experimental short fiction

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24 February 2023

6 Books That Break the Mould and Use Experimental Storytelling Techniques

Reading and writing go hand in hand. To be a truly great writer, you must immerse yourself in the written word. It’s a deeply personal craft, and no two writers will express themselves in exactly the same way. In fact, some storytellers push boundaries and experiment with style and expression to challenge both themselves, and their readers.

Experimental and unconventional writing techniques take many forms. Non-linear narratives, epistolary styles, second-person voice , and grammatical experimentation are just some of the fascinating ways that authors push boundaries in service of their stories.

Whether you’re a reader or a writer, here are some amazing works of fiction to explore that use experimental or unusual writing techniques to build their narratives in unique and fascinating ways.

I’m Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid

I’m Thinking of Ending Things is a bold and completely unique psychological horror thriller that keeps its secrets until the very end. It’s a simple story on the surface; an un-named woman agrees to go on a road trip to visit her boyfriend’s family, despite having doubts about their relationship. But underneath that simplicity lies as deeply disturbing, complicated narrative that is impossible to forget.

Iain Reid masterfully weaves a compelling story that is completely turned on its head as the reader reaches the climax. It’s a book you can’t just read once. There are things hinted at below the surface that require a second read-through to really get to grips with. Every element of the plot, every tiny revelation, is carefully included with nothing left to chance, but as you reach the end, instead of things clicking into place, you’re left wondering how those elements feed into the resolution.

I’m Thinking of Ending Things is a book with immense staying power. It will live in your head rent free, and nip at your thoughts until you dive back in to unravel the mystery. The narrative is scary and unsettling, but you’re never really sure why you feel that way. And it’s all achieved through an interesting mix of narrative points of view and a non-linear arc, interspersed with hints at a deeper reality, without revealing too much too soon.

Stories of Your Life by Ted Chiang

I will never stop sharing my love of Ted Chiang. In my view, he is one of the most innovative writers out there, with the deft skill to make big, complicated concepts understandable. He has published two short story collections, but his first collection, Stories of Your Life , contains the titular novella, Story of Your Life, which changed the way I look at grammatical structure completely. It’s one of the most fascinating works of short fiction that really exemplifies how experimental writing can convey new and unique meaning.

Story of Your Life is about a linguist, Dr. Louise Banks, who narrates the story. When aliens appear on earth, she is tasked with opening a line of communication with them, and to do that she must learn how they communicate.

The aliens do not use language the same way that humans do, so Chiang explores the concept of linguistic relativity — the idea that the way we use language influences the way we experience and conceive of reality. As Banks learns the alien language, she experiences reality as they do, which Ted Chiang represents by experimenting with grammatical structure and his use of tense. He seamlessly blends past, present, and future through his exacting and careful manipulation of grammar. It should be hard to understand, and yet, it isn’t. An absolute must-read if you want a perfect example of having to know the rule to break them.

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

House of Leaves is probably the most famous example of experimental structure to convey a story. its unconventional layout and style is designed to mirror the events and the mental instability of the book’s protagonists, and it does so to wonderful effect.

The novel itself is difficult to classify. It is primarily marketed as a horror story, and yet easily falls into classification as romance and satire as well. It’s a postmodern, contemporary work about a young family who discover that their new home is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside and become increasingly unsettled.

Multiple narrators tell different stories in different ways. The book is filled with marginalia has multiple narrators, colours, footnotes, and typographical tricks that help to convey the disorienting and chaotic nature of the story.

Besides exploring themes of perception, reality, and madness, House of Leaves is also a meditation on the nature of storytelling itself, and a fascinating parody of academia. It’s a challenging read that demands close attention and active engagement, but it’s a wonderful example of what can be achieved by a writer who thinks outside the box.

Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel

The first book in Sylvain Neuvel’s science-fiction series, the Themis File s, Sleeping Giants , is a wonderful example of epistolary fiction at work. It tells the story of a mysterious artifact discovered buried deep beneath the Earth’s surface, and the efforts to unlock its secrets, but with a unique narrative structure.

The novel is written as a series of documents, including interview transcripts, journal entries, official reports. and newspaper articles. What this achieves, is to give the reader a real sense of immersion in a narrative that is incredibly expansive, and yet feels both immediate and personal.

One of the hallmarks of science fiction is a grandiose extrapolation and explanation of complicated scientific concepts. By choosing an epistolary style for his series, Neuvel foregoes those elements, as they become irrelevant. We only need to know what we can piece together from the documents with which we are presented. The interviews especially, limit what information readers are furnished with, giving a sense of being part of something greater, while not being overwhelmed by the “infinity” of it all.

Sleeping Giants incorporates elements of mythology and science fiction, weaving together a complex and thought-provoking narrative that explores themes of power, control, and the consequences of human ambition. Through its unique narrative structure and storytelling, it offers readers a fresh and exciting take on the traditions of science fiction.

Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix

The unique design and layout of Grady Hendrix’s Horrorstör is the first thing that jumps out at any prospective reader. The IKEA-esque catalogue style is immediately recognisable, and it’s hard not to be drawn in.

The novel tells the story of a group of employees who work at Orsk, a fictional Scandinavian furniture store that bears a striking resemblance to IKEA, and who decide to spend the night in the store to find out what is happening overnight that is resulting in a lot of smashed products whenever they open up for the day. They patrol the deserted showroom, trying to solve the mystery, with chilling results.

The thing that makes Horrorstör so unique is its use of design elements to enhance the reading experience. The novel is designed to resemble a furniture catalog, with product descriptions, diagrams, and even fake advertisements interspersed throughout the text. This design choice helps to create a sense of immersion for the reader and adds to the overall creepy and unsettling atmosphere of the story; especially since it’s a design that is easily recognisable and the product descriptions become bleaker as the story progresses.

Horrorstör uses its unique design to incorporate elements of satire and social commentary into its horror elements, skewering the consumerist culture of modern-day America and the soulless corporate environments that can often come with it. This blend of horror and humour, along with its unconventional design elements, makes Horrorstör a book that’s well worth picking up for its concept alone.

If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino

If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller is a highly experimental work of fiction. It is very much a book lover’s book, and firmly post-modern.

The novel follows the story of “you” as “you” set out to read a new novel by Italo Calvino titled If On A Winter’s Night a Traveller . However, after a few pages, “you” discover that there is a printing error, and the novel has been replaced with a different book entirely. As “you” attempt to track down the correct novel, “you” are thrust into a series of different stories, each with its own unique style and genre.

Using alternative chapters of second-person narration, Calvino puts “you,” the reader, at the very centre of his tale. It’s a love story, both in the truest sense, as well as a love story to the act of narrative storytelling. It’s disjointed due to its alternating narrative and varying opening chapters of other works, but there is still a substantive arc that runs through the second-person narration; a story of an international conspiracy involving fraudulent books, a cunning translator, a secluded author, a failing publishing company, and a series of oppressive governments.

Every element of Calvino’s work feeds in to the next. The narration and how it is used is interesting on its own, but the thematic content of each of the fictional works relates to narration that follows in the chapter after it. And the titles of each of the stories, when put together, create the beginnings of yet another tale. It’s highly experimental, deliciously complex, and beautifully unique — a masterclass in the art of experimental storytelling.

Whether you plan to write experimental works of your own, or you prefer to stick to the tried-and-true methods of storytelling, these novels are worth taking the time to read. They are fascinating and dynamic narratives that challenge the traditional modes of storytelling, exploring the limitless potential of the written word.

Note: All purchase links in this post are affiliate links through BookShop.org, and Novlr may earn a small commission – every purchase supports independent bookstores.

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Book Reviews

Experimental fiction at its finest — and funniest.

Alan Cheuse

Sorry Please Thank You

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Experimental fiction in North America began with a genius of a doyen in Paris: Gertrude Stein, whose aesthetic assertion that writers shape and form and reform the medium of language the way sculptors work with stone, painters work with light and shape and composers work with sound, changed Hemingway forever and, thus, changed the nature of the American short story — or the American art story, at least.

So much for the Irish storywriter Frank O'Connor's waggish remark — leading from the strength of his strong realist tendencies — that experimental writing is "what looks funny on the page." O'Connor meant us to think of "funny" as odd, curious and not very rewarding. But if you think of the founding father of the experimental novel, patriarch Jimmy Joyce, funny on the page in Ulysses often meant funny ha-ha, as well as dramatically comical, mood-transforming and thought-provoking.

By both standards, one dismissive and the other adulatory, Sorry Please Thank You , Charles Yu's latest collection of short fiction, seems experimental and, at the same time — not always true of the experimental fiction in our time — wonderfully and often comically pleasing, even as it provokes and transforms. I don't know that there's a better story-bending talent at work than Yu since the rise of George Saunders.

"I am you. And you are me. Are we the same person? Depends on what you mean by person ..." We find this in the middle of a long riff titled "Note to Self," in which Yu corresponds with his alternate self. The story builds out rather delightfully from the notion of multiple persona- alities produced by fiction employing the writer as a character. We flow along in these pages with Yu's interrogatory seriousness as play. But there's as much play turning seriousness when you think about the echoes in the story of "I Am the Walrus," and the spliff-induced self-investigation that permeated the Sixties. "I am you, and you are me, and we are altogether ..."

Yu inhabits the house of mirrors originally built by Jorge Luis Borges in his story "Borges and I."

Borges and the Beatles! That's the world of Yu, in which he makes much of the richness of modernism — employing any technique, various stylistic turns, and any bit of information and news from ordinary life in order to make extraordinary art — with the intent to move beyond entertainment to something that borders on instruction or enlightenment. Those who think the world got created yesterday might think of this as "conceptual" story writing — or, to use Borges' oft-employed term, making "fictions." If you take a longer view you can see that Yu's success has many parents, from the oft-quoted Stein, the tone of Hemingway and Beckett, Virginia Woolf's fanciful short creations (as in, say, the story "Kew Gardens"), Calvino's game-faced fantasies and the low-key but powerful satire of Kurt Vonnegut.

What, you may say, is going on in Sorry Please Thank You that leads to all this name-dropping?

Charles Yu is the author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe and Third Class Superhero . Larry D. Moore/Random House hide caption

Charles Yu is the author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe and Third Class Superhero .

"Standard Loneliness Package" announces that a sly, nimble fantasist with a speculative edge is at work here. As the narrator immediately makes known, he is employed by a company that outsources human emotion. From the pain of root canals to the depths of grief, every variety of suffering has a price, and our man has done it. But by the end of this nimble and adroit piece of work, the narrator appears to be suffering from an emotional condition from which he does not care to be free.

Yu manages this deft balance of experimentation and emotion even with such banal material as a video game, in a story called "Hero Absorbs Major Damage," a parody of a manual for human behavior ("Human for Beginners") in which we first meet a character who calls himself "Charles Yu"; in "Open", a para-Borgesian tale in which a door hovers in the middle of a room, inviting the characters to enter; and in the title story, a plaintive suicide note that ends things for the writer of the note and for the collection itself.

"What shapes can the world take?" Yu asks in the middle of a lot of white space halfway through that manual on how to live. "A torus," he says, "a saddle, a Euclidean plane, on a brane, on a string, in a hologram, on a speeding train, in an infinite loop, a thirty-second universe, a maximal entropy universe, a backward-arrow-of-time universe. A no-causality universe."

Or a tour-de-force experiment in short fiction?

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The Best Fiction Books » Contemporary Fiction

The best experimental fiction, recommended by rebecca watson.

little scratch by Rebecca Watson

Experimental fiction often uses unusual forms of syntax, style, or form—perhaps taking the form of fragments, footnotes or parallel narratives. Here Rebecca Watson , author of the critically acclaimed experimental novel little scratch , recommends five of the best experimental novels and explains why a writer might choose to bend the rules—and to what effect.

Interview by Cal Flyn , Deputy Editor

When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife by Meena Kandasamy

The Lesser Bohemians by Eimear McBride

Between the Acts by Virginia Woolf

Diary of a Bad Year by J M Coetzee

Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill

1 When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife by Meena Kandasamy

2 the lesser bohemians by eimear mcbride, 3 between the acts by virginia woolf, 4 diary of a bad year by j m coetzee, 5 dept. of speculation by jenny offill.

T hanks for joining us on Five Books to discuss five of the best examples of experimental fiction. Could you tell us about your own novel little scratch , and its formal invention?

I guess the book is about the way that consciousness works; more specifically, present tense immediacy. That kind of consciousness. I think that it began with the challenge of feeling that prose does not really represent the bombardment and overwhelming simultaneity of everyday live experience. There’s so much going on. But when we write prose, we have this very neat, linear way in which we inhabit a moment. So my challenge was to represent the opposite of that on the page. Trauma can hyper-sensitise the ordinary, so it gave the experiment an extra charge.

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I split the page into channels. It breaks into two or three columns, goes between prose and half-prose. As you go down the page, you pass through time, and you have the internal, the external—sensory information, what you hear, what you smell—and how they, essentially, conflict with but also inform each other. It was kind of a game of association.

One of the things I found so interesting about it, and accurate—at least, according to my own experience of moving through the world—is how the interior monologue can be the defining element of a day. A theatre of drama, or conflict, when outwardly nothing is really happening. But as well as this issue of trauma it also struck me that your book was also fun , in how imaginative it was and how it told little jokes to itself. Do you think that’s important in experimental fiction, that sense of play?

Although perhaps ‘play’ is not the right word for the first book we’re going to discuss? This is When I Hit You by Meena Kandasamy. It’s about quite extreme domestic abuse; a woman marries an Indian intellectual who uses his ideas “as a cover for his own sadism.”

Um, actually I think you can use the word play. It’s uncomfortable, but the beauty of what she does is that she takes an incredibly disturbing centrepiece—this abusive marriage—and turns it into a creative challenge, and a performance.

It’s fiction, with an unnamed first-person narrator, and the narrator is telling the story retrospectively, about five years after these few months of marriage. It’s about how to tell the story: how do you go back and look at something so invasive, so encompassing, while reclaiming, or asserting, your sense of self.

“Experimental writing needs an openness and willingness from a reader, to go beyond what you might be used to”

What is the centre of the book is a playfulness about what it is to be a writer, and what it is to live a life—how we write narratives. And she has this very playful voice that shifts and flirts and diverts. It moves in lots of different registers.

I don’t think it looks experimental on the page. It’s the shifting register that makes it feel really, really new. Kandasamy studies the different vehicles of how to tell a story. The novel moves between prose poetry, to bits where it’s like a Q&A. The narrator is simultaneously the actor who breaks the fourth wall, and the writer dictating the stage directions. So even though we’re looking at this abusive marriage, most of the time this person is almost testing you to see if she can make you laugh, think, shift your expectations of a ‘victim’.

That’s interesting. I’ve actually come to Kandasamy backwards, I think. The first book of hers I read was her novella-memoir hybrid, Exquisite Cadavers . Which was written, I think, in response to how the earlier, highly garlanded novel was received. If When I Hit You does not appear overtly experimental on the page, Exquisite Cadavers certainly is—it’s split into two columns, one strand of which is fictional and the second a sort of metafictional commentary that reflects on her life and the writing process. One expects quite a lot of the reader, when writing in such a form. Or maybe you disagree?

I think we act like there’s more we need from the reader than we actually do. That’s the barrier for people getting into this kind of writing. I think often experimental fiction is used as a warning term rather than as a way of elaborating what the writing is.

Absolutely. The second book you’ve chosen is The Lesser Bohemians by Eimear McBride.

I had to look at this again yesterday, because although I have such a vivid recollection of the feeling of reading it, I couldn’t remember anything about it on a line level! I opened it and thought, ‘wow, so this is what it looks like.’ I guess because it’s so voice-led, you completely enter that head. It’s true consciousness. McBride’s really good at, like, skipping to the image of the association—the kind of narrative preamble, or narrative signposting, that writers often give she will skip, not because she’s trying to be cryptic, but because in real consciousness none of those things exist. You’ve instantly leapt to the next thought or sensation.

It’s a love story between an 18-year-old girl who just moved from Ireland to London to attend drama school, and the older actor she meets in a pub. They slowly unveil their stories to each other, but both are hiding parts of themselves.

Partly it’s about the unknowability of the other, but also the ability to learn so much through love. The lyricism of it is just something else. There’s such a music, such a lilt to it. There’s rhythm and movement to how you read it, any reader would get that. And that’s something incredible to establish.

A lot of people have remarked upon the sexually explicit nature of this book. But one wonders if sex is not perhaps the perfect experience to be rendered as stream of consciousness . I guess I’m also thinking of certain scenes in Ulysses , which McBride herself has talked about as a prime literary influence. But does McBride bring a new approach to this form?

Experimental fiction both points forward and back. We often describe things as new, when they are speaking as part of a tradition. But there is a noticeable newness to this book, and it’s in the deftness of language and the immersion—you feel so entirely in this person’s head whilst also being so clearly told a story. The way she gets inside people’s bodies, and writes sex in such a brilliant, honest and felt way. I think that is genuinely new. And if sex is something that is more instinctive, relies more on sensation and the unifying of desire and the body, then yes, surely experimental fiction serves that best: like sex, it defies a linear, straightforward recounting.

It was a highly anticipated follow up to her very acclaimed debut A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing . How similar are they—as books, as reading experiences?

Next up on our experimental fiction reading list is a Virginia Woolf book I admit I wasn’t familiar with: Between the Acts , her final novel which was published posthumously.

Yes, there’s a split over whether it was finished or not. She never did her final revise of it, and often she did do quite a lot of work in that act of revision. But it doesn’t read like something unfinished. It’s very, very accomplished, and one of my favourite of Woolf’s books.

It takes place at a village pageant in the summer preceding World War Two. I read it as a teenager and was so obsessed with it. I remember getting into an argument with a literature professor at an interview for a university that I very much got rejected from. It was so weird. We both loved Virginia Woolf, but both had very different visions of what that book was. I was young, so sure! I was the naïve one, more likely to be wrong but, at the same time, I remember this man puffing out—because I disagreed with him.

What I was making the case for—and what I still agree with—is how obsessed that book is with the idea of individualism versus society, the exhausting nature of being one person whilst also being so recognisably within the midst of a group, connected to other people.

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I remember him being like, ‘it’s about the war!’ And I was like, I get that it’s about the war, but it’s also about these other things. We just couldn’t connect. I mean, it is about the war,  to be fair—so much of it is about the burden of retrospect. It’s just before the war arrives, but they know the war is coming. Another war’s happened already. And so everything’s laced with this very aggressive, violent imagery. There’s something simmering. It’s all about living in what seems a simple present tense that’s about to combust into historical significance.

Let’s talk about J. M. Coetzee’s Diary of a Bad Year next. This is another one that’s pretty interesting to look at on the page. It’s separated into parallel narratives; could you tell us a little about the plot or rather plots, plural?

It begins with the page split into two, horizontally. We have on the top an extract from a book by an old Australian writer, called Strong Opinions . It’s political essays, stuff like that. That’s the top narrative, and initially the bottom narrative is him, first-person, his life as he’s writing the manuscript. Quickly he meets a woman called Anya, in the laundry room of his apartment building. He’s very struck by her, she’s very attractive, she’s a lot younger… there’s something about her that intrigues him. So he asks her to start typing up his manuscript for the book, the first narrative.

Suddenly she appears as a third column, or rather a horizontal division. So now you have the book, his first-person, her first-person. And each informs the others. So you see two perspectives – how she sees him, and how he sees her. He embroils her in his life, but she also embroils herself, because she and her boyfriend start to plot how to insinuate themselves. He’s got a lot of money—maybe they could get some of his cash.

“It sounds very complicated, but it’s incredibly easy to read, and it’s very profound”

You have these interfering narratives, and you can read across the double spread of the page, or down each page. Depending on which way you do it, you learn different things about each of the segments. That sounds very complicated, but it’s incredibly easy to read, and it’s very profound. This guy’s dying, so it’s about being a writer, how to make meaning, and the difference between the creator and the product—seeing this fallible human being behind the authoritative essay.

It does also have a very propulsive story. A classic narrative, of someone thinking they are intentionally bringing someone into their life, and at the same time they are being undone. Who has the power?

Mmm, yes. And this three-stranded form really represents exactly what you were getting at in the start of our conversation: the clarity of prose, the mess of reality. But one thing I suppose I worry about—and maybe other readers worry about this too—when you mention there are multiple ways of reading this book, I guess that allows for the possibility of reading it ‘wrong.’

I think that is often the reader’s fear. I always want to say to people: ‘Hey, don’t worry. Just trust yourself.’ That’s what I say to myself, sometimes. Readers often fear they don’t have the authority to tackle a text. Or just see it as something they have to ‘tackle.’ But a writer doesn’t write something with an authoritative insistence of how it should be read. They lay out a path of how to read it, and you as a reader will follow that – or make your own. little scratch , particularly, exists to be read in different ways, and the reader is meant to make their own choices. Depending on what choice they make, they get different things. That’s the same for Diary of a Bad Year ; those decisions are important, but they’re meant to be fun. They’re not meant to be a stress. The reader should remember that once the book is in their hands, they’re the authority. It’s their reading experience, they’re in control.

Just before we move on, I wanted to read you a quote from the Guardian : “The ensuing comedy of conflicting perspectives, of high rhetoric and low aims, is an amazingly strange thing for Coetzee to have decided to write.” What do you think about that? Is invention itself the aim?

I don’t know. I didn’t think it was strange. I mean maybe, in as much that it’s kind of crazy that it came out of someone’s head. But who are we to say what a writer will write next? And why would we want that to be predictable? The novel is exciting in its formal invention, but as a story in its own right, it’s interesting. The form is a way of getting you closer to the story. It’s not an indulgent thing.

Right, this brings us to our final work of experimental fiction. This is Jenny Offill’s Dept. of Speculation , one of my own top favourite books. I think I’ve read it, honestly, upwards of 100 times. I carry it around on my phone, on my Kindle app, and just reread it on the bus, or anywhere. Do you feel the same? What do you like about it?

It’s quite a hard book to summarise, because it’s so much about those myriad moments that make up a life, or relationship, or anything. Firstly, it’s really funny. People don’t talk directly enough about how funny Jenny Offill is.

It’s essentially about a test of marriage, a kind of imperfect love story. Right? It’s both very sad and very funny.

Right. And it’s told in fragments, each of which are a sentence, or a paragraph, long.

You have these moments between the fragments to take a break, just to laugh, or absorb it. She takes the ordinariness of life and she makes it mean something. I think she proves why every moment of life can have significance, and how the quiet moments of existence contribute to our sense of self.

Last year, when her new book Weather came out, there was a picture of the fragments of Weather , how she’d rearrange them. Seeing that patchwork was amazing, because you can forget when a product is complete that so much work goes into the order of these things. Even just choosing the right ones… there will be so many rejected fragments. It affirmed the level of precision with which she works in order to create these novels.

She’s said that the gaps are moments for the reader to have an imagination. She doesn’t want to fill in the gaps. Because in doing so you eliminate or pin the story down. By fragmenting you allow the reader to immerse themselves in, be part of the world in a more intense way. The absences give the created world a greater imaginative potential.

I really enjoy fragmented fiction, especially this book. But as a style it’s recently become common enough—perhaps riding the wave of Offill’s success—to have inspired a rather funny satire of the form in Lauren Oyler’s new novel Fake Accounts . And of course, you’ve found mainstream success with little scratch. Do you feel like experimental fiction is becoming more influential, more popular?

I don’t know. I think that the fact that little scratch was published and accepted and treated as a novel speaks to a healthy publishing culture. Certainly there’s more space for it and, I think, more commercial viability, which is the key sign that people are open to it.

There’s still a lot of pushback. There’s still a strange treatment of experimental writing. And, you know, when I see people talking about my book, it’s the first thing they do, right? They say, ‘okay, guys, this looks weird, but don’t worry, you’re going to be able to get into it.’ There’s an apology at the beginning. I find that strange. ‘Experimental’ has taken on this negative association. It’s something that we have to forgive, that you can get something from despite it.

I think that kind of negates the whole purpose of this type of writing, which is to help immerse the reader further in the story. It serves a purpose. It’s there to do something beyond looking funny. It’s meant to open up new possibilities. I find it sad that it is often seen as a boundary. We are still very obsessed with keeping that boundary, putting the signpost up. I think we need to work on that.

Do you feel that is anti-intellectual, somehow?

Maybe? I think some readers fear they are being pushed away, or that it’s coded for a certain level of education, rather than for a general reader—which I don’t think is true.

But I think what you were saying earlier about being scared of not approaching the text ‘right’—those kind of insecurities, it’s not that formal or informal education helps you read better, but that maybe it gives you a level of self-trust. Sometimes we need an ego to trust ourselves as a reader. But it’s too complicated to make generalisations. Some think ‘experimental’ fiction is elitist, like it’s trying to shut out a certain reader. But all I can say for myself is that I’m writing for all readers. And I hope little scratch will show some readers who might feel hesitant over formally inventive writing, that shaking up the page can sometimes be a more natural way to read. It might bring you closer, rather than push you away.

April 12, 2021

Five Books aims to keep its book recommendations and interviews up to date. If you are the interviewee and would like to update your choice of books (or even just what you say about them) please email us at [email protected]

Rebecca Watson

Rebecca Watson is the author of little scratch , which is published by Faber in the UK and Doubleday in the US. She was picked as one of The Observer 's ten best debut novelists of 2021. Her work has been published in The TLS, The Guardian, Granta and elsewhere. In 2018, she was shortlisted for the White Review Short Story Prize. She works part-time as assistant arts editor at the Financial Times and lives in London.

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March 29, 2020

Experimental Fiction: Examples and Dynamics

art , experimental , fiction , literature , writing

Experimental fiction examples aren’t easy to find. The thing is, experimental fiction is the kind of writing that rarely produces a commercial hit – though it does so every now and then.

Imagine literary fiction on LSD, and you have something like experimental fiction. But no, not all experimental fiction is literary – and certainly most of literary fiction isn’t experimental.

A definition of experimental fiction isn’t easy, either. In some sense, experimental fiction is the kind of fiction that displays significant deviation from literary norms – mostly in structural, formatting, or methodological aspects. We’ll see more about all these in a moment, through the examples I’ve picked.

At the same time, we must also recognize an interesting paradox: Whether a novel is experimental or not must be seen in connection with its context. In other words, what is groundbreaking, radical, and unorthodox today, might be the norm tomorrow.

For some, experimental fiction is “weird”. For others, it’s “awesome”. As for me, it’s an interesting opportunity to learn a thing or two about how fiction, writing, and even literary criticism operate.

Examples of Experimental Fiction

I’m a great fan of examples – they make it easy to immediately picture something. This is especially the case with difficult or vague concepts. And, I assure you, experimental fiction is such a concept.

Therefore, I have put together a list of three novels that exemplify this kind of writing. I’ve read all three of them. One I liked a lot, one I hated, and one I enjoyed more about its how than about its what – which is a major sign of experimental fiction, as we’ll see in more detail below.

The three novels in question are The Raw Shark Texts , Beautiful Losers , and House of Leaves . As I said, every now and then you do get some commercial hits, too. Let’s take a look at these novels one by one, to see how experimental fiction looks like. Afterward, we’ll talk about the how’s and why’s of the genre Is it a genre or a mode? That is a difficult question to which I don’t have a clear answer. I would favor "mode", but I’m open to discussions on the matter. For more on genre vs mode, also look at my post on Gothic vs science fiction and horror . .

The Raw Shark Texts : Text, Concept, Writer, Reader

The plot of The Raw Shark Texts is fairly simple, on the surface. Eric Sanderson, suffering from what appears to be a rare form of amnesia, discovers a note from a previous instance of himself, addressed to himself. He begins to follow the clues and enters a world where words and text can take the form of a conceptual shark and kill you.

If that sounds crazy alright, wait till you see the book.

Yes, that’s a shark made of words there. And guess what, it’s also moving . You read that right; a physical book, made of printed text, can show a shark – made of printed text – move toward you. Here’s how:

The whole point about The Raw Shark Texts and its experimental nature is to draw attention to the power of words . Particularly, the novel makes a compelling case about how we approach (and formulate) reality in a way that, though subjective, has very objective consequences.

Beautiful Losers : Hey, Where Are the Paragraphs?

Leonard Cohen… His music, I like; his writing, not so much. If I recall correctly, Beautiful Losers was written under the Greek summer sun on the lovely island of Hydra . It was also written under… the influence, which clearly shows, as you can see in these excerpts:

It’s not so much the lack of paragraphs (not all the book is like that, but some of it is), but just the fact that there’s so little to grab onto. The Raw Shark Texts had a plot and some sort of evolution; Beautiful Losers , far less so.

Come to think of it, Beautiful Losers reminds me of some results I got using my JavaScript random text generator . Though, actually, the random text generator was probably more coherent!

House of Leaves ; or, Mercilessly Mocking the Academia

This last example of experimental fiction is my favorite, though not because of the book itself. I did enjoy House of Leaves – though not as much as The Raw Shark Texts , which was far more philosophical and speculative in a purely artistic way This is a subtle issue, and difficult to properly explain without you having read the books. Very simply, I mean that The Raw Shark Texts engaged the reader in a philosophical discussion without doing it directly or overtly; merely as a consequence of its form. Conversely, House of Leaves , by paying excessive attention to concepts such as academic criticism , journalism , and generally our record-obsessed culture , leaves far less room for ambiguity, artistry , and reader-based interpretation. .

House of Leaves I enjoyed because it mercilessly mocks the academia . It taunts criticism This includes the present post, in a way! It takes a brilliant mind to actually anticipate criticism and preemptively absorb it into the literary product. I know, because I’ve done it myself with one of my novels (besides brilliant I’m also very modest, what can I say…) . It exposes the clinical, hopelessly boring deconstruction of art that has become a self-sustaining process, having become so engorged with the blood of artists that it’s about to burst in a supernova of amusing gore.

In plain English, House of Leaves shows how hopelessly out of touch with reality modern intelligentsia can be.

It basically takes a horror story – where the house of a family isn’t what it seems – and through a very complex series of (entirely fictitious) interviews, pieces of research, books, videos, and what not, it creates an echo that’s supposed to assign authenticity to the whole thing, only it does the exact opposite. It’s the “ Blair Witch Project genre”, basically.

Moreover, and more crucially, it precisely exposes academia for what it is, by showing all these (fictitious) researchers approaching with excessively dry and clinical methods events that are inherently emotional .

To do that, House of Leaves deploys the most bizarre formatting you’ve ever seen.

I particularly liked the instance where there is a footnote, which itself contains a footnote, which itself contains yet a third footnote.

The book is 600 pages long. If we only kept the “basic story”, formatted traditionally, the book would probably be 60-70 pages long.

What Is the Purpose of Experimental Fiction?

In its most basic form, experimental fiction is about drawing attention. If the author is skillful, this isn’t merely about drawing attention in general , but about drawing attention to specific processes – mostly in regard to reading, writing, literature, and the dissemination of information.

Experimental fiction is an auto-referential process .

If the author is really skillful, then the final product is also perfectly readable and enjoyable – I’d characterize The Raw Shark Texts as such an example; House of Leaves less so, and Beautiful Losers not at all.

Another option is when a book becomes partially – that is, to an extent – experimental by… accident. This is usually a result of the novel escaping the author’s conscious control .

Issues of Historical Context

Bram Stoker’s Dracula would be a fantastic such example. To us today it might not seem all that experimental, but for the late-1800s Victorian audience, the merging of Gothic elements with modernity and the “upgrading” of the epistolary forms to include phonographs, photos, and other media, was surely unorthodox.

Another example would be Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein . As I mentioned in my post on 3 Gothic characters with a secret :

[I]n the general complexity of the plot, with stories within stories and horrifying events easily attracting all the attention, few readers realize the importance of [Margaret Saville] for the narrative: “[A]s the designated recipient of her brother’s writings, she will ultimately hold Robert’s letters which contain Victor’s story which contains the monster’s story which includes the story of the DeLacy’s [sic]” (Dickerson, Vanessa D. “The Ghost of a Self: Female Identity in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein ”. Journal of Popular Culture . 27.3. 1993. p.84). It is a remarkable realization, that the entire narrative is dependent on the hands of a woman. Furthermore, the lack of an omniscient narrator in  Frankenstein  leaves open all possibilities, including the one that the text of  Frankenstein  is, after all, edited by none other than Margaret Saville herself. Extending the skeptical hypothesis to its opposite limits, there is nothing to prove Margaret’s existence in the first place. She could as well be a creation of Robert’s imagination, just like the entire narrative. The metatextual twist is, of course, that the entire narrative  is  a product of the imagination, namely Mary Shelley’s – who shares the same initials as Walton’s sister, MS.

Again, Frankenstein doesn’t seem all that experimental to us today. Perhaps not even at its own time. And yet, this auto-referential essence that we saw in more recent (and more… traditionally experimental) works is obvious.

Experimental Fiction Is a Discourse of Doubt

You might like it or hate it – I did hate Beautiful Losers . But one thing’s for certain: Experimental fiction will make you feel something.

This is already a big deal.

In a literary world full of pointlessness and regurgitation, authenticity is always welcome. Sometimes it doesn’t work – to some people at least – but the effort is always worth it.

On the other hand, the examples of experimental fiction I showed you in this post are the exception rather than the rule, when it comes to commercial viability. If you care about making money from writing books ( I certainly don’t ), I doubt experimental fiction is the way to go.

I’ve written some experimental fiction myself – the Self Versus Self project. Not only does it come in two volumes – one narrative poetry, one a novel – that somewhat narrate the same plot, but even the novel itself is not quite traditional. Here’s what I said about it in the post linked above:

[ Self Versus Self ] contains various forms of texts, from Instagram hashtags to twitter comments and from news reports to journal entries. It also contains stories within stories, and some experienced readers will surely notice many other details, all related to  the writing process itself . Is the work self-referential? You bet.

It’s all about challenging your preconceptions.

What is art?

What is criticism?

Why should you care?

And, in the words of one of the characters of Self Versus Self , there are no answers; but there are always questions.

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Marisa Crane on the Finer Points of Experimental Fiction

“the experimental form should relate to and enhance the themes and narrative—not distract from it.”.

I’ve always loved experimental writing—in fact, it’s my favorite type of work. From books like Multiple Choice by Alejandro Zambra, which is written in the form of a Chilean aptitude test, and Why Did I Ever by Mary Robison, a novel in over 500 fragments, to Carmen Maria Machado’s masterpiece novella, Especially Heinous: 272 Views of Law & Order SVU , experimental work never ceases to inspire and delight me.

When I read Jenny Boully’s The Body: An Essay , which is an entire book comprised of footnotes to an invisible text, I think my brain exploded. Of course, everyone who picks up a book interprets it differently, but Boully takes it to the extreme—every reader must imagine and interact with a text that isn’t there (but also is?). And one of my earliest inspirations, Elizabeth Crane, has a story in her collection, Turf , called “Justin Bieber’s Hair in a Box,” which is, well, what it sounds like. I first heard her read it at the LA Festival of Books years ago, and I thought, Wait, you can do that ?

But what, exactly, are we referring to when we talk about experimental writing? Honestly, I find that it can be difficult, if not impossible, to define it, but like many things in life, we often know experimental work when we see it. In short, experimental writing breaks literary conventions. But before we can understand what breaks conventions, we have to first define conventional, which gets a little messy. It’s important to note that what I mean by “conventional” is based on a Western lens of narrative, which Matthew Salesses does a magnificent job of interrogating and upending in his book, Craft in the Real World .

Some literary conventions according to Western standards include:

Ensure that there’s tension Action must move the story forward Protagonists should be active in pursuit of their desires and goals Write a beginning, middle, and end Include rising action, climax, and falling action Format the writing to look “normal” on the page, i.e. the piece is broken up into conventional sentences and paragraphs Don’t insert yourself into the story Don’t break the fourth wall Article continues after advertisement Remove Ads

There are many, many more but this isn’t an essay on conventional Western writing, so let’s dive into it.

Experimental writing tends to use unusual forms to tell a story or communicate an emotion or metaphor. The best thing about experimental work is that there aren’t any hard and fast rules—it’s an expansive, freeing process. As much as I love work that falls within the typical boundaries of genre and expectations, it can sometimes make me feel suffocated or stifled. Sometimes knowing that I have room to play with structure and style can put me in a more relaxed mood, which often translates to more interesting and strangely delightful work. Sitting down to write an experimental piece is when I am most likely to surprise myself.

Using inventive forms and styles to tell stories isn’t about doing what’s never been done before—it’s about stretching the limits of storytelling. It’s about giving a big middle finger to the restrictions you put on yourself. But before you can do that, it’s wise to familiarize yourself with the experimental work that’s already out there, with the writers who innovate and inspire.

There are many “types” of experimental literature, a few of which I’ve outlined below:

Unconventional structure : Think maps, recipes, crossword puzzles, lists, etc. You notice that it’s going to be an unconventional piece before you even read the first word. ( Vagabond Mannequin by K.B. Carle which K.B. uses a crossword puzzle)

Retellings : Think the retelling of a fairytale, the reimagining of a film, or alternate readings or viewings. ( Alternate reading of Wuthering Heights by Tanis Franco , which was in Best American Experimental Writing 2018)

Pieces that revise a current text or medium : Think erasure poetry, transforming an original text into a word search, or creating a physical design, such as a window. ( Hotel Almighty by Sarah J Sloat is a book of erasure poetry using Stephen King’s Misery as the source text)

Point of view : Think Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi , much of which is written in first-person plural.

Using various types of technology : Think Jock Party by Jennifer Wortman , which is a collaboration with Predictive Text.

Mixed media : Think literature that uses visual art, photographs, artifacts, documents, and advertisements. Guestbook by Leanne Shapton is an eerie, uncanny short story collection that integrates photography and watercolors into the narrative.

Voice as experimentation : This one may be more subjective than the others but I personally think that voice can be experimental, that you know it when you read it because something is unique or interesting about it. Star Babies by Elizabeth Crane uses repetition to create and propel the story in a hypnotizing way.

Having a structure in mind before you get started experimenting can be very helpful for providing you with a template or framework in which to tell your story. A template can be very freeing and offer space for free-associating because you already have a basic outline for the piece, which means you can go wild within those constraints.

But once you set out to write your experimental piece, there are some things you may want to keep in mind. And while I know that I said there are no rules when it comes to experimental writing, I do have some general guidelines I follow:

Don’t forget to play and delight in your work. Write the piece with confidence and authority—authority can go a long way in building reader trust and investment. Article continues after advertisement Remove Ads Lean into the experiment or metaphor—if you’re going to do it, then really do it. Be willing to fail. Then fail again and again. Edit, edit, edit. Even messy, out-of-this-world pieces need to be tight and controlled, within their mess, if that makes sense. A good editor will know the difference when they see it. The structure needs to enhance the content. Or, in other words, the form must follow the function.

This last guideline more or less means that the form of your piece should relate to the intended purpose or function. Put another way: the experimental form should relate to and enhance the themes and narrative—not distract from it. For example, if you wanted to write a piece in the form of map directions, you may want to consider the ways in which the protagonist is lost or attempting to find their way (however literal or abstract this may be).

Likewise, if you were considering writing a piece in the form of a receipt, you might want to consider what the protagonist has bought, felt like they had to buy (can’t buy me love?), or inherited.

When I began writing my debut novel, I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself , I didn’t set out to write an experimental novel, but I knew I was writing a story about grief and shame, two of the most traumatic and complicated experiences we can have in life. As I tried to write about my main character Kris’s grief after her wife, Beau, dies during childbirth, I found myself drawn first to fragments, which seemed like a more fitting way to capture her equally fragmented state of mind. Among these fragments, other elements started to appear—first, pop quizzes and lists, then on occasion, game instructions and word searches.

This was especially true when the grief and pain felt too overwhelming for me to continue writing about. I’ve found that using experimental forms can not only grant me access to complicated, difficult emotions but also provide some much-needed breathing room for the reader, even a playfulness. Experimenting can create some distance between the reader and the piece so they are able to continue engaging with the work, even during heavy, painful moments.

Form follows function in my novel for many reasons, one being that the pop quizzes link back to Beau, who was a teacher, and whose piles of graded tests and papers continue to occupy space in the home she and Kris shared. It’s this connection that makes these types of interjections less random and more deliberate. Beau occupies nearly all of Kris’ mental and emotional space, especially early on in the novel when her grief is still fresh, so it makes sense, on some level, for her thoughts to take this form.

Plus, I wanted to challenge Kris’ beliefs and assumptions about grief, shame, identity, parenthood, and love. And these quizzes allowed me to confront and question her throughout her journey, although unlike a typical pop quiz, which has correct answers, Kris’ quizzes often don’t, not only complicating her understanding of these themes, of how to move through the world as she knows it, but also forcing the readers to participate, to make their own choices. To even possibly reveal themselves to themselves.

__________________________________

I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself by Marisa Crane is available from Catapult Books.

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8 Groundbreaking Experimental Novels That Are More than 100 Years Old

Reading Lists

Writers have been bending rules and genres for longer than you might think.

When I describe my novella Northwood to others, I always call it experimental —  mostly in order to manage their expectations. I initially conceived of Northwood as a book of poems, and though it settled into being a short novel, it still contains elements of poetry and linked microfiction. I tell people it’s “experimental” so they won’t be confused when it’s not what they expect. But what does “experimental” literature really mean? Experimental in relation to what? Perhaps it’s more accurate to say, not that Northwood is a brand-new experiment, but that it’s part of a long-standing, well-established tradition of literature that pushes boundaries of genre and form.

We tend to forget that there has always been work that plays with form, style, content; work that is modernist before the modern era, or postmodernist before the postmodern age, or avant-garde ahead of its time. Work that anticipates modes and subjects and ideas and structures that would be put to use ubiquitously decades later. But if all of the things so-called experimental writers do now have been done — many times — before, sometimes centuries ago, then what is really experimental or unusual or deviant about these works? What are our our literary norms, and who decides, and defines, that which is perceived to stray from them? What prompts a writer to stray from the path set by an external notion of the mainstream, or one’s own self-imposed categories, habits, genres? And do truly experimental works always feel new?

I don’t have the answers to these questions, but in my own struggle to figure out what the heck I was doing with Northwood, I looked to some books that are 100 or more years old but which still feel strange today, books by writers who informed my own experiments with form and voice and style.

Jakob von Gunten , Robert Walser, 1909

This novel, about a young man who attends a school for servants headed by a mysterious, possibly incestuous, pair of siblings, completely disregards any traditional notion of plot or narrative arc. Full of fanciful, obsessive digressions on the nature of objects, light, and smiles, Walser (whom Kafka cited as an early influence) proved that a satisfying narrative could be almost wholly internal, moving in meandering circles or not at all, much like Louise-Bennant’s recent (and brilliant) Pond.

The Lulu Plays , Frank Wedekind, 1894

Written in two parts, spanning five acts, Wedekind’s mammoth Lulu is a twisted, hyper-sexualized, astoundingly feminist exploration of a young, murderous prostitute longing for freedom. I can’t say enough about the final act, which features one of the most intensely bathetic, horrific, and moving murder scenes I have ever read. It is at once ridiculous and emotional, sympathetic and sneering; it’s a masterpiece of tone ahead of its time, or any time.

Telegrams of the Soul , Peter Altenberg, circa 1890

This collection of Altenberg’s mini-“essays” are, like Walser’s short pieces, largely plotless and charmingly surreal (and, in their darker moods, a lot like Lydia Davis’ fictions — flash before flash was a genre). Take this line from his piece “On Smells”: “even good books never stink, they are the distillation of all the malodorous sins one has committed of which one has finally managed to extract a drop of fragrant humanity!”

The Thief of Talant , Pierre Reverdy, 1917

A novel that looks like poetry, or a book of poetry that looks like a novel — whatever it is, The Thief of Talant is formally fascinating and emotionally engaging. Unlike some of the other works listed here, the idiosyncrasies of which are surprising but sometimes dated in tone, Reverdy’s work feels completely out of time; it could have been written yesterday, and yet it is more than 100 years old.

The Other House , Henry James, 1896

This novel, told almost entirely in dialogue and plotted at a furious pace, reads more like a film script than a novel; there are no interminable sentences or endless blocks of text as per the late Jamesian mode here. A masterclass in economy, it’s a surprisingly cinematic novel written long before the film scripts it so uncannily resembles.

How Queer Writers Are Creating Queer Genres

Death , Anna Croissant-Rust, 1893

The short works of Croissant-Rust (yes, that was her real name) are a mix of wild emotion and detachment, full of exclamation points and exhortations while retaining an eerie sense of distance. Morbid, sentimental, surreal, Rust breaks down narrative into patterns of feeling, abandoning any formal devices or logic. When someone describes a modern work as “dreamlike,” I think of Rust, who is, for me, the original dreamer; these are pieces written by ghosts, desperate to send a message to the living while at the same time utterly resigned to failure.

Mysteries , Knut Hamsun, 1892

Like much of Hamsun’s pre-Nobel work, Mysteries is remarkable in its defiance of plot and traditional character development; not much happens (and, as the title suggests, what does happen isn’t explained), and characters’ motives are entirely obscure, yet Hamsun manages to create an atmosphere as gripping as any pot-boiler. I return to this book every year, trying to figure out how Hamsun manages to make so much out of so little; but it is so subtle, its magic so recessive, I doubt I’ll ever figure it out.

La Bas , Joris-Karl Huysmans, 1891

This book just flat out messes with my head. Its style mimics the decadence of the social world it depicts; dense, wild, intoxicating, repugnant, surreal, more Lynchian than Chekovian, anticipating the excesses of writers like Dennis Cooper and Kathy Acker. For me, it’s fascinating more for its subject matter than its readability as a novel — the depiction of a psychotic Satanic mass alone is worth the price of admission, proving that there has always been an appetite for “edgy” work.

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17 Top Publishers of Experimental Fiction

By Hiten Vyas

The following list features 17 top publishers of experimental fiction.

Continue reading to learn about these and their publishing activities.

1. Dalkey Archive Press

Founded in 1984, Dalkey Archive Press is a Chicago-based publisher of literary fiction, poetry, and literary criticism. They specialize in unorthodox and experimental fiction, citing the works of Gertrude Stein, Flann O’Brien, and Djuna Barnes as the kinds of books they are most interested in publishing. If you would like Dalkey Archive Press to consider your work for publication, you can send them a copy of your manuscript via email .

Submissions should include a cover letter, and your name and email address must be placed on each page of your manuscript. Don’t get disheartened if you don’t hear back right away. Dalkey Archive receives around 12,000 manuscripts each year, so it may take up to a year for them to respond to submissions. For any additional questions, you can reach Dalkey Archive Press here .

2. Montag Press Collective

Founded in 2008, Montag Press is a fiction publisher based in the Bay Area. They publish experimental novels, plays, and short story collections, particularly in the genres of horror, science fiction, speculative fiction, and historical fiction. More specifically, they are interested in the following subgenres: dark fantasy, urban fantasy, subversive fiction, apocalyptic fiction, steam punk, counterfactual histories, alternate histories, historical experimentalism, and weird fiction.

If you have a manuscript you think Montag Press might be interested in, you can send it to them via email . Please note that they only accept completed manuscripts, and all submissions must be accompanied by a cover letter. For more information, you can check out their submission guidelines here .

3. Milkweed Editions

Founded in Minneapolis in 1980, Milkweed Editions is an independent publisher of non-fiction, literary fiction, and poetry. The press takes its name from the milkweed plant where monarch butterflies undergo metamorphosis. And just like their namesake, they aim to be a transformative force in the literary community by publishing experimental writing and debut novels that are often overlooked by other publishers.

Milkweed Editions is currently closed for unsolicited submissions, but they do hold several annual writing contests where winners are awarded publication. You can learn more about their contests and guidelines here . You can also subscribe to their free email newsletter to get notified about open submission periods. For general inquiries, you can reach Milkweed Editions here .

4. Fugue State Press

Based in New York, Fugue State Press is a small publisher that was founded by novelist James Chapman in 1992. They specialize in publishing experimental novels written by American and international writers. Some of the authors they have published over the years include Noah Cicero, Joshua Cohen, Stephen Dixon, Ben Brooks, Shane Jones, and Eckhard Gerdes, among others.

They currently welcome submissions of experimental novels that are emotional, visionary, and ambitious. They do not publish genre fiction, so they are not the best place to submit thrillers, fantasy, science fiction, detective novels, or children’s books. To determine if your work is a good fit for Fugue State Press, check out the submission guidelines on their website. If you think your writing is the kind of work they are looking for, you can fill out their query form here .

5. BlazeVOX Books

BlazeVOX Books is an independent publisher based in Buffalo, New York. Since their establishment in 2000, they have released more than 350 books of fiction and poetry, most of which fall under the umbrella of experimental literature. They are also the publisher behind BlazeVOX, a biannual poetry and prose journal that has featured the works of Louis Armand, Mitch Corber, Linda Ravenswood, James Austin, Lewis Warsh, Eileen Myles, and George Bowering.

BlazeVOX Books accepts submissions for both their journal and their books division. If you have a manuscript you are interested in submitting, you can send it to them via email . Check out their submission guidelines here for more information. For general inquiries, you can reach BlazeVOX Books through their online contact form .

6. Tarpaulin Sky Press

Founded by Christian Peet in 2006, Tarpaulin Sky Press is a small publisher based in Vermont. They publish full-length books, trade paperbacks, chapbooks, and hand-bound books of experimental fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and hybrid texts, as well as an online magazine called Tarpaulin Sky. Some of the authors whose books they have published include Rebecca Brown, Jenny Boully, Steven Dunn, Joanna Ruocco, Claire Donato, and Amy King, among others.

Tarpaulin Sky is currently closed for book submissions, but they plan on reopening in the fall. In the meantime, feel free to browse their catalog to get an idea of the kinds of books they are interested in. If you wish to submit to their online journal, you can check out their submission guidelines here .

7. C&R Press

Founded in 2006, C&R Press is a literary press that publishes fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. Since their establishment, they have published more than 60 books and a dozen chapbooks, and they are eager to publish more. They are currently open for submissions of and are interested in full-length manuscripts. This includes novels, short story collections, poetry collections, and creative non-fiction. They also welcome hybrid and experimental work.

If you are interested in submitting, you can check out their submission guidelines here . Once you are ready to send them your work, you can do so through their Submittable page . C&R Press also holds annual writing competitions in fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction.

8. Journal of Experimental Fiction

The Journal of Experimental Fiction, also known as JEF Books, was founded by novelist Eckhard Gerdes in 1986 with the goal of bringing experimental fiction to a wider audience. In addition to their biannual general fiction issue, they also publish experimental novels that would likely be ignored by larger publishing companies. Their most recent books include Mouth! by Charles Hood, Goosestep by Harold Jaffe, Psychedelic Everest by Brion Poloncic, and Between the Legs by Kate Horsley.

JEF Books accepts submissions through the Kenneth Patchen Award, an annual writing contest for experimental novels. To learn more about the award, you can check out the guidelines here . Should you have any questions or concerns, contact JEF Books through their online contact form .

9. Fiction Collective Two

Based in Utah, Fiction Collective Two is a non-profit publisher that specializes in experimental and avant-garde fiction. They are committed to publishing fiction that larger publishers find too innovative or challenging. Authors they have worked with include Kim Addonizio, Vanessa Place, Brian Evenson, Curtis White, Lewis Warsh, Jerry Bumpus, and many others. FC2 has also published several anthologies, including Degenerative Prose, Forms at War, In the Slipstream, and An Illuminated History of the Future.

FC2 holds two annual manuscript contests—one for authors who have not previously been published and another for authors who have already published at least three books of fiction. Entries for their 2019 contests can be submitted until November 1, 2019. Learn more about the guidelines here . Should you have any additional questions, you can reach FC2 through the contact form on their website.

10. Galley Beggar Press

Based in Norwich in the UK, Galley Beggar Press is an independent publisher that publishes experimental fiction and narrative non-fiction. Since they were founded in 2012, they have published many talented and award-winning authors, including Eimear McBride, Alex Pheby, Paul Ewen, Preti Taneja, and more.

Each year, Gallery Beggar has an annual submission window for full-length manuscript. They also have two additional submission windows for writers of color and women writers. For more information on submitting a manuscript, you can check out their guidelines here . If you have any other questions, you can get in touch with Galley Beggar Press via email .

11. Fitzcarraldo Editions

Founded in 2014, Fitzcarraldo Editions is a London-based publisher that specializes in experimental fiction and long-form essays. Among their first releases were Mathias Enard’s Zone, a single-sentence novel spanning 520 pages, and Simon Critchley’s Memory Theater, an essay that blurs the lines between memoir and fiction. Since then, they have published the works of Nobel Prize winner Svetlana Alexievich, Man Booker International Prize winner Olga Tocarczuk, and many other talented writers.

Fitzcarraldo Editions accepts submissions through their two annual contests—one for novels and another for essays. If you would like to enter either of their contests, you can check out the guidelines here . For other inquiries, you can contact them via email .

12. Dead Ink Books

Dead Ink Books is a small literary publisher based in Liverpool. They specialize in experimental literature and are committed to helping new and emerging writers develop their careers. Some of their most recent titles include Glitch by Lee Rourke, Sealed by Naomi Booth, Water Shall Refuse Them by Lucie McKnight Hardy, and Please Read This Leaflet Carefully by Karen Havelin.

Although they don’t seem to be accepting submissions at the moment, you can join their mailing list to get notified about upcoming calls for submissions. If you would like to get in touch with Dead Ink Books, you can do so through their contact form .

13. Salò Press

Based in Norwich, Salò Press is a micropublisher that specializes in literature of a weird, experimental, and surreal nature. Although they primarily publish poetry, they also publish works of fiction and non-fiction. At the moment, they are accepting submissions of fiction, poetry, non-fiction, essays, and experiments of up to 32 pages for their chapbook imprint. They also welcome submissions for Fur-Lined Ghettos, their print magazine.

If you are interested in submitting a chapbook, you can check out their guidelines here . For submissions to their print journal, the guidelines are posted here . You can also contact them via email should you have any additional questions.

14. Penned in the Margins

Penned in the Margins is a London-based independent publisher that publishes poetry, experimental fiction, creative non-fiction, and literary criticism. Their most recent titles include Darling, It’s Me by Alison Winch, After the Formalities by Anthony Anaxagorou, Reckless Paper Birds by John McCullough, and Witch by Rebecca Tamas.

Penned in the Margins is currently closed for submissions, but they do plan on announcing an open call within the year. In the meantime, you can get familiar with their submissions guidelines here . For general inquiries, you can send Penned in the Margins an email .

15. Coach House Books

Headquartered in Ontario, Coach House Books is a Canadian publisher that specializes in experimental works of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and drama. Originally founded as Coach House Press in 1965, they are known for publishing the early works of some of Canada’s most renowned writers, including Margaret Atwood, George Bowering, Fred Wah, Daphne Marlatt, Ann-Marie MacDonald, and Nicole Brossard.

Coach House Books welcomes submissions from Canadian writers. For fiction submissions, send them your completed manuscript, along with a cover letter. You can read their full submission guidelines here . If you have any general inquiries, you can contact Coach House Books here .

16. Laksa Media

Laksa Media is an independent publisher that produces narrative non-fiction books and experimental fiction books. They are part of the Independent Book Publishers Association and the Book Publishers Association of Alberta. As part of their company’s commitment to giving back, a portion of their net revenue goes to charitable organizations and projects, particularly those related to literacy, elder care, mental health, education, and affordable housing.

At the moment, Laksa Media only accepts submissions from Canadian and American authors, or those with an Asian ancestry. For fiction, they welcome novels under 100,000 words, and they are most interested in experimental, genre-bending works. Check out their submission guidelines for more details. All submissions must be sent through their submission form .

17. The Lifted Brow

The Lifted Brow is a non-profit publishing organization based in Melbourne. Through their imprint Brow Books, they publish innovative works of fiction and non-fiction. They currently welcome submissions from Australian writers, and they are particularly interested in experimental writing that defies boundaries. Submissions from LGBTQ writers, writers with disabilities, and writers from demographic margins are encouraged.

If you are interested in submitting, you can check out their guidelines here . Even if you haven’t finished writing your manuscript yet, feel free to send them your idea. For questions about submitting your work, you can send Brow Books an email .

Are there any other publishers of experimental fiction that should be on this list? Please tell us about them in the comments box below.

Hiten Vyas is the Founder and Managing Editor of Writing Tips Oasis .

Want to expand your reading horizons, but worried you aren't enough of a ~literary~ reader? Never fear, because there are plenty of experimental novels that aren't hard to read , which means you'll be reading the writer's writers in no time.

Now, I know that by promoting books that aren't difficult to read, I'm going to draw the ire of at least one self-appointed, literary gatekeeper, who will insist that people who can't suffer through [insert favorite dead white man here] shouldn't bother reading any adult books at all. Folks, I'm here to tell you that that's a bunch of ... well, a very non-literary word.

It's like the late Amy Krouse Rosenthal told John Green: "for stories to work, readers and writers must both be generous." That means readers must turn pages with an open mind, and writers must craft books that are "not trying to wow or impress," but that are gifts for the reader to enjoy. Some readers can read big-L Literature and be generous, but just because a small number of people — and yes, many writer's writers are writing for a very limited audience — can enjoy a book does not necessarily mean that the writer is being generous.

I read a lot of literary fiction, and I enjoy experimental writing, but I've hit a wall with my fair share of these. When I feel that a writer isn't being generous with me, when it seems that they have deliberately obfuscated their meaning in order to weed out the less worthy, I check out. Goodbye, needlessly muddied novel, I hardly knew ye.

If you're looking to expand your reading pool with a little toe-dip into experimental fiction, the novels below are the perfect and not-too-intimidating jumping-off point. Check out my recommendations below, and share your favorite experimental novels with me on Twitter !

1 'Ella Minnow Pea' by Mark Dunn

In the tradition of Gadsby , Mark Dunn's Ella Minnow Pea uses fewer and fewer letters as the story progresses. In the fictional Nollop, South Carolina, an aging memorial dictates what letters the residents may use. As letters fall from the statue's inscription — The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. — the town council demands that those letters be outlawed.

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2 'Dear Committee Members' by Julie Schumacher

Dear Committee Members is told through a series of recommendation letters one English professor is commissioned to write over the course of a year. Once upon a time, Jason Fitger was a novelist, but now he writes to employers and graduate acceptance committees on behalf of students he barely knows and former lovers he knows too intimately.

3 'If on a winter's night a traveler' by Italo Calvino

Each chapter of If on a winter's night a traveler begins with a description of how you — You the reader? You someone else? You decide! — are attempting to read the novel-within-a-novel, which is also titled If on a winter's night a traveler . Each chapter concludes with the opening passages of various other novels you are reading. Italo Calvino's most famous novel is an exercise in experimental romance, and for that reason alone it should be on your TBR.

4 'The Story of My Teeth' by Valeria Luiselli

Gustavo "Highway" Sánchez needs a new set of teeth, and he has a great plan to acquire them. He puts his old teeth on the auction block, passing them off as the molars and incisors of dead philosophers. When he has enough money, he buys a set of dentures supposedly crafted from Marilyn Monroe's own teeth, and the story takes a turn.

5 'Flowers for Algernon' by Daniel Keyes

Flowers for Algernon follows Charlie, a bakery worker with an intellectual disability, in the days and weeks sandwiching an experimental procedure designed to raise his intelligence. Told through Charlie's personal progress reports written for research purposes, Daniel Keyes' novel is unlike anything written before it.

6 'Fever Dream' by Samanta Schweblin

As Amanda lies in an Argentinian hospital, dying of some wormy ailment, a decidedly un-childlike child named David pokes deep into her life story, pulling out streams of dialogue that drive Fever Dream 's entire narrative. Nominated for the Man Booker International Prize, this short novel deserves a spot on your nightstand.

7 'American Psycho' by Bret Easton Ellis

I recall reading American Psycho , realizing that Bret Easton Ellis was pulling off something in the narration, but being unable to dissect exactly how he was doing it. As a writer, that's both infuriating and awe-inspiring. Read the book about the homicidally insane Wall Street yuppie and see for yourself.

8 'Atmospheric Disturbances' by Rivka Galchen

In this short novel, a psychiatrist believes that his young wife has been replaced with someone who looks, speaks, and acts exactly like her. Desperate to find out why this "impostress" has walked into his life, the doctor digs into a conspiracy involving a fringe meteorological association and his wife's home country of Argentina.

9 'Invisible Monsters Remix' by Chuck Palahniuk

Originally intended as a chapter-skipping maze of fiction with secret passages, Invisible Monsters was tempered — even tamed — by the time it hit store shelves in 1999. This 2012 re-release restores Chuck Palahniuk's gritty tale to its rightful glory.

10 'NW' by Zadie Smith

NW follows a group of four Londoners from the same housing project in the northwestern part of the city, shifting between their lives and narratives as the story progresses. With each POV shakeup, the writing style changes as well. At the heart of the tale lie Leah and Natalie, childhood best friends whose paths have diverged in adulthood.

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10 Experimental Novels That Are Worth the Effort

Today marks the US publication of Eimear McBride’s A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing , a highly experimental, Joycean novel that, despite the fact that modern readers often eschew difficulty, has been heaped with awards. It is, in fact, a difficult book — but it’s totally worth it. And it’s not the only one. After the jump, ten experimental novels that are worth the effort it takes to parse them. Take a look, and since this is only a list of one reader’s favorites, add your own to the bizarre pile in the comments.

A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing , Eimear McBride

McBride’s widely lauded novel is full of fragmented, floating sentences that sometimes feel like only gestures at sentences, like gestures at the things under thoughts, that real, pre-language stuff. It’s hard going at first, but once you let the language wash over you and form a rhythm, the book blossoms into a gorgeous, brutal stream of word and thought.

C , Tom McCarthy

McCarthy’s second novel is gorgeous and devastating, a search for patterns in the phenomenal world and a warning against the same; a book of just-missed connections, wireless communication and full-on joy. As Jennifer Egan wrote , “ C is a rigorous inquiry into the meaning of meaning: our need to find it in the world around us and communicate it to one another; our methods for doing so; the hubs and networks and skeins of interaction that result. Gone is the minimalist restraint he employed in Remainder ; here, he fuses a Pynchonesque revelry in signs and codes with the lush psychedelics of William Burroughs to create an intellectually provocative novel that unfurls like a brooding, phosphorescent dream.”

Hopscotch , Julio Cortázar

This is book that can be read in any order, with chapters that can be left out or left in, depending on the mood of the reader. It sounds easy to screw up this literary labyrinth, but you really can’t: every page hums with life and language, and however you make your way through, you’ll be glad you did. As Pablo Neruda famously wrote, “People who do not read Cortazar are doomed. Not to read him is a serious invisible disease.”

Notable American Women , Ben Marcus

Marcus’ sophomore novel is totally weird, but also pretty gorgeous. Like another, later novel of Marcus’, language is weaponry here, and the protagonist of this book (“Ben Marcus”) is a child whose mother belongs to a cult of Silentists, obsessive verging on abusive. This novel constantly asks its reader to re-evaluate the real, both the absolute real and the relative real, and the difference between the two. For instance, the two blurbs on the back of this book are these: “Ben Marcus is a genius, one of the most daring, funny, morally engaged and brilliant writers, someone whose work truly makes a difference in the world.” — George Saunders; “How can one word from Ben Marcus’s rotten, filthy heart be trusted?” — Michael Marcus, Ben’s father. Point and case.

The Mezzanine , Nicholson Baker

This entire novel takes place over the length of an escalator ride. No, no, it’s about 140 pages of minute details, imaginings, footnotes, and lists with columns like “Subject of Thought” and “Number of Times Thought Occurred per Year (in Descending Order).” There are times when the amount that Baker can focus on one tiny thing threatens to drive one mad, but in the end, the novel is a deeply moving meditation on change and life and, of course, language.

Speedboat , Renata Adler

Adler’s mostly plotless first novel is stunning, hilarious, vivid, vital. Let go of what you think a novel should be, and let this novel be what it is, and you’ll be rewarded by waves of pleasure on every page, both emotional and intellectual.

Wittgenstein’s Mistress , David Markson

This novel is organized as a long series of notes written continuously on a typewriter by the last woman on earth — a woman who is obsessed with art and philosophy and literature, but keeps forgetting, or confusing, or willfully misrepresenting things. Again, the book is sort of plotless and (especially for sticklers for facts) frustrating, but it’s also a beautiful and sometimes heartbreaking ode to loneliness and the world of the mind.

How to Be Both , Ali Smith

Smith’s newest novel, just recently shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, can be read two ways — depending on which version of it you happen to pick up. Some copies of the book begin with one of its interconnected stories, some with the other. In both structure and subject, Smith is investigating duality and the relationship of surface to substance. “It’s about fresco form,” Smith told The Guardian . “You have the very first version of the fresco underneath the skin, as it were, of the real fresco. There’s a fresco on the wall: there it is, you and I look at it, we see it right in front of us; underneath that there’s another version of the story and it may or may not be connected to the surface. And they’re both in front of our eyes, but you can only see one, or you see one first. So it’s about the understory. I have the feeling that all stories travel with an understory.”

JR , William Gaddis

This novel is long. This novel is almost entirely made up of untagged dialogue. This novel is brilliant and will suck you in and keep you forever.

The Emigrants , W.G. Sebald

Sebald’s writing is at the easy end of experimentalism — that is, there are no bizarre sentence structures, no choose-your-own-adventure-style tricks, no tomfoolery. But at its heart, his work is deeply experimental — after all, what is it? Novel, travelogue, essay? Some combination of these, complete with badly reproduced and sometimes doctored black and white photographs and the specter of Nabokov following us through all the complicated pages? Yes, yes, yes, yes.

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Experimental Novels from the 21st Century

It’s a simple but profound truth: the novel is capable of anything.  There are some writers who give us straightforward narratives in which we can envelop ourselves and feel comforted.  But there are other writers who attempt to push against the barriers of fiction in order to create works that defy classification.  Experimental novels can be pretty hit or miss. But there are some experimental novels that reward you generously for doing the work of reading them.  We decided to compile a list of our ten favorite experimental novels of the 21st century so far.  Let us know what you …

It’s a simple but profound truth: the novel is capable of anything.  There are some writers who give us straightforward narratives in which we can envelop ourselves and feel comforted.  But there are other writers who attempt to push against the barriers of fiction in order to create works that defy classification.  Experimental novels can be pretty hit or miss. But there are some experimental novels that reward you generously for doing the work of reading them.  We decided to compile a list of our ten favorite experimental novels of the 21st century so far.  Let us know what you think, and which of your favorite experimentalists we should have included, in the comments section.

Only Revolutions: A Novel  by Mark Z Danielewski

Danielewski’s follow up to the terrifying bestseller, House of Leaves, is about a couple of eternal teenage lovers attempting to outrace time and history.  But what truly makes this a novelistic experiment is its poetic, stream-of-consciousness style, as well as the way the narratives of the young lovers are arranged.  You can read the book from Hailey’s point of view, then flip the book around and read it from Sam’s point of view.

Wittgenstein’s Mistress  by David Markson

Markson’s story begins with an intriguing premise: the protagonist is the last person left on earth.  She sits alone at her typewriter, documenting her thoughts, opinion, and searches for other life.  Like Danielewski’s book, this one isn’t experimental merely for its unconventional narrative and stream of consciousness style. What truly sets it apart is the way inconsistencies become layered in the protagonist’s narrative, casting doubt on whether she really is the last person on earth, or has actually gone mad.

NW  by  Zadie Smith

Smith’s fourth novel experiments with form, style, and voice.  It follows four primary characters, but the real focus of the novel is its NW London setting.  The formal pastiche that Smith paints—switching from first to third point of view, from long narratives to short stories, from stream-of-consciousness to formally rigid screenplay dialogue—is meant to mirror the polyphonics of modern day urban life.

Notable American Women  by Ben Marcus

This novel confuses genres and therefore confuses reality.  The protagonist is a young Ben Marcus, and is told from the point of view of Ben and each of his parents.  The language of the novel is highly inventive, creating a world so detailed and unique it seems like a reality unto itself.  Aside from genres and realities, the novel also confuses time.  And if that isn’t mind-bending enough for you, some of the blurbs on the book jacket feel real and normal, while some seem like inventions: “How can one word from Ben Marcus’s rotten filthy heart be trusted?” –Michael Marcus, Ben’s father.

The Interrogative Mood: A Novel?  By Padgett Powell

When it comes to experimental fiction, Padgett Powell is one of the definitive contributors to the canon.  Perhaps his most experimental novel, The Interrogative Mood is comprised exclusively of questions.  In spite of this, the novel is still a well contained and grounded, if unconventional, story.  How he pulls it off is something you’ll have to read to find out.

Remainder  by Tom McCarthy

Remainder made Tom McCarthy a notable modern experimental practitioner.  The novel follows a man who is injured in a freak accident and who receives an immodest sum of money as compensation.  His memory is damaged, and as images and moment begin to come back to him, he uses his money to stage these memories so that he can actually experience them again.  These events become more and more violent as the novel moves forward, begging questions of what sort of worlds exist with each of us, and what would happen if we brought those worlds to life?

A Girl is a Half-formed Thing  by Eimear McBride

McBride’s debut novel took nine years to secure a publisher, finally being released in 2013.  This speaks to its uniqueness, inventiveness, and difficulty.  Since being released it has achieved much acclaim and won many awards.  It tells the story of a girl and her brother who struggle against the tragic chaos of their lives.  It’s told from the girl’s point of view, which is scathing and angry and often difficult, though always rewarding, to parse.  Aside from awards, McBride’s novel has garnered comparisons to James Joyce, Virginia Woolfe, and Flann O’Brien, all three of whom could easily be on an Experimental Literature Mount Rushmore.

Cloud Atlas  by  David Mitchell

Mitchell’s third novel is distinguished by its nesting-doll structure—story within story within story, etc.  The narrative begins in the nineteenth century and moves all the way through time into a post-apocalyptic future, and then, of course, moves back through time into the nineteenth century. Here the first half of the first story, hundreds of pages later, concludes.  It’s another one of those novels, like many on this list, that seems near impossible to pull off, but somehow Mitchell does.

A Visit from the Goon Squad  by Jennifer Egan

This Pulitzer Prize winning novel defies labels.  Is it an interconnected short story collection, or is it a somewhat fragmented experimental novel?  Read it and decide for yourself.  However you see it, this book manages to pull off a number of complete narratives in a relatively short amount of space.  If that isn’t experimental enough, the book also features a chapter (or story) written entirely as a PowerPoint presentation.

The Pale King  by  David Foster Wallace

This list wouldn’t be complete without David Foster Wallace, whose second novel, Infinite Jest, was as unique and inventive a book as has ever been written.  His final, unfinished novel, The Pale King, is perhaps equally as inventive.  The novel changes forms on a dime—from descriptive scenery, to dialogues, to excerpts from the Illinois Tax Code, to character sketches—and also features sections narrated by a fictional “David Wallace.”  The story, for the most part, focuses on characters who work for the IRS.  It’s not possible to say what Wallace would have changed, added, or taken out had he lived to publish it.  However, as it stands, The Pale King is an ambitious novel from one of our most ambitious writers.

Featured image courtesy of https://bit.ly/1LC4qEK

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The Greatest Experimental Literature

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Be Brave: Experimental Writing Ahead: But There Are Rules

Experimental but Not Chaotic

Nolan Liebert provides a few basic rules for experimental fiction, including links to pieces written by authors Ani King and C. J. Harrington.

Nolan’s Advice

My name is Nolan, and I write speculative and experimental fiction and poetry. The majority of my published work falls in the experimental category, in one way or another. I edit Pidgeonholes , a weekly online journal of experimental and international literature, and volunteer as a first reader for freeze frame fiction . So, while I’m not an MFA-holding, rhetoric-wielding expert, I think I’ve got some practical insight into what makes experimental writing successful. So, without further ado, let’s deconstruct this mystery together.

Before you begin with experimental fiction, you need to know one thing: writing something incomprehensible and calling it “experimental” defeats the point of literature. There are rules. Yes. Rules.

The main rule, the most important rule, the only rule you really need to remember is to start with knowing, truly understanding the form or forms you are working with. Some examples are:

• computer code
• false non-fiction
• metafiction
• dialogue -only
• invented dialects
• stream-of-consciousness
• asemic writing

Of course, there are many more, and many authors will invent their own.

By Choosing a Form, You Will Draw Attention to the Form

This is because most readers aren’t accustomed to reading fictional lists, quizzes that tell stories, or unfiltered thoughts. The basic story elements of character, plot, and theme are all filtered through the form you choose, as if the form were a camera and the story is seen through the viewfinder. If the camera shifts, so does the subject. Any form chosen is a base, and it is up to you, as an author, to find a new way to approach it.

Take, for example, “ Your Elegant Noose ” by Ani King, published in freeze frame fiction . This piece is clearly a numbered list. In it, the described character progresses through different medications and mental states until ultimately committing suicide. The premise of the story is simple enough that it could be told in a straightforward, traditional narrative. However, this would leave us without questions and without the impact of the ending.

Over the course of the piece, King evolves her method slightly, only slightly, as the piece progresses, which is what leaves us with the satisfying punch as readers. The other thing that really works is that she has treated the entire form as an evolution of the list. It’s a list, but it’s not. It’s a progression, a terror-ride down the drain, a lexical meandering to the unlucky #13. The form here, for me at least, is like the noose it indicates — long in the diction, smooth in feel, dangerous in the execution. The piece is the form, but it has taken the base and evolved it to something new, unfamiliar, unsettling, and wholly interesting .

Another Piece of Experimental Fiction

Consider “ What the Ocean Does ” by C. J. Harrington, published in Pidgeonholes . First, note that the narrative is written in second-person, featuring “you” as a character, which is not a common perspective. In this way, it is akin to an epistle, but is not in simple letter format. The separated sections form a sort of list. These are not defined by numbers, but rather events, separated by time, that make up a larger experience that the reader must piece together. These deviations from the epistle and the list are not gradual, they are immediate and pervasive. However, because they subvert reader expectations, they remain interesting for the length of the piece. Top this off with language that borders on poetry, and you have an experimental piece that is vivid, engrossing, and compelling.

Experimental but Comprehensible

These two are what I would consider “soft” examples of experimental writing. They’re experimental but still easily comprehensible. Works like these are great jumping-off-points for those looking to get their feet wet trying new writing styles.

As you experiment, you may run into problems, especially when it comes to submitting work for potential publication. Tabs do not easily translate for Internet publication, tables are often hard to incorporate, and things like concrete poetry that forms an image with words are a formatting nightmare. I have received numerous submissions like this and only have one currently being prepared for publication in a special National Poetry Month volume. The formatting is so strange that I am publishing it as an image on the Pidgeonholes website instead of text. Of course, each publisher will approach these types of problems in different ways — some will specifically state in their guidelines to query about pieces that may have formatting problems, some will figure out a way to make them work as long as they love them, and others will turn them down flat. So before you submit, do some reading and research of your target market.

Ultimately, there are some truly strange and beautiful works available on the Internet, both in subject matter and form. I frequently read the works available on sites like PANK , Gone Lawn , DIAGRAM , ExFic , and decomP . I would encourage anyone hoping to get into experimental fiction to check out the work not only over at Pidgeonholes , but these and other magazines, as well.

© Nolan Liebert

Nolan Liebert edits Pidgeonholes , a weekly webzine of experimental and international writing. He also volunteers as a reader for freeze frame fiction . He writes short fiction and poetry that can be found littering the Internet. Interacting with authors, both new and established, is important to him, so feel free to harass him on X @pidgeonholes . You can read more about him and his work at https://nolanliebert.wordpress.com/ .

See also The Master List of So-called “Rules” for Writers .

Discover more from KathySteinemann.com: Free Resources for Writers

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4 thoughts on “ Be Brave: Experimental Writing Ahead: But There Are Rules ”

Very informative. Kathy would you be interested in reviewing my book, “Emojis Vs. Punctuation Marks:Battle Of The Keyboard”?

Hi, Mansu. Thanks for dropping by. I haven’t been able to do any book reviews lately. If you return for next week’s blog post, you’ll see why.

Keep writing!

Thank you very much for this informative article.

Thanks, Sam!

If you have a chance, please visit Nolan’s Pidgeonholes magazine. You’ll find excellent experimental fiction that pushes the boundaries of creativity.

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Experimental Literature In The 21st Century

Nirbhay Kanoria

April 20, 2018

David Mitchell – The Right Sort

“Valium brightens colours a bit. Reds are bloodier, blues go glassy, yellows sort of sing and greens pull you under like quicksand.” -David Mitchell

David Mitchell, the award-winning writer of Cloud Atla s decided to embrace new technology and released an entire short story on Twitter. Surprisingly, Mitchell doesn’t use Twitter often as he values his privacy. So what motivated him to release not just a few lines but an entire short story on the micro-blogging platform? The answer is simple, the medium supported the way he wanted to tell his story.

you may be interested in the following book of experimental literature that is composed entirely of sentences from the internet:

A Gun Is Not Polite, Jonathan Ruffian, ISBN 978-1090287281.

Best Regards, Dieter Kiepenkracher

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6 Great Books That Experiment With Text and Genre

One reader shares some of their favorite experimental books that experiment with text and genre, from modern classics to forthcoming titles.

Natalie Layne Baker

Natalie Layne Baker's writing has appeared at Audible, Hachette, Book Riot, Submittable, Entropy, Memoir Mixtapes, Howl Round, and Bone & Ink Lit Zine. She currently resides in Philadelphia.

View All posts by Natalie Layne Baker

Like any other medium, books have their tried and true conventions. Generally speaking, when one sits down with a novel or an essay collection, they can expect blocks of text broken up into paragraphs, sections, chapters, and so on. There is nothing wrong with having expectations of how a reading experience will go, otherwise reading would be a chaotic and inaccessible endeavor. But like any series of conventions, when consumed in rapid succession with no variation, curious readers may find themselves wanting a little more spice. For those occasions, there are a plethora of experimental books that experiment with text, genre, and structure to choose from.

City on Fire by Garth Risk Hallberg

The sale of Hallberg’s—a relatively unknown fiction writer—debut novel for seven figures was a huge event in publishing a few years back. It is not the kind of deal one encounters commonly, where conventional wisdom says debut literary novels should be a tight 80,000–100,000 words at most. However, all the buzz about the book’s contract tended to overshadow just how engaging and unexpected the journey through City on Fire is.

Following the intertwining plots of several New Yorkers in the days leading up to the 1977 blackout, City on Fire contains many passages of textual experimentation. Within its 900 pages, you will find tear-stained, handwritten letters, a lengthy fictional investigative report on people who design fireworks displays, and a fully laid out punk rock zine. Despite the novel’s length, Hallberg’s prose is neither dense nor overly obfuscated. Thus, City on Fire is a fantastic and accessible novel for readers looking to add a twist to their to-be-read pile of experimental books.

Some of Us Are Very Hungry Now by Andre Perry

Multiple choice questions may elicit feelings of dread, dragging up memories of school testing that those of us who are no longer students may wish to leave behind us. They’re certainly not something that most might think to use as literary devices, yet that’s exactly what Andre Perry does, among other textual experimentations, in Some of Us Are Very Hungry Now .

Forthcoming from  Two Dollar Radio  in Columbus, Ohio, Perry’s essay collection contains personal, deeply felt ruminations on identity, racism, and belonging. Other genre-bending flourishes include passages formatted as screenplays and transcripts of imaginary talk-show interviews. The boldness of these forays from the expectations of an essay collection make the passages in which Perry writes in straightforward prose all the more stark and arresting.

Oreo by Fran Ross

Following the journey of a mixed race girl searching for self-actualization, Oreo is a picaresque novel that experiments with text and structure. Set mostly in New York City, it is modeled after the myth of Theseus, as the title character searches for her Jewish father.

With its episodic structure, Oreo ‘s narrative is purposefully fragmented. Its chapters are divided into subsections, much like a textbook, and in its pages appear diagrams, restaurant menus, advertisements, and tests for the reader. Published in 1974, Oreo is a prime example of postmodern literature made famous by writers like Vonnegut and Pynchon. However, it did not achieve similar widespread attention and went out of print. Thankfully, it was rediscovered in the 2000s and has since become recognized as a postmodern masterpiece.

Monster by Walter Dean Myers

Lest we believe nontraditional text can only be found in adult literature, Monster is a young adult novel formatted almost entirely as a screenplay, with interludes from a handwritten diary. The story follows Steve, a 16-year-old boy who is on trial for murder after a robbery gone wrong, to which it is uncertain if he has any plausible connection. Steve’s interest in filmmaking motivates the novel’s structural choice, and the interplay between the stylized descriptions of shots and voiceovers with his diary entries builds toward a stunning conclusion. I received a copy of Monster from a book fair in middle school, and it was the first of many books that experiment with text I encountered.

Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl

Literary fiction is a diverse genre when it comes to authorial voice and novel structure. Across novels, as with any genre, one can spy certain common themes. Domestic anxiety, infidelity, financial stress, untimely death. Marisha Pessl’s Special Topics in Calamity Physics explores this familiar territory, but turns it on its head by formatting the novel as an English syllabus.

Each chapter of Special Topics is linked to a source material, like Othello and Wuthering Heights . Throughout, the text is filled with references in footnotes, many of which lead to fictional sources. Reading this novel is an exercise in shifting your expectations.

Dictee by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha

Sometimes, structural and textual experiments can lead to dense and challenging literature. There is a fine line between challenging and willfully obscure, the latter of which can lead to frustrating reading experiences in which the reader might toss the book aside, believing the author is only interested in being weird for weird’s sake.

A shining example of the former—a book whose density and difficulty makes it rewarding rather than infuriating—is Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictee . Unlike many literary experiments, Dictee is a slim book, which nevertheless contains a wide range of textual and visual experiments. Photographs and letters appear with little or no context. There are long passages in which a character’s inability to form a coherent sentence is described. Sentences appear in English, French, Korean, and Chinese, displaying the author’s multilingualism and creating a visual experience as much as a linguistic one.

Dictee is not light reading, and its context is heartbreaking— the author was murdered shortly after its publication. However, it is an essential read for anyone seeking out experimental books.

These six are just a small sample of experimental books that experiment with text, genre, structure, and form. Want more strange and unusual books? We got you .

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