Algorithms reward speed, consistency, recognisable hooks, and emotional immediacy. Contemporary and general fiction — at their best — tend to do the opposite. They linger. They complicate. They ask readers to stay with discomfort instead of scrolling past it. This is where many writers start bending themselves out of shape.
Repeat after me.
The algorithm does not care if your work is good.
It cares if your work is useful to it.
That’s not a moral judgement. It’s a mechanical one.
Algorithms reward speed, consistency, recognisable hooks, and emotional immediacy. Contemporary and general fiction — at their best — tend to do the opposite. They linger. They complicate. They ask readers to stay with discomfort instead of scrolling past it.
This is where many writers start bending themselves out of shape.
The Algorithm Trains You to Write Louder, Not Truer
Spend enough time online and you’ll feel it. Shorter sentences. Stronger statements. Hot takes instead of considered thought. You’re nudged to explain faster, simplify harder, and declare meaning upfront — because anything that requires patience risks being skipped.
That pressure doesn’t just affect how you share your writing. It creeps into what you write. Characters become more extreme. Themes get flattened into slogans. Ambiguity is treated like a flaw.
Contemporary and general fiction doesn’t thrive under that kind of compression. It needs space to breathe — and the algorithm is fundamentally hostile to breathing room.
Visibility Is Not the Same as Value
This is where writers get confused.
High engagement feels like validation. Low engagement feels like failure. But neither reliably measures the quality or longevity of a piece of work.
The Australia Council (now Creative Australia) has repeatedly noted that cultural value and audience impact don’t always align with immediate visibility metrics. Some work finds readers slowly — through libraries, classrooms, word of mouth, or simply time.
The algorithm can’t measure that. It can only measure reaction.
Writing for the Feed vs Writing for the Page
Here’s a distinction worth making.
Writing for the feed prioritises:
- immediacy
- clarity at first glance
- emotional certainty
Writing for the page often prioritises:
- accumulation
- nuance
- unresolved tension
Neither is inherently bad. But pretending they serve the same purpose leads to frustration.
If you write contemporary or general fiction primarily for the page, your work may not translate cleanly into bite-sized content. That doesn’t mean it’s broken. It means it was built for a different kind of attention.
When Writers Start Self-Censoring for Reach
One of the more damaging side effects of algorithmic thinking is quiet self-censorship.
Writers stop:
- exploring morally complex situations
- sitting with ambiguity
- writing characters who don’t resolve neatly
Not because they don’t want to — but because they’ve learned what doesn’t perform.
Over time, that erodes confidence in your own instincts. You start second-guessing depth as indulgence. Silence as weakness. Subtlety as irrelevance.
That’s not growth. That’s training.
Choosing Not to Optimise Is Still a Choice
Writing against the algorithm doesn’t mean ignoring the internet entirely. It means deciding — consciously — what you will not change for reach. It might mean:
- publishing less often
- resisting trend-driven topics
- letting some work exist quietly
- accepting slower discovery
This is not noble suffering. It’s strategic alignment. If your goal is a long-term contemporary or general fiction career, you need work that can survive beyond the feed it was posted into.
The Algorithm Wants Predictability — Fiction Needs Risk
Algorithms thrive on patterns. Contemporary fiction advances by breaking them.
Stories that matter often:
- unsettle
- resist neat conclusions
- ask readers to do some work
Those qualities are expensive online. They don’t travel well in screenshots. They don’t summarise cleanly. They rarely go viral.
But they endure.
Libraries stock them. Book clubs argue about them. Readers return to them years later.
The algorithm doesn’t reward that. Time does.
A Ground Rule Worth Keeping
Here’s the standard I use — and recommend.
If changing your writing to suit the algorithm would make the work less honest, less complex, or less necessary to you — don’t make the change.
Adjust how you share the work if you must. But protect how you write it, because once you let the algorithm dictate content, it doesn’t stop. It just keeps asking for more of the same — louder, simpler, faster — until the thing you cared about writing is barely recognisable.
Reality Check
You don’t owe the algorithm your best work. You owe your readers — present and future — something that wasn’t written purely to be consumed and forgotten.
Write the work that requires patience. Let it take time to find its people. Accept that some stories are meant to move slowly through the world.
That’s not resisting progress. That’s choosing permanence over performance.
References (Australian sources)
Australian Society of Authors — Writing careers and ethical practice
https://www.asauthors.org/
Creative Australia — Cultural value, audience reach & sustainability
https://www.creative.gov.au/advocacy-and-research/research
State Library of Queensland — Long-form storytelling and cultural memory
https://www.slq.qld.gov.au/