Literary Fiction narratives are unique and unprecedented explorations
All writing of the Literary genre as opposed to Mainstream/ Commercial/Traditional and Genre could be considered experimental. Conversely, Genre Fiction such as Sci Fi, Noir Detective, Horror, Fantasy, Mystery, Historical Fiction, Thriller, Paranormal and Romance, tends to stick to formulae and focus on getting the action across for escapist entertainment which is sorely needed in our world, and they sell quite well. Such traditional narratives are rarely found within the same journals, anthologies, and publishing houses as Literary Fiction. However any of those genres can be subverted by an impish author to create something naughty such as Surreal Mystery, or a Horror Anti-Novel, thus taking her narrative into the experimental fiction realms.
The world "genre" is used in more than one way, and it's also a slippery word with subjective meanings to different people, and the categories it relates to are complex. "Genre Fiction" includes the traditional narratives and are rarely found within the same journals, anthologies, and publishing houses as Literary Fiction. Literary Fiction is a genre (category) of fiction, but is not Genre Fiction. People read Genre Fiction expecting it to be predictable, straightforward, accessible, to make them want to turn the pages to find out what happens next, to get to the point cleanly and contain lots of action. Literary Fiction on the other hand may be more surprising in form, and more challenging intellectually, and it has very high standards of quality and importance that deal more often with character-driven inner explorations of ideas, and language-driven beauty that propels readers through by the heightened attention to the effects of words. It is generally asks more of the reader the more it subverts traditions of narrative. Literary Fiction is usually on the cutting edge to some degree. Authors who push further within Literary Fiction into new territory are writing Avant-Garde, Non-Traditional, Innovative, Experimental Literature. These are all basically words for the same phenomenon, thus which one you use is a matter of personal preference.
Experimental Literature can go beyond any labels of sub genres that exist within Literary Fiction, or they can push the narrative to perform within those categories. Some of the sub genres of Literary Fiction include the Irreal, Absurdism, Meta-fiction, French New Novel, and New Wave Fabulism. Literary Fiction tends to be more character-driven than Genre, Pulp, Commercial, Mainstream Fiction, which is usually action-driven. The more Experimental texts are more concept-driven, in which the unusual structure of the telling of the story draws attention to itself as having inherent meaning that is part of the story. Since the dawn of Modernism in the last century, and then Post-Modernism, Literary Fiction has become more self-conscious, and isn't even always expected to create rounded characters: Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot is an example of that, or the works of Antonio Artaud.
Some genres and sub genres (again, this labeling is not a science, so what is one person's genre is another person's sub genre) can overlap, but not always, with what people consider Literary and Experimental styles. Steampunk and Bizarro are examples of that.
Some of the more famous Experimental writers are Thomas Pynchon, John Barthes, Frederick Barthleme, Italo Calvino, Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein. The first author considered in the Experimental category is Laurence Sterne who wrote The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy. Well-known full length movies of Experimental Fiction include 8 1/2 and others by Fredericko Fellini, Last Year at Marienbad based on the French New Novel by Robbe-Grillet. And movie shorts which eschew plot, character, continuity, any semblance of reality resemble the more Avant-Garde forms of Experimental Fiction. Dog Star Man by Stan Brackage is an example.
For examples of some current techniques of experimentation which are all explained as such by the authors, you can read Exclusive Magazine. To learn more about Experimental Literature through articles, find publishers, and more, check out Everything Experimental Writing. Experimental Writing is often non-linear, discordant, disorienting, but it can be instead organically flowing and musical. It is rarely straight realism but it can employ that technique.
Literary Fiction is expected to be completely original, each new work creating its own niche, its own concept. Every writer should have a unique voice that identifies him. There is no clear demarcation between types of writing. I have taught a huge number of writers who are working on mainstream, conventional prose. I have also edited ground-breaking Literary novels for sophisticated authors who have been at their craft for decades.
Article at Writing-World by Tantra Bensko
Example by Bill Yarrow
A Portable Childhood by Charlies C Cole
Wearable Book
Ultimate Game Guide
This is a Book by Demitri Martin
I had to stop teaching experimental fiction classes with Writers College because the school shut down, but I regularly teach it through UCLA Extension Writing Program. I also taught Advanced Experimental Fiction Workshop with this academy before. Anyone interested in a group who has at least one other person who can commit, contact me to discuss.
Free Introductory Experimental Writing Course
This 16 part Free Online Experimental Fiction Writing Course I hope will be a useful resource for some writers who are curious about what Innovative Fiction is and how to break into it. I assume most who engage with it will simply read it, get some new understanding and ideas, and move on, or maybe some day try an exercise or two. That's great, and please enjoy it.
It is not like my regular classes, which have long thorough lectures and assignment descriptions, and can be customized to the student, and are very linear in progression, covering all the topics, and strategies, and publication, and many readings by other authors, and different topics than these, though there is some overlap. It contains exercises to write in new ways, such as a story made out of a list.
For some Ideas
Artifice Wish List
About Classic Innovative Stories and Books
One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand
The Garden of Forking Paths
Lost in the Funhouse
The Waves
Tristram Shandy
Hopscotch
Tender Buttons
If on a winters night a traveler
Some Current Stars
Ben Marcus
Matt Bell
Amanda Sparks
Robert Kloss
Alissa Nutting
Miekal And
Lance Olson
Eckhard Gerdes
Kate Bernheimer
Lily Hoang
Marcus Speh
Dennis Schneiderman
Blake Butler
Joanna Ruocco
Kyle Minor
Richard Thomas
Peter Tieryas Liu
The world "genre" is used in more than one way, and it's also a slippery word with subjective meanings to different people, and the categories it relates to are complex. "Genre Fiction" includes the traditional narratives and are rarely found within the same journals, anthologies, and publishing houses as Literary Fiction. Literary Fiction is a genre (category) of fiction, but is not Genre Fiction. People read Genre Fiction expecting it to be predictable, straightforward, accessible, to make them want to turn the pages to find out what happens next, to get to the point cleanly and contain lots of action. Literary Fiction on the other hand may be more surprising in form, and more challenging intellectually, and it has very high standards of quality and importance that deal more often with character-driven inner explorations of ideas, and language-driven beauty that propels readers through by the heightened attention to the effects of words. It is generally asks more of the reader the more it subverts traditions of narrative. Literary Fiction is usually on the cutting edge to some degree. Authors who push further within Literary Fiction into new territory are writing Avant-Garde, Non-Traditional, Innovative, Experimental Literature. These are all basically words for the same phenomenon, thus which one you use is a matter of personal preference.
Experimental Literature can go beyond any labels of sub genres that exist within Literary Fiction, or they can push the narrative to perform within those categories. Some of the sub genres of Literary Fiction include the Irreal, Absurdism, Meta-fiction, French New Novel, and New Wave Fabulism. Literary Fiction tends to be more character-driven than Genre, Pulp, Commercial, Mainstream Fiction, which is usually action-driven. The more Experimental texts are more concept-driven, in which the unusual structure of the telling of the story draws attention to itself as having inherent meaning that is part of the story. Since the dawn of Modernism in the last century, and then Post-Modernism, Literary Fiction has become more self-conscious, and isn't even always expected to create rounded characters: Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot is an example of that, or the works of Antonio Artaud.
Some genres and sub genres (again, this labeling is not a science, so what is one person's genre is another person's sub genre) can overlap, but not always, with what people consider Literary and Experimental styles. Steampunk and Bizarro are examples of that.
Some of the more famous Experimental writers are Thomas Pynchon, John Barthes, Frederick Barthleme, Italo Calvino, Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein. The first author considered in the Experimental category is Laurence Sterne who wrote The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy. Well-known full length movies of Experimental Fiction include 8 1/2 and others by Fredericko Fellini, Last Year at Marienbad based on the French New Novel by Robbe-Grillet. And movie shorts which eschew plot, character, continuity, any semblance of reality resemble the more Avant-Garde forms of Experimental Fiction. Dog Star Man by Stan Brackage is an example.
For examples of some current techniques of experimentation which are all explained as such by the authors, you can read Exclusive Magazine. To learn more about Experimental Literature through articles, find publishers, and more, check out Everything Experimental Writing. Experimental Writing is often non-linear, discordant, disorienting, but it can be instead organically flowing and musical. It is rarely straight realism but it can employ that technique.
Literary Fiction is expected to be completely original, each new work creating its own niche, its own concept. Every writer should have a unique voice that identifies him. There is no clear demarcation between types of writing. I have taught a huge number of writers who are working on mainstream, conventional prose. I have also edited ground-breaking Literary novels for sophisticated authors who have been at their craft for decades.
Article at Writing-World by Tantra Bensko
Example by Bill Yarrow
A Portable Childhood by Charlies C Cole
Wearable Book
Ultimate Game Guide
This is a Book by Demitri Martin
I had to stop teaching experimental fiction classes with Writers College because the school shut down, but I regularly teach it through UCLA Extension Writing Program. I also taught Advanced Experimental Fiction Workshop with this academy before. Anyone interested in a group who has at least one other person who can commit, contact me to discuss.
Free Introductory Experimental Writing Course
This 16 part Free Online Experimental Fiction Writing Course I hope will be a useful resource for some writers who are curious about what Innovative Fiction is and how to break into it. I assume most who engage with it will simply read it, get some new understanding and ideas, and move on, or maybe some day try an exercise or two. That's great, and please enjoy it.
It is not like my regular classes, which have long thorough lectures and assignment descriptions, and can be customized to the student, and are very linear in progression, covering all the topics, and strategies, and publication, and many readings by other authors, and different topics than these, though there is some overlap. It contains exercises to write in new ways, such as a story made out of a list.
For some Ideas
Artifice Wish List
About Classic Innovative Stories and Books
One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand
The Garden of Forking Paths
Lost in the Funhouse
The Waves
Tristram Shandy
Hopscotch
Tender Buttons
If on a winters night a traveler
Some Current Stars
Ben Marcus
Matt Bell
Amanda Sparks
Robert Kloss
Alissa Nutting
Miekal And
Lance Olson
Eckhard Gerdes
Kate Bernheimer
Lily Hoang
Marcus Speh
Dennis Schneiderman
Blake Butler
Joanna Ruocco
Kyle Minor
Richard Thomas
Peter Tieryas Liu
"I started reading Collapsible Horizon last night - what a way to tell a story! I love your style and I'm digging the spiraling circularity unfolding. I already want to re-read Yard Man, but will wait till the end of the book - for Ouroboros sake. My curiousity is piqued by the in-between spaces. I'm officially a fan - thank you Tantra Bensko!"
“The struggle of literature is in fact a struggle to escape from the confines of language; it stretches out from the utmost limits of what can be said; what stirs literature is the call and attraction of what is not in the dictionary.”
― Italo Calvino