Tumgik
#all the links should work but this is tumblugh so who knows
klywrites · 3 years
Text
UNCONVENTIONAL NOVELS
[last updated Oct 21, 2022]
(a list I put together... of lists I did not put together)
For those interested in techniques and genres that are outside of the mainstream market in the West/Americas, here's a post of resources you can refer to for inspiration, research, or quiet support.
DISCLAIMER !! : Note there will be some overlap and you don’t have to like or agree with anything here—I certainly don't. This is mainly for research and interest! Also, while you may come across books by diverse authors, a lot of the ones listed here may be outdated and probably Eurocentric, but there are also many forms and structures that were originated by authors of colour. Please don’t limit your research to this post. I will update this post as time goes on.
If the contents of the books you find here don’t interest you then maybe structure will (the point is to examine form, too, not just content). 
Tumblr media
some recommended reading
Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative  by Jane Alison - in this book, the author explores form and pattern through close readings of various (niche/unconventional) novels.
This post by @whimsyqueen​ has a summary of the book and its parts.
What is Postmodernism in Literature? - a brief Youtube video presented by Dr. Masood Raja (Postcolonialism channel); simple yet informative.
Wikipedia articles - antinovel | verse novel | defamiliarization | metafiction | digression (literary) | fragmentary novel | weird fiction | new weird | slipstream | experimental literature | postmodern literature | interactive novel | hypertext fiction | LitRPG | cybertext | New Sincerity | ergodic literature | 
I’ll continue to update this post over time or write more.
Tumblr media
anti-novels
No rules, no problems. Take all the tropes and conventions of the typical novel and throw them away. Or make up your own conventions.
Goodreads: list of 100+
Barnes & Noble: flex your reading muscles
Millions article: long live the anti-novel, built from scratch
a review of Subimal Misra’s work This Could Have Become Ramayan Chamar’s Tale: Two Anti-Novels
bizarre, weird fiction
If you ever wanted to read or write about cat men on Mars, or a bear who talks and plays the saxophone, or people with blue butts... well, you can.
Book Riot: 100 strange and unusual novels
Bustle: 13 super strange books
Goodreads: Monster/Erotica books
Owlcation: 10 of the weirdest novels ever written
blog post by Z. Burns ft. 7 more weird books
experimental
Hard to define but generally more about form than content. Often but not always used to refer to ergodic literature (see next heading). Maybe you want half your story told in footnotes. Maybe your paragraphs are separated from the main body of text and dispersed all over the page. Maybe some of it is upside-down or sideways. Perhaps some words are blacked out. Since there’s no hard definition of “experimental” the term is sometimes used as an umbrella term. For specific examples of ergodic literature, see the next heading.
The Modern Novel - includes a list of books and a breakdown of what makes them experimental; there are also further links at the end
Goodreads list
Bustle: 10 experimental novels that aren’t hard to read
Standout Books: 5 experimental novels that will inspire any writer
(preview) Experimental Fiction: An Introduction for Readers and Writers Julie Armstrong
ergodic literature (experimental)
Experimental literature often taken to an extreme. In ergodic literature , “nontrivial effort is required to allow the reader to traverse the text.” These books contain unconventional typography, as mentioned above. Perhaps there are empty pages, pages with one word, chapters that contain only a poem where others follow a different structure, etc. 
Examples include: House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski; Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar; and even, to an extent, the 18th Century classic, Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne, which presents multiple narrative techniques unusual for its time.
Disturbing the Text: Typographic devices in literary fiction, Zoe Sadokierski (recommended)
this essay will give you a fairly comprehensive look at many examples of ergodic literature, along with some substantial analyses (images included!)
sparse plot / low conflict / books where “nothing happens”
Very basically, a plot is a sequence of events affected through cause-and-effect. In the West, audiences often expect there to be a linear series of conflicts that ultimately leads to a big “showdown”. This is not a universal narrative structure, and personally I would love to see more “cozy” fantasy novels that aren’t about saving the world or destroying an oppressive government.
Reddit recommendations - “a book where nothing happens”
Book Riot: in praise of plotless books
(blog) mundane and slice-of-life SFF recommendations
 sketch story (wikipedia) | literary sketch (britannica)
“I would like to read a novel that is composed of numerous very interesting facts, but which nonetheless fails to cohere for me as a book.”
● source: (blog): I would like to read a dull plotless novel...
List Challenges: novels with no plot whatsoever
Reddit thread on slice-of-life/mundane speculative fiction
recommended reading
the significance of plot without conflict - an excellent post on the kishotenketsu structure, which is influenced by East Asian values such as unity and harmony over conflict and resolution.
what is iyashikei and why should you care? - often found in anime and manga, the purpose of this genre is to provide healing
dialogue novels
Novels composed mostly or entirely of dialogue.
article on The Rumpus (recommended)
Goodreads list
fragmentary novels
A popular example that comes to mind is The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. Fragmented novels are novels that are made up of fragments, vignettes, etc. that can be read on their own or as part of the whole book. In some cases a fragmentary novel might be an anthology of short stories, or a composite novel (e.g., the Wayside School series), or an epistolary novel.
fractiousfiction: reading list of 50+ books
seven fragmentary novels that aren’t The Pale King
Bomb Magazine article on Mary Robison’s Why Did I Ever?
how fragmented novels can be fulfilling reading
fragmented narratives are broken, independent, and honest
novels in verse / verse novel
A novel told through poetry rather than prose. It differs from epic poems in that a verse novel generally must have both poetic elements (verse form, imagery, lyricism, figurative language) and novelistic conventions (such as character development, conflict and resolution, etc.).
Book Riot list
Epic Reads: poetry books and novels in verse
Goodreads list
Riveted Lit: 17 books in verse you need to read
recommendations:
Blood Water Paint by Joy McCullough (thank you @ellatholmes​ for recommending this to me!) - inspired by the life of Artemisia Gentileschi, whose paintings many people recognize.
Inside Out & Back Again by Thanhha Lai - (Vietnamese author) - based on Lai’s first year as an immigrant in the United States, Kim Hà and her family move to the US to escape the Vietnam War.
The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo - (Dominican author) - a coming-of-age story about a girl named Xiomara, who explores her feelings and experiences through poetry.
Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds - (Black author) - as Will rides down the elevator, he has sixty seconds to decide if he’s going to kill his brother’s murderer.
The Last Fifth Grade of Emerson Elementary by Laura Shovan - a class of 5th grade students writes poetry journals before their school gets demolished.
Tumblr media
oddly specific FAQ :
“I mostly love world-building and just want my characters to talk about it.”  Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities might inspire you.
“What if I want to write an entire novel using headlines or lists?” That’s exactly what Dorthe Nors did with Minna Needs Rehearsal Space, and Days. Sample here.
“What if I want my chapters to be out of order?” Check out Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar. It comes with reading instructions that state, “In its own way, this book consists of many books, but two books above all.”
“What if I want to make a weird, confusing, playful experience of my book and write sideways, upside-down, use lots of footnotes, and make my readers jump all over the book to figure out what’s going on? Look inside of House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. Like Hopscotch, this novel is an example of ergodic literature but taken to the extreme. It is spectacular in form. Another example would be S. by Doug Dorst and J.J. Abrams.
“But most of these lean literary and I want to write genre fiction. I can’t write a fragmented fantasy anti-novel, it just wouldn’t work for fantasy’s conventions.” YOU CAN IF YOU MUSTER UP THE COURAGE AND FIND A WAY TO DO IT. Writers genre-bend all the time! Throw out conventions that don’t work and bring in ones that do. Creating is the only thing we have control over. Do it your own way.
“What if I’m writing a novel with 15 different plotlines and a million characters, and I want every paragraph to be from a different POV??” Fritz Leiber did that with The Wanderer (which happens to be sci-fi).
Tumblr media
If you’d like to support me while I write stories with plots reserved for gardens and/or dead bodies, consider buying me a ko-fi. Thanks!
2K notes · View notes
lemontrash · 5 years
Text
Reply to Anon
As Tumblugh is being a grade-a chundlebutt this evening, I’ve had to put my reply here. Here we go! 
____
Anon said: 
hi typed in ガンダム コロニー 植民地 and it's just literally really a colony. Multiple articles, wiki entries, and dictionaries have スペースコロニー in the description of 宇宙植民地 as the origin of the translation. All those articles describe space colonies as "they are 宇宙植民地 as the name suggests", "giant 植民地 erected in outer space" etc. Google in Japan search. Only people who are wondering about any ambiguity that doesn't exist seems to be tumblr 😚。Pretty straightforward. Also English sounds cool, so that's why
(part 2) Like have you noticed the amount of faux English they use? They say モビルスーツ instead of 人型機動兵器, ニュータイプ instead of 新人類, スペースノイド instead of 宇宙人, アースノイド instead of 地球人, and so much more (that’s not even getting into the weapons lol 😭). There’s even entire online dictionaries dedicated to the lingo in Gundam because they use so much faux English mumbo jumbo like how Harry Potter uses plausible sounding Latin (look up the dictionary it’s insane the amount if words listed). Gundam is pretentious
_____________________________________________________________
Hi anon! That’s interesting! i try and search a lot when i translate to double check but I’m not a native speaker so yep- sometimes I get it wrong. Translation is difficult :( 
I see what you’re saying, and yes in the context of the show, the two words aren’t much spliced and diced, but I still have some confusion and some questions:
So, both these words translate to ‘colony’ in English, and I can see how 殖民地is used to define コロニー. Plus I definitely agree there’s a big ‘English is cool’ factor but -
Can we call コロニー ‘faux English’? I don’t think we can. it’s not the same as アースノイド or ‘モビルスーツ’ Those words are sci-fi jargon pretty much unique to the show. They don’t have another meaning outside of the show context. But ‘コロニー’ does - it’s part of more general Japanese and it is a real English word too. 
So ....outside of the show, do 植民地 and コロニー have the same connotation in general Japanese? Logically, if there’s no or only marginal difference, then if I search アフリカ植民地 and アフリカコロニー, I should get a roughly similar context of results. or a similar mix of results. Like if I searched ‘pavement’ versus ‘sidewalk’ i’d get the same pictures. 
But I don’t. I get this: 
Tumblr media
Searching for ‘アフリカ植民地’gives me information and maps of colonial Africa, but searching ‘アフリカコロニー’ gives me space, ants and penguins. Lots of penguins. 
The text search shows differentiation too:  
Tumblr media Tumblr media
Searching ‘イギリスの植民地’ gives me the PAST - information about the British Empire (and a lot more results!) but searching ‘イギリスのコロニー’ gives me the PRESENT - information about the overseas territories of the United Kingdom. I note that the first link does give information about history but it’s a site and article written by an apparently non-Japanese North American living in North America, so i don’t think that one counts. 
Wikipedia gives me different connotations: 
Tumblr media Tumblr media
So whilst ‘殖民地’ IS in the ‘コロニー’ definition, it moves on to talk about space colonies and lepers and birds almost immediately. It’s not the same connotation. 
In English, we only have the one word - ‘colony’ - and we have to work hard to signal the difference between its historical use and negative connotations compared to its other uses. 
So was I in error to say that the use of コロニー in Gundam Wing is deliberate divorce from the past? Reflecting on the above, yes I was. Not an intentional decision for stylistic ‘politically correctness’ made by the creators anyway. More like just part of the overall trends of word use in Japanese. And of course, ‘English is cool’. 
Am i in error to say that ‘殖民地’ and ‘コロニー’ have different connotations and that the negative historical weight of the word ‘colony’ in English is much more strongly tied to 殖民地 whereas コロニー tends to have all the more forward-thinking, fresh, modern, and neutral connotations? ....I still think I’m on the right track there. More than just ‘English is cool’ don’t these words come with different feelings in Japanese? If your teacher said ‘今日、殖民地について話しています’ would you have a different expectation of the topic compared to if they said ‘今日、コロニーについて話しています’ ?
I don’t know, but it’s certainly a topic that fascinates me! *laughing* I love linguistics. Thanks, anon! Sorry I overthink everything! 
3 notes · View notes