New Fiction Writing Styles

What are the latest writing styles? Here are some thoughts on the things that are changing.

1. First person POV rules the roost. Far more modern novels are written in first person ("I said") than before. If Pride & Prejudice were written today, it'd be written by Lizzie, rather than about her.
2. Present tense. Many more modern novels are written in present tense ("I say"), rather than past tense ("I said"), because it's more immediate. The choice depends somewhat on your target age group. Younger generations love this style, but it's uncomfortable to read for some in the older generations.
3. Multiple POVs. The explosion of e-books has meant great experimentation in the use of POV. Alternating chapters can have different POV characters, and romance novels can present both the Hero and Heroine's POV in the same chapter.
4. Ebooks vs Print Novels. At first, the ebooks looked like they were going to take over. But print books have since made a resurgence, because people simply like something real in their hands, or like to buy a physical item. So the question of ebooks vs print books is quite nuanced by genre.
5. Immersive in-the-moment style. Modern genre fiction tries to keep the reader immersed in the story. One of the strategies is to use "in-the-moment" action scenes, which abhors flashbacks, backstory, or excessive introspection. It's like a movie told in words.
6. First line of a novel doesn't matter. There is a lot of hype about getting the first sentence of a novel perfect. Or sometimes the first paragraph. This seems less important in modern times, where the reader's first experience of the novel will actually be the blurb.
7. Alternative themes are no longer alternative. With the explosion of niche ebooks, lots of sub-genres and sub-sub-genres have gone mainstream.
8. Niche genres. The internet has brought together larger groups of people, and made it easier for small niche subgroups to find content they want. This means that authors can target more niche areas.
9. More exclamation marks! Once shunned to the point where a novel had only a handful of exclamation marks, these are appearing more and more in genre fiction. They are used more often in dialogue, usually replacing the older style of "she exclaimed."
10. Adult themes. Grown-up scenes have become so prevalent in e-books, it's overdone. The level of literary skill often doesn't accompany the author's desire to entertain (or shock) the reader. The avoidance of such writing has emerged as a new style.
11. Fewer hyphens. The English language gradually evolves to have fewer hyphenated words. In the 1900's, the word was written "to-day" (now "today") and the same trend is affecting many words. Examples are words like: email, webcast, subgroup, hypermodern, and many more.
12. Metaphors and Similes are Bad! That's not what my English teacher told me. I always thought a metaphor was the gold medal of good writing, and a simile won the silver. Don't worry, they're still great in literary fiction. But there's a modern school of thought that in immersive genre fiction (e.g. thrillers, mystery, romance, sci-fi), using metaphors and similes actually undermines the goal of having the reader's mind embedded in the scene. It creates an alternative visual image that distracts from the story. Therefore, modern writing theory advises cutting metaphors and similes to a minimum in genre fiction.
13. Quoteless dialogue punctuation styles. This hasn't gone wide yet, and the standard punctuation of dialogue quote marks still applies: double quotes around the spoken words, and a punctuation mark inside at the end. But a number of quoteless hypermodern dialogue styles are appearing in novels, and quickly gaining acceptance. Instead of quotation marks, one style is to use a prefix em dash at the start of each line of dialogue. Another style is to avoid any punctuation, and just write it like the old dialogue, except without any double quotes. Surprisingly, both styles are quite readable (who knew the human brain could be so capable), and they look cleaner without the clutter of punctuation.
14. Series. The economics of ebooks on Amazon favors getting readers to binge on multiple books. The goal is to keep a reader immersed in a series of many books, either about the same characters, or different characters in the same setting. Much online advice for writing careers is to not write one book, instead, write three!