Literary Fiction According to Influencers

First, A Digital Background

I re-joined TikTok recently. Re-joined because I had been there, and I left. But before I jumped into my own personal observations about this AI-generated social media system, I must assert that I am Gen X and traveled from typewriters to desktop computing, from floppies to clouds, and from cassette tapes to streaming--only my generation survived that, because the rest didn’t have to make such giant leaps in such a short time. What do I mean? I am adaptable. Nothing has ever stopped us from moving on, and that applies to my own outlook on life. Keep going.

Re-joining an E-Cult

The last time I was on TikTok, I spelled it with two words. There were national presidential elections in the Philippines, and I used it as a platform to help the Leni Robredo Pink Campaign. I designed little campaign promos and posted to no end. The experience was interestingly toxic, in a I-just-entered-a-Cult way. I simply didn’t understand why people would dance to choreographed TikTok moves and post them for attention. What exactly was the purpose of this social media? No surprise, my TikTok toxic adventures ended when Leni Robredo lost.

A few weeks ago, I was watching a John Fox podcast on YouTube. I also just learned that podcasts were now mini-shows that we could watch and listen to, some even with high-quality production. I always thought of podcasts as a listening medium, even after watching all the seasons of Only Murders in the Building. As someone who loves information, I was instantly hooked. From John Fox, I learned that books are now being promoted by influencers. I have my own feelings about these influencers, and let me not go there. Books are the holy grail—and why would influencers think they could promote something they would have to read? I re-joined TikTok around the same time that I also heard that younger generations are no longer reading, and that many people in college or even high school could read way below their grade levels. Tech attention + TikTok + Instagram = What a mystery!

Flip-Lit

My idea was to promote books, and to read the first lines of a novel and analyze them. My first post about the late Anita Shreve’s The Pilot’s Wife didn’t get much traction. Apparently, too, too long. So TikTok wasn’t like a YouTube podcast—not much thought in the process of creation. Since I have loved design for—ever, and I do have Canva, this should be a no-brainer.

First, I noticed the women putting their foundation makeup on while they talked (A hook device to stop a TikToker from scrolling, apparently). Then there were the “lectures” on books. All the young people with stacks of books they’re promoting on TikTok for two minutes. And then, the thousand TikTok evangelists who give you the how-tos to engage on the platform. Everybody was talking about algorithm dos and don’ts, like they actually understood machine thinking and machine learning. I also noticed the scripts—most of them were saying the same thing. The TikTok evangelists recite the same scripts on how to post and how to find creator-content gaps, because the golden egg was there. Then there were the younger ones who criticize the other influencers on what works and doesn’t work. Competition, perhaps. Human, definitely.

Hashtag Literary Fiction

But what really got to me was what they say about #literaryfiction. This was the hashtag I mostly searched. John Fox might be right that influencers were affecting book sales, but I totally doubt that he was referring to literary fiction. The TikTokers knew the naming mechanisms. They could go from speculative fiction to romantasy, talk about them well, and oh, how they love romantasy. Apparently, TikTokers coined the word, and now their little invention is slowly leaving Planet Book, just like any trend.

Character development.

If you ask TikTok what literary fiction is, you will get those two words. Just about every TikToker I have listened to mentioned the word “character” when discussing how literary fiction is different from the rest. They also said that literary fiction is not about plot. I did some TikTok research on where the script was coming from. Indeed, TikTok was also saying the same.

#LiteraryFiction According to TikTok

Literary fiction is a style of writing that prioritizes character development, deep emotional expression, and the quality of prose over fast-paced, plot-driven narratives. It’s less about what happens and more about how characters experience life and the world around them.

Here’s a breakdown of its key traits: 

Core Characteristics

• Focus on the "Human Condition": It dives into internal struggles, relationships, and everyday moments to explore universal themes like love, loss, identity, and morality.

• Complex Characters: Instead of archetypes, characters are often multifaceted, with their own contradictions, flaws, and growth.

• Prose Quality: The writing is often plainspoken, sharp, or beautifully crafted, pulling you into the character's life without calling attention to itself.

• Less "Action": You won't find the same kind of high-stakes plots as in genre fiction (like romance, thriller, or mystery). Literary fiction can feel "slow" or introspective to readers used to those genres.

Literary Fiction vs. Genre Fiction This is the most common point of confusion.

• Genre Fiction (e.g., mystery, sci-fi, romance) relies on preexisting tropes and plot beats that readers expect.

• Literary Fiction is more focused on exploring themes and character development, and on the writing style and the quality of the prose compared to genre fiction. It's sometimes joked that lit fic has "no plot, just vibes".

Examples & Context Many classic and award-winning books fall into this category. For instance, To Kill a Mockingbird is often mentioned as a literary fiction novel. Others, like A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, are historical novels that are also considered part of the literary fiction canon.

Why Read It?  Readers often describe it as feeling like a "good gossip session with even better friends"—it’s about wanting to understand people and the world deeply.

It can be tricky to tell the difference at first. Would you like some specific book recommendations to help you explore literary fiction?

Hive-mind Thinking

No judgment. Not saying any of the above is wrong. Artificial Intelligence, in all its ones and zeroes, relies on hivemind thinking. No singularity there. A game of averaging. And once TikTok evangelists AKA creators AKA influencers do the same, it's basically an intentional free subscription to the cult of sheep herding.

I spent my Gen X life learning how to be independent. That #lifegoal is nothing new. A whole generation thinks the same—that’s our serious stereotype. I can safely say I am indeed an independent thinker, and with that trait comes the Doubting Thomas Syndrome. I believe in science and data. And I am not easy to convince. Literary Fiction is my language. And Language is what I think Literary Fiction is all about.

Because I’m a poet, and a lover of poetic forms, especially the sonnet, I am particularly attached to extreme attention to the way words come together, how they sound together, and the visual they create once they are in one sentence, a line, or a full poem. Where are the ups and downs? Where are the highs and lows? Not an overuse of metaphors, but knowledge of how they are placed on a page. Easy to do that in poetry? Not always. But fiction—literary fiction, that is—calls for a different treatment. There is much space in prose, and such endless space may mean getting careless in the distribution of language in the storytelling.

I think that’s what the influencers or the copycat creators are missing. And because they are a hivemind, they also affect AI’s definition of literary fiction. Not sure exactly where the emphasis on characterization began, but the conversation around Language was completely missing from their explanation of literary fiction. If you’re missing the language, what else could you possibly be missing, too? I can tell you that we are not necessarily forgiven for being plotless in our work—literary agents do want a good story. And a good story is the driving force of any story, whether it ends well or not. Engagement is the plot. Language is the control device. Character arcs? They come once everything else is taken care of. Writers can always change how these characters end up in a book. In fact, a Random House editor did ask me to change the ending for one character in my first novel, and I followed the advice and realized how brilliant that was—but never once did she say, “Change the Language.” In fact, what drew her in was exactly that. Her first question to me was: “Are you a poet?”

Language

My literary books will always be about language. That is the entry point. What I loved about All the Light We Cannot See was the language. I couldn’t bear the Netflix series. All was lost in the filming, but page by page, the book dazzled with the most beautiful words. They were not devices to impress or win a prize; they were there to do so many, many magical things in the reader’s mind. And sometimes it takes one glorious line to just stop a reader and bring that person to another world. That’s not simple. That’s hard to do. Writing fiction like a poet is a formidable task. Fiction is long, wide, a lot of space for a wordsmith to dance around in. It makes the challenge all the more interesting. Get good shoes.

It took me over a decade to enter Beloved, because every page stopped me from going inside. But once I was given the permission—and that means understanding Toni Morrison’s language—I knew I finally understood what literary fiction was really all about.

And perhaps de-cult device for TikTokers is Morrison. Read her, then ask again what literary fiction is.