Yes, I have a new book to announce; yes, there is a twist in the plot. But no, there is no twist in the book’s plot! In fact, the book has no plot.
It doesn’t have characters, either.
The twist in the plot in announcing this new book is that it’s a nonfiction book.
I don’t know what kind of demon drove me – refer to George Orwell’s quote decorating the main page of Home for Fiction – but I decided to write a complete guide on writing quality fiction.
The result – somewhat anticlimactically, after the previous sentence – is The Complete Writer: a Guide to Writing Better Fiction.
Clicking on the photo (or on this link) takes you to the Amazon page, where you can read a free preview and purchase The Complete Writer. If you can’t afford the book and look to get it for free, keep reading this post
Defamiliarization, as the word implies, is a process where something familiar is no longer perceived as such. Specifically in writing, defamiliarization in literature refers to a technique (a literary device, in a sense) where the writer offers familiar, common things in an odd, unorthodox way.
The purpose of defamiliarization is to cause the readers to question their perception of reality and, as a result, ultimately redefine it.
In a way, defamiliarization in literature is a destabilizing process. All such literary devices – see, for instance, my post on juxtaposition – enhance the readers’ perception of reality. Therefore, perhaps ironically, although defamiliarization causes you to initially question reality (the known and familiar), through this process it actually facilitates a much deeper and more comprehensive understanding of reality.
In this post we’ll take a closer (yet accessible) look at defamiliarization in literature, with examples and tips on how to use it properly – that is, packing as much symbolic meaning as possible in your text. Remember that literature is more than a sum of its parts, which means that a quality text should inspire more meanings than what its words allow.
A piece of fabric can be the most common, mundane, and everyday thing. But not always…(more…)
No, in case you thought this post contains answers to all your (existential) questions, I’ll disappoint you. It only contains my answers to the questions you asked me for the Home for Fiction contest we recently had; contest results, in other words!
I got quite a few questions – thank you all! – perhaps even a bit more than I expected. In case you missed the whole thing, the contest worked so that you could ask me a question related to my writing, the blog, etc., and then I would pick the five most interesting ones to answer. From these, I’d randomly pick three that would win Amazon gift cards, valued at $10, $20, and $30.
Well, as I said, it’s contest results time! Before we proceed to the answers, a couple of notes:
Since I shared the contest page with friends and acquaintances online, I inevitably got questions from people I already knew. This did not affect my choice of questions…
… and as for the Amazon gift cards, the process was entirely automated. I coded a JavaScript-based name picker to randomly get three names. If you’re interested in its details, the code is available at the end of this post.
With these in mind, let’s take a look at the contest results!
