English I Accelerated

Genre Unit Contemporary Fiction Overview

Contemporary fiction is a rather broad category, so what follows is a basic compilation of
characteristics many works shared during the twentieth and twenty-first century share. In no
way does this account for ALL contemporary fiction; rather, this focuses on what makes
contemporary fiction unique in the history of literature.

What Is Contemporary Fiction?
Definitions will vary, but contemporary fiction is generally considered to have started in 1960
and stretches all the way to the present. Usually, contemporary fiction presents human beings
as fundamentally flawed creaturesmuch like the dark romantics did during the nineteenth
century. Often, contemporary fiction focuses on characters that behave like real people
struggling with real-world problems. By the end of these stories, the characters often havent
learned anything or even been bettered by what they encountered during the story; however,
the story itself and the characters journey is reflective of the society the reader lives in and
leaves the reader thinking about his or her own life.


Basic Components of Contemporary Fiction
There are numerous characteristics of contemporary fiction, but here are a few that have
defined literature since 1960:
CHARACTERS AND CONTENT
Characters are presented as real people with real-world, everyday problems.
Charactersincluding the storys protagonistsare flawed individuals dealing with
many internal conflicts. Often, these characters flaws are the heart of the story as
opposed to a litany of external conflicts.
Sometimes, throughout the course of a story, a character may be changed for the
better as the result of a defining moment in their life; however, just as many times
in contemporary fiction (if not more), characters do not change at all or they change
for the worse.
If a character does change, it is often the result of an outside force, element, or
person that makes him/her analyze his/her own self, and these changes are often
portrayed in a much more realistic manner; in other words, changes are not
immediate. They take time and are often not complete changes.
For the most part, the story deals with whats going on in the characters mind just
as much as whats going on outside the charactersometimes, it deals with it more.
Society is often viewed as a cruel antagonist, and the storys characters are
generally powerless to escape its hold on them. For the most part, society burdens
them with unnecessary problems that forever make their lives difficult.
While stories still exist (as they always will) that focus on the characters overcoming
evil and external forces, many contemporary works focus on characters overcoming
some aspect of themselves or some antagonistic aspect of the society they live in. In
these cases, society is represented by its laws, ideologies, norms, and opinions, and
often characters around the protagonists represents these ideals of society.
Contemporary fiction often focuses on the cruelty/insanity/horror of the human
mind, making many contemporary works very violent or hostile in nature.
In short, although not always true, contemporary fiction can be much more cynical
and pessimistic about modern society.
However, ending on a more optimistic note, contemporary works often focus on the
power of human interaction and contact, and highlight how one persons actions
can change the way a person thinks, acts, or behaves.


WRITING STYLE
Often, contemporary fiction will be written in the present tense, as opposed to the
more traditional past tense. Authors do this to give a sense of immediacy to their
story, which builds tension since it is literally unfolding right before our eyes.
In the past, authors have used much more detailed and descriptive writing to paint
the world around the characters and explicitly catalogue a characters actions; in
contemporary fiction, a greater emphasis is placed on dialogue and how characters
interact with one another.
In an attempt to make the characters seem even more realistic, contemporary
fiction is being written in first-person point of view more and more. By no means is
all contemporary fiction written in first-person, but writers are turning to this point
of view more often than they have in the past.