How Fashionable is Your Writing?
Is your writing fashionable?
This may be an odd way to think of writing, but here me out.
Researching trends and fashions in writing is important for new authors, whether you intend to publish traditionally or self-publish. If you want to publish traditionally, knowing the fashions in your genre will help you talk about your book to potential agents and acquisitions editors. If you’re planning on self-publishing, knowing the fashions will help you in marketing your book and finding the readers most likely to enjoy it.
The main point I’m working toward today is: in what way do you care about fashion in your writing? Do you want to be on-trend, following the examples of some of your genre’s most recent bestsellers? Are you aiming for staying power, where a reader can pick up (or download) your book in fifty years, and not feel that the book is dated? Are you looking to subvert the tropes or trends in your genre, throwing readers’ expectations for a loop?
I’m not going to list all the current trends in this post. There are too many genres (even for fiction) to list them all here, and if someone is reading this article in a couple years, the trends will have changed again anyway. There are plenty of articles you can research if you want to know what’s current in your particular genre. Look in writers’ groups or online communities for discussions. That being said though, there are some fashions are more universal across the fiction genres, and are espoused by editors.
For instance, there has been a general trend across most genres to lean away from formality. Simple language is preferred over verbosity, the use of specialized jargon has diminished (epic fantasy and sci-fi excepted), and coaches and editors encourage using active construction over passive for narration.
For dialogue, readers expect natural-sounding text, consistent with the setting of the story. Don’t be afraid to use incomplete sentences, poor grammar or contractions where it works with those characters. This is how people talk. The current fashion is also to limit dialogue tags to the bare minimum – if there are only two characters speaking, you don’t need a tag for every line. The conversation will flow better for the reader too, if not constantly interrupted by dialogue tags. Action beats are good for breaking up large chunks of text, which is also considered desirable these days. Apparently huge paragraphs of continuous monologue can intimidate or bore readers.
Using adverbs in dialogue tags and action beats is discouraged. Personally, I love a good adverb, but it’s best not to get dependent on them. Use them like perfume – sparingly. 😉
Tight, spare writing is preferred. Again, long, winding descriptions or lengthy explanations are thought to bore readers, or push them out of the story. I don’t know if readers really have as short attention spans as the authors of writing guides think, but it is the current advice, and since books are competing with a lot of increasingly short-duration media clips (looking at you, TikTok), it makes sense to cut down on superfluous detail. What counts as superfluous, in this case?
Lengthy descriptions that don’t advance the plotline or character development. You want to give the reader a picture of the character’s surroundings, but if you spend half a page describing a piece of furniture, and then it never comes into the story again, readers will wonder why there was so much attention paid to it.
explanations of actions or objects that readers would be able to infer on their own (Like spelling out that the character, in getting ready in the morning, “picked up the Colgate toothpaste tube, unscrewed the cap, laid it down, then squeezed toothpaste on their toothbrush which they were holding in their right hand, before replacing the cap and brushing their teeth in the usual manner.” Unless this is crucial information to the execution of a larger plot, a reader can guess how someone applies toothpaste. And unless it’s a commercial, no one cares what brand of toothpaste they use.)
Filter words, like “a sense of,” “an air of,” “an atmosphere of.” If you can eliminate these words from your sentence and still have it make sense, then they’re superfluous. (Example: “the room’s tasteful decoration exuded a sense of calm,” can easily be shortened to “the room’s tasteful decoration was calming.”)
I’m deliberately not calling these “rules,” because language is not set in stone. It evolves and changes. When I was reading about the points above, I was temporarily incensed on behalf of past writers, whose work didn’t follow the recommendations. Austen? Hemmingway? Montgomery? Surely the authors weren’t implying that the books produced were inferior because of their style?! But no. All they’re doing is pointing out what the current fashion is.
You also can look at the fashions of how you like writing as a hint to genres where you might be successful – if you love writing dialogue that’s full of the latest slang, maybe you’d be best doing contemporary fiction or YA, rather than a period romance (unless you’re subverting the genre with a retelling of a classic story in modern idiom). If you love detail and complex plots, maybe thrillers or speculative fiction would be good fits. If you lean toward introspection and description, maybe literary fiction is your niche.
It becomes a matter of marketing – to draw out the fashion analogy, if you design an outfit of frock coat and satin waistcoat with lace jabot and Morocco-heeled shoes, you’re probably not going to try selling it at a yoga-clothing store. Instead, you’re going to look for people who appreciate its opulence and drama – maybe period re-enactment societies or Goth shops.
You’re the author of your own book. You can decide how you want to dress it. If you do it confidently and well, there will be readers who will love it.
For sources of writing tips and trends, see the blog post “Welcome 2025! And Self-Editing Resources.”
Photo by Karsten Winegeart on Unsplash
