I disagree that every story has already been written. The science fiction field alone disproves that, and the modern world we live in is full of everything from cell phones to computers to be used as plot elements that never existed before. You can make a whole exciting mystery novel based on a cell phone call coming from a mysterious locale, and this was something that had never been done before.

Even in areas of love, there is homosexuality for instance and this was not much touched on before the 1970s. Sappho the lesbian poetess was a rarity even in the more forgiving Ancient World.

There is infinite possibility in the world of fiction, just as there is infinite possibility in the multiangled, multihued web of reality we live in.

As an example which illustrates my argument, let’s look at James Patterson’s Alex Cross novels, which really gave him his start. In Cross, a black detective based in D.C. solves a variety of cases. One of the novels is about a badass Russian, and this could only have been written in the context of a post-Cold War world where there was a stasis conflict between U.S. and USSR and a collapse in Communism into disreputable Capitalism.

James Patterson’s works in general are unique. His Private series of books (I’m reading one right now: Missing Persons, which takes place just after Private Moscow) are set in a globalized world society. There is nothing new about the interlinked One World we live in — it has only really existed since the 1960s and jet airliners crisscrossing the globe.

Setting stories in different world cities (Private Moscow, Private Berlin, Private India) allows the trope of One Worldism to be fully mapped out in rudimentary form, but there is always a future for stories to be set in a globalized setting. Just because Patterson did it with his Private novels doesn’t mean that another novelist can’t do it differently and even better with his own version.

A lot of fiction, it is true, is “pouring new wine into old bottles.” But the idiosyncrasies of each writer make the process unique. The way you tell the story is as specific to your essence, your personality, as your fingerprint; hence, the same story would come out 2 different ways depending on the whims of the 2 different authors who write it.

The problem I have with a lot of fiction is that it is told with a slavish regard to the Monobloc Voice of Twenty-First Century Fiction. There is a Monobloc Voice, and this voice predominates in modern fiction. What it is is a form of tasteless realism with no bite. Stephen King is the opposite of Monoblocism. James Patterson’s collaborators all write with smooth, featureless Monoblocism.

There is something off-putting about a man who sublimates himself to the shadow of a greater Order, negating Himself.

You must be willing to stand on the line as yourself to earn my respect. Of course, fiction tends to mash up different writers in similar strands of writing, but you should be able to distinguish yourself in at least little ways. For example, with me I’ll write 2 [something] instead of the more acceptable “two.” Or on a more dramatic scale, I’ll shift around adjectives by saying, instead of “the deep, blue sky,” “the sky: [deep, blue].”

My writing is, in fact, too distinctive. That is why I’m reading the Monobloc world of James Patterson-collaboration books. Patterson comes out with the plots, but his Monobloc-voiced partners really write the fiction. It is their standard voice I am seeking to emulate in my works. For all my criticism and complaints of the Monobloc, there is a power and grandeur to it that bears close study.