English 11 / Unit 6: Contemporary American Literature
6.6 Techniques in Contemporary Fiction
Notes
Contemporary authors experiment with how stories are told.
- Magical realism: realistic settings with magical elements treated as ordinary.
- Multiple narrators: several characters tell parts of the story.
- Metafiction: a story that draws attention to its own storytelling.
- Code-switching: moving between languages or dialects, showing identity and community.
- Hybrid forms: graphic memoirs, verse novels, and mixes of poetry and prose.
- Worked example: a novel in which a ghost lives with a family and everyone treats it as normal uses magical realism.
Practice
A story set in a modern town in which a character floats away and no one is surprised is an example of:
Magic is accepted as ordinary in a realistic setting.
Code-switching in a story helps to:
Moving between languages signals identity and community.
Why might an author use a verse novel or graphic memoir?
Hybrid forms expand how stories can be told.
Ready for more? Take the Unit 6 test.