What makes you decide to go all experimental with a story? I think this is a plot issue because experimental directly deals with the way you tell or present a story. Maybe it's an overall thing, but it's always a big risk. Have you played experimental ways of telling your story? Taken on new forms in your writing? Are you doing anything different with your story that could be classified as experimental?
I usually try experimental stuff because it's fun or I'm reading someone else and I like how they're doing it and want to play around with it. I rarely go all experimental on stuff I plan on taking seriously, but if I find something I like that works while bodging around, then I'll try to incorporate it into a good final piece.
Well, this is a thread about it. But if you haven't been exposed to experimental literature, I don't think any thread is going to help you understand it. There are tons of examples of published works that fall into this category. I was hoping to hear from some who have tried branching out into these sort of storytelling forms and how it has worked for them.
Just wondering, but why don't you go experimental with stuff you take seriously? Is it too much of a risk?
Because it just generally comes out bad, ugly, and unrefined on first go and I'd rather not inflict that on anyone in any seriousness. It's like a painter drawing doodles of himself in a cowboy hat on a napkin and trying to pass it off as great art. It just don't work unless you're really good or already famous, and I ain't neither.
I see "experimental" as form rather than plot. Everything that could have been done to plot has already been done and the rest is just graphic design. Any examples of experimental story? Danielewski doesn't count.
I'd say I tried when I was a teenager, but now as an adult I don't do it anymore. As a teen, I tried to write a crime story in first person, where the narrator was supposed to be the murderer but that I wouldn't reveal this till at the end. I also tried to write a story purely from the perspective of a newborn baby, actively avoiding words and concepts that a baby simply wouldn't have a word for wherever possible. Both of these stories lasted only a few pages long as I had no idea how to do it. Another time, though I didn't do it so much to experiment as I just thought "Hey this is a cool idea!" (I was 12 ok?), I wrote a "novel" (what I saw as novels back then - it was probably 30-40 pages long) where there were 4 narrators. The whole thing was written almost like a continuous dialogue where each speaker had a different font style, like italicised, or bold, or bold and italicised lol. And they'd interrupt each other, just like a dialogue, or finish each other's lines off etc. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Not saying it's a good idea but heck it was fun. Oh I also enjoyed finishing books with "to be continued" or starting books with "the end" I thought I was so clever. Before anyone makes fun of me, I did all this as a teenager, ok? I think when you're younger, you're just more open to things. You know less about how things "should" be and you care much less about that too, and the positive to being that way is you try other ideas. You think of things and you really believe in them, and you plunge headlong into them and if it doesn't work, no hard feelings. You got time. Whereas now, as an adult, you're much more bound by conventions and rules, you also have a better idea of what works and what doesn't, as well as what might be difficult to execute and what might be easier, and you also have far less time to waste. So you choose the easier route, because half the time it's almost as good or maybe better than any wild ideas you have. 9 out of 10 wild ideas probably won't work and that sorta time "wasting" just isn't a privilege a lot of adults have anymore, nor one they wanna use. You're less fascinated by things in general, less easily enamored, and I think it also means you see fewer possibilities, and thus become less experimental. But as a kid, I had no shame about my work and saw everything I wrote as fun and a success in my own eyes - it's empowering and enables you to take more risks, I think because you're more willing to give things a chance before you shoot it down. And if it doesn't work, you don't see it as a waste of time. It was just something you wanted to try and you tried it
Those are quite good (ideas), 2 out of the 3 already exist as successful novels But the fact that I can only name one novel for each idea means that those ideas remain underexplored. They still have great potential, although they won't be as "experimental" as they were before those two other peoples went and spoiled the novelty of it .
@Mckk -- I don't see experimental fiction as a young mans's game. Actually quite the opposite. I'm not one of those writers who claims to have been writing since they were six. I really didn't start writing until I was an adult and I sure as hell didn't start with anything experimental. But now that I know the rules inside and out for the most part, I don't see it as a waste of time if I do something different. I think it's sad to view experimental work as a wast of time. Maybe it's harder and sure there are times when it's not going to work, but can't that be said about a lot of writing without it being experimental. There is another member on here who has let me read some of their work. I think it's the experimental aspect that is going to help them get published. In my opinion, they are totally pulling it off. And I don't believe this is a young member. I like to read this experimental stuff. At first I'm always like, What? They can't do that. But then they do and it works. Didn't everyone like The Road? A Brief History of Seven Killings was pretty experimental. Those books won prizes and weren't written my kids or very young people. I think you need a certain level of maturity and skill to pull of something that's really outside the box.
Oh I totally agree with you it takes experience and maturity to actually pull off an experiment. And it's not that I don't think adults experiment but young people do, but my theory is I think young people are much more likely to experiment as compared to adults. But yes, to pull off an experiment, you need experience, and young people are also as likely to copy as they are to experiment, really (the amount of fanfic or simply ideas I stole directly from people. When I was 10, I wrote a 90+ handwritten story on "the jungle healers" who were tiny people who "borrowed" stuff from around them - Roald Dahl anyone?) But I think all this is also just the irony of life. Young people often have the drive and passion but none of the insight, wisdom or maturity, whereas older people have insight and wisdom and maturity but no longer the drive, passion, or self-belief to pursue something. The most successful are older people who never forgot their youth, as it were. And I actually do remember one more "experiment" - I tried to portray an "extra" as the protagonist, to introduce the protagonist only later in the chapter, just to mislead the reader Did this when I first started my WIP around the age of 20 or 21. Later I realised what a stupid idea that was. Tried to kill her off or even delete her from the story altogether. She's now a POV character who features heavily in the subplot it's like she clung on and wouldn't leave. Happy accident, perhaps. Or fruits of my experiment? Not sure how to look at it really, but I'm glad she's there. Would never have had this character at all if I wasn't being silly and thinking "Hey wouldn't this be cool?"
