Experimental Fiction

Characters and setting

Traditional works of fiction consist of characters with clearly defined traits placed in realistic and predictable settings. For instance, there is always a clear demarcation between a protagonist and an antagonist, with the former being portrayed as more sympathetic than the latter.

However, writers of experimental fiction often blur the lines between the protagonist and antagonist. Sometimes, there are no clear-cut heroes or villains in the story. They may base stories around protagonists completely lacking any redeemable qualities, otherwise known as an anti-hero. Who knows - maybe they choose to not have any main characters at all!

Genre tropes

As mentioned before, we expect tragedies to have unhappy cathartic endings; works of crime fiction to end with the writer solving the mystery for the reader. Horror consists of supernatural forces, dark, secluded settings and foreshadowing.

Experimental fiction challenges these very genre tropes, often in unexpected ways, such as by suddenly deviating from genre conventions or by genre mashing. For instance, a tragedy may suddenly include traces of comedy. An innocent romance story may turn into something sinister and dark. A murder mystery may become progressively obscure and mysterious.

Linear storylines

Traditional plot structures of having an exposition, internal conflict, rising action, climax, falling action and resolution can be restrictive to experimental writers.

Hence, experimental writers often break the chronological order of plotlines to produce stories that are non-linear and unexpected.

Fictional vs non-fictional narratives

In experimental fiction, fictional stories are often interrupted with segments of non-fictional anecdotes. Writers may suddenly link fictional events in the story to non-fictional anecdotes from their real lives or provide a commentary on the plotline or their writing style.

Lincoln in the Bardo (2017) by George Saunders is an experimental novel inspired by the death of Abraham Lincoln's son William Wallace Lincoln. Saunders was inspired by newspaper accounts of Lincoln visiting his son's grave, which made him contemplate how a father may grieve the loss of his son while running a nation. While the story consists of historical facts about Lincoln, it is set in a fictional place called Bardo, which is a space between life and death where Lincoln's dead son is greeted by multiple fictional characters (who are also dead) trying to help him pass over.

Form

Experimental works of fiction can be written in both poetry and prose or incorporate combinations of the two.

In Grief is a Thing with Feathers (2015), Max Porter blends poetry and prose to contemplate the grief experienced by a family coping with their mother's death. The book consists of random memories, dialogues taken from conversations and poetry to discuss the themes of love and loss.

Language, syntax and wordplay

Imagine forgetting all the rules of grammar, including the spelling of words, their meanings and how they fit together. Experimental fiction explores different ways of playing around with language, syntax and wordplay. This can be done by ascribing new meanings to words.

Ella Minnow Pea (2001) by Mark Dunn is a progressively lipogrammatic novel. This means that as the story progresses, more and more letters of the alphabet are excluded from the narration. As the story progresses, the text becomes harder to decipher as the spellings become more creative and phonetic.

Format

When experimental writers see a blank page, they view endless possibilities when it comes to the layout of how their text must be printed on the page. Instead of the rigid consistency of margins, horizontal lines, paragraphs and chapters, experimental works of fiction may form different designs on the page. They may leave spaces blank or make use of different fonts, font sizes or images to break up the traditional prose layout.

The Raw Shark Texts (2007) by Steven Hall narrates the story of a person who wakes up without memories and begins following clues written by himself in the past. The mystery unsolves to the revelation of a conceptual shark that is preying on the memories of the protagonist. Interestingly, the printed text has been presented on the page in such a way that it represents a shark progressively moving towards the reader throughout the book.

Narrative devices

The narrative point of view in a piece of experimental fiction may be constantly changing, with stories being told from the perspectives of different characters.

Additionally, the narrative style may be in the form of letters, flashbacks, scientific reports, memoirs, streams of consciousness, etc.

A recent experimental crime fiction novel called His Bloody Project (2015) presents the murder mystery of a triple homicide through witness statements, testimonies written by the accused, medical reports and newspaper accounts covering the murder trial. But guess what - all of these seemingly non-fictional narrative modes are actually expertly fabricated by the writer Graeme Macrae Burnet.

Escapism

Traditional realist works are escapist, that is, they aim for the reader to get lost in the story. However, experimental fiction, by playing around with form, structure, style, language and syntax, beg the reader to constantly engage with the form or the writing style rather than the subject matter. Readers are always kept hyper-aware of the ways in which the words are presented on the page, the meanings ascribed to them and the structuring of the overall story.

Comprehensibility

Since experimental writers constantly keep readers on their toes, their works may be harder to read. They are intellectually challenging as they constantly clash with the readers' expectations, making them incomprehensible, frustrating and unsettling.

Experimental Fiction Examples

There are rare examples of popular experimental fiction that are commercial successes, as this genre is more focused on finding innovations within literature rather than being enjoyed and understood by a wide readership. However, here are a few interesting examples of short stories and novels that fall under the genre of experimental fiction.

Experimental fiction short stories

Short stories within the experimental fiction genre can sometimes be confusing and dizzying due to the lack of time given to the reader to adjust to new, unexpected forms of storytelling. However, due to their digestible lengths, most readers are more forgiving and open-minded when it comes to short stories that are experimental in form and content.

'Happy Endings' (1983)

This short story by Margaret Atwood is broken down into six short sections labelled A through F. Each section details the romantic relationship between John and Mary. Within each section, the beginning of their love story is drastically different. The readers are forced to engage with the story, sort of as though they are in a game with multiple choices as options. However, soon the reader realises that no matter which alphabet they choose, each scenario ends with the death of John and Mary. Sometimes these are happy endings where the couple marries and dies together, whereas others are seemingly not as pleasant.

Through this narration, Atwood is repeating the same exact point - no matter how relationships go, they eventually end up with us dying, either happy with our partner or under other circumstances.

'Fable' (2016)

In his short story, Charles Yu presents our main character sitting in his therapist's office. He is narrating several fables, introducing characters living in a medieval time, a time of magic, curses, and swords. With each fable, the narration becomes more intimate and revealing. Through the course of the narration, the readers begin to realise that the fables contain references to events in the protagonist's own real life. There are parallels between the fictional stories the protagonist is narrating and his own life. He is just telling his story through the fictional fables of his characters in an attempt to perhaps avoid opening up to his therapist. With each fable, we begin to understand our protagonist more and see through his problems.

Experimental fiction novels

Now it's time to look at longer examples of experimental fiction by writers who are more daring and creative.

The Unfortunates (1969)

English author B. S. Johnson published the story of a sportswriter who is sent to a city on an assignment, where he is haunted by the memories of a friend who has died of cancer.

The interesting aspect of the story is that it consists of 27 unbound chapters, which can be read in any order by the reader - giving the possibility of 15.5 septillion possible combinations. This structural technique of storytelling mirrors the way memories work in our minds.

House of Leaves (2000)

This horror story by Mark Z. Danielewski is about a family who moves into a house that seems bigger on the inside than on the outside. That sounds like any other haunted house story, right?

However, this is not a typical haunted house story. This story has been written from the point of view of multiple narrators. Each narrator is an occupant of the house who is attempting to investigate the story of the death of the previous occupant. However, as soon as one narrator dies, the investigation becomes the obsession of the house's next occupant. The story is presented in the form of an academic record of research reports, interviews, videos and notes written by each of the occupants (or narrators) of the house who are compiling the observations made by the previous occupants.

The word 'house' is printed in blue ink every time it appears. As soon as the narrative voice changes, so do the fonts in which the story is written. The layout of the words on the pages almost forms a sort of labyrinth, sometimes written upside down or backwards and in need of deciphering.