Writing Contemporary and General Fiction Ethically

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There’s a persistent myth in writing circles that truth justifies everything. It doesn’t. Saying “it really happened” doesn’t absolve you of responsibility. It just shifts the question from accuracy to impact.

Writing Contemporary and General Fiction Ethically

Contemporary and general fiction love to claim the moral high ground.

“Based on lived experience.”
“Drawn from real life.”
“Speaking truth.”

But here’s the part we don’t say out loud often enough: truth without ethics isn’t brave — it’s careless.

And ethics without truth? That’s just decoration.

If you’re writing contemporary or general fiction, you are almost certainly writing close to real life. Real people. Real communities. Real consequences. That means the question isn’t can you tell the truth — it’s how.

Truth Is Not a Free Pass

There’s a persistent myth in writing circles that truth justifies everything. It doesn’t. Saying “it really happened” doesn’t absolve you of responsibility. It just shifts the question from accuracy to impact.

Ethical writing asks:

  • Who carries the weight of this story?
  • Who recognises themselves?
  • Who didn’t consent to being here?

The Australian Society of Authors regularly advises writers that fictionalising real experience does not remove ethical obligation — especially when stories are identifiable, local, or drawn from shared trauma. If someone can recognise themselves, your intent matters less than your execution.

Writing Close to Home Changes the Rules

In smaller communities — like many parts of Queensland — anonymity is fragile. People know each other. Histories overlap. Stories travel fast.

What might pass as “thinly veiled fiction” in a big city lands very differently in a town where the audience includes the people you’re writing about. That proximity requires restraint, not silence — but restraint all the same.

Ethical fiction isn’t about protecting everyone from discomfort. It’s about knowing the difference between honesty and exposure.

Punch Up, Not Down (Yes, Even in Fiction)

This rule still applies.

If your story gains power by embarrassing, diminishing, or exploiting someone with less power than you — socially, economically, emotionally — you need to stop and rethink.

That doesn’t mean you can’t write difficult characters. It means you examine where the narrative weight falls.

Who gets complexity?
Who gets interiority?
Who exists only as a device?

If the answer is uncomfortable, good. That’s where ethical craft lives.

Truth Lives in Pattern, Not Detail

Here’s a hard-earned lesson: you don’t need to recreate events exactly to tell the truth. Often, exact detail is the least important part.

Truth in contemporary fiction usually lives in:

  • patterns of behaviour
  • emotional consequence
  • power dynamics
  • aftermath

Changing surface details — time, place, composite characters — is not cowardice. It’s craft. It allows you to tell a truer story without turning real people into collateral damage.

The State Library of Queensland’s work with life writing and oral history reinforces this principle repeatedly: emotional truth often survives abstraction better than it does literal transcription.

Ask Yourself the Questions No One Wants to Ask

Before you publish, ask yourself — honestly:

  • Am I writing this to understand something, or to settle a score?
  • Would I still stand by this if it were read aloud in the room?
  • Does this story clarify something meaningful, or just expose it?

If the answer makes you defensive, pause. Defensiveness is usually a signal, not a shield.

Ethical Doesn’t Mean Sanitised

Let’s be clear: ethical writing is not polite writing.

You are allowed to write about anger, resentment, harm, failure and/or moral mess. But you are not entitled to flatten complexity to make yourself look better.

Ethical fiction is often harder to write because it refuses easy villains and convenient innocence.

Truth rarely comes with clean edges.

Responsibility Extends Beyond the Page

Once published, your story doesn’t belong to you alone. It enters conversations. Communities. Sometimes families.

This is where many writers are caught off guard — not by criticism, but by recognition. Ethical preparation means anticipating that moment and being willing to own your choices without hiding behind “it’s just fiction”.

Creative Australia’s research into audience engagement consistently notes that readers interpret contemporary fiction relationally — as commentary, reflection, and cultural mirror. You don’t control that response, but you are responsible for how you invite it.

A Quiet Standard Worth Keeping

Here’s the measure I use. If the story deepens understanding, respects complexity and leaves the reader more thoughtful than triumphant, you’re probably on solid ground.

If it relies on shock, humiliation, or borrowed pain to feel “real”, you might want to stop calling that courage.

Truthful writing isn’t loud. It’s precise. It’s considered. And it carries its weight without asking someone else to carry it for you.

That’s not playing it safe. That’s writing like you know words land.

References (Australian sources)

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