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.

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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:

• lists
• computer code
• forms
• quizzes
• false non-fiction
• metafiction
• epistles
• lipograms
• 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.

However

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

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Mini Bio

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/.

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