with modern fiction right now, and you feel it when you walk into an off- or online bookstore.
You feel it scrolling through bestseller lists or skimming the “most anticipated releases” on Amazon, if that’s your preferred destination. The covers are clean, the blurbs are punchy, and the stories are polished, diverse, and utterly dead.
Not because the writers are untalented, but because so many of them stopped thinking for themselves.
The symptoms of hollow fiction
Open any mainstream novel and you’ll see the rot almost immediately:
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Characters that feel like HR-approved archetypes. Perfectly diverse, safe, and boring. You can predict their arc by page five and their dialogue by line three.
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Plots engineered for TikTok clips and Netflix options. High concept, low substance. Every story screams “please adapt me,” and none of them say anything that matters.
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Themes that preach instead of provoke. It’s all virtue-signaling wrapped in prose. No one’s challenging any true status quo these days, and no one’s telling the truth.
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Dialogue written like sanitized Twitter threads. Every sentence has the same cadence, affectation, and terrified fear of offending anyone.
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AI-written garbage that passes as “good enough.” A few tools, some tropes, a character arc spreadsheet, and suddenly, someone who’s never had a real thought in their life is calling themselves a novelist.
Why modern fiction is crumbling
This is another example of a structural collapse that once made Western culture the best in the world. Here’s a list of what I’ve seen lately:
1. Publishing companies are terrified of risk
Big publishers are more concerned with optics than stories. They’d rather publish ten books that challenge nothing and reinforce mainstream narratives than one that might actually offend the algorithm or a fragile reviewer. Authenticity is bad for business, even if it doesn’t need to be.
2. Writers are chasing trends instead of seeking objective truth
There’s a cottage industry built around telling writers how to “make it.” They’re told to follow formulas, map their characters like Disney executives, and write books that are “marketable.”
But marketable to who? People who crave mind-numbing, mindless entertainment, who want their sanitized view of the world reinforced.
3. AI is flattening everyone
Ironically, AI tools are making writers worse. Instead of sharpening their voice, it becomes a voice-replacement service. Why wrestle with the hard questions when the machine will spit out a plot twist and a chapter in 10 seconds?
But here’s the thing: You can’t automate soul, outsource ideology, or factory-produce purpose. If you do, you might just start f*cking yourself to death.
4. Clean prose ≠ meaningful prose
Writers are being trained to write “well,” but writing well without saying anything real is just dressing up a corpse. Where’s the risk? The (authentic) moral friction? The anger?
5. Mainstream fiction’s become complacent, and it sucks
These days, it’s a regurgitating content dump to please algos and sensitivity readers. It’s nothing more than disposable dopamine with a nice cover.
What I’m doing instead
I’m writing novels that don’t ask for permission, and I got a sh*t ton of outlines that’ll keep me busy for the next half of the decade.
It’s not clean, not trendy, and it sure as hell don’t go down easy.
One of them follows Gage Wolfe, a rugged libertarian exile, and Liwen, a Chinese K-pop idol with a secret rebellious streak. He’s hiding from the system. She’s trying to break out of it.
Together, they don’t save the world and bring in some g*dd*mn green socialist utopia. They resist collectivism on their own terms. And yeah, a Wiccan who loves the Germanic/Norse pantheon just put the word g*dd*mn in front of “green.”
Anyway, that outline will eventually tell a story where there’s no chosen one, no perfect arc, and no neat genre box. Just two broken people who had enough.
It’s neither AI-written nor is it written for publishers, but for anyone who’s sick of the lie that comfort is freedom will devour it, and some of my other works, like Beyond the Lost.
Sure, I use AI tools when they serve the vision. But I never let them replace the vision. I don’t write to fit in. I write to fight back against the woke nonsense that I see on both sides of the horseshoe.
Challenging the new status quo
If you’re a writer, stop outsourcing your voice and f*cking own it. Stop playing it safe, and stop selling your soul to the devil to be marketable.
Write something that makes people uncomfortable that a DEI committee would never approve. Something that punches back, not something that absorbs a blow.
Because if fiction can’t challenge centralized power, expose illusions, or remind people what it means to choose freedom over comfort, then what the hell’s the point?
Want an example? Check out the prequel to my libertarian young adult fantasy series, Arcane Awakenings. This short book has a plot that’s not afraid to bite, and it gives readers thought-provoking insight that could cause some discomfort in a specific worldview they embraced.
And if I struck a chord, then good. I did my job.
