#meander spiral explode

[haveyoureadthisbook-poll]

Have you read Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative by Jane Alison (2019)?

yes

no

I didn't finish it

I've never heard of it

Voting ended onMay 15, 2025

[klywrites]

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 Also, while you may come across books by diverse authors, a lot of the ones listed here may be outdated and probably Eurocentric, but there are also many forms and structures that were originated by authors of colour.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). 

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.

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.

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).

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!

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

Spiraling.

[leehallfae]

“although we think of narrative as a temporal art, experienced in time like music, of course it’s interestingly visual, too; a story’s as much house or garden as song.”

— jane alison, meander, spiral, explode: design & pattern in narrative

[literaturha]

People have been painting, drawing, carving spirals since the Neolithic period, when the spiral might have been a symbol of life cycles, childbirth, female reproduction. In ancient Greek culture, the Fates—Clotho, Atropos, and Lachesis (Nona, Decuma, and Morta for the Romans)—spun the thread of a person's life, wove its incidents into a fabric, and snipped it when the life was done. Someone performing a magic ritual could spin a magic wheel like a top, as a spurned woman does in Theocritus' second Idyll. 'Draw to my house, my magic wheel, that man of mine,' she chants as she spins, the words themselves conjuring that craved man.

Jane Alison, Meander, Spiral, Explode

[bookcoversonly]

Title: Meander, Spiral, Explode | Author: Jane Alison | Publisher: Catapult (2019)

[lipstickmata]

“Ben Marcus calls the best stories ‘stun guns,’ says they hold you ‘paralyzed on the outside but very nearly spasming within.’

Yes. Think of what we can do. Our hands (as I type I realize that once I’d have said hand, but now most writing takes two hands: curious) can hold a reader fixed, making her feel not her own time but the time we devise. 

A story covering millennia can flit by in six minutes. A storyworld of just a minute can burn four hours in your life.

It’s magic, but a magic that can be mapped, which I suppose makes it a technology.”

--Jane Alison, Meander, Spiral, Explode

[leehallfae]

“ben marcus calls the best stories ‘stun guns,’ says they hold you ‘paralyzed on the outside but very nearly spasming within.’”

— jane alison, meander, spiral, explode: design & pattern in narrative