5 Tips for Adding Surreal Elements to Your Novel

Merriam-Webster defines surrealism as “the principles, ideals, or practice of producing fantastic or incongruous imagery or effects in art, literature, film, or theater by means of unnatural or irrational juxtapositions and combinations.”

For me, it’s that “incongruous” piece that’s always drawn me to surrealistic works of fiction. I like things that don’t go together. Life’s puzzle pieces don’t frequently fit snugly into one another, and when they do, they don’t depict a particularly interesting picture. The magic exists in the empty space between what’s known and what isn’t. Dissonance creates a paradoxical kind of harmony.

(What Is Absurdist Fiction?)

I didn’t invent these guidelines; I observed them in the works of the artists who helped shape my own work. Bret Easton Ellis, J.G. Ballard, Leonora Carrington, Kōbō Abe…I studied their works and tried to isolate the mechanics that produced the effects which so captivated me. This, I’ve found, has been the best way to develop and hone my skills as a writer.

No one is ever reinventing the game. My style is an approximated amalgamation of those who came before me, and it’s made unique by the addition of how I experience the world through the filter of my consciousness. And since nothing is more surreal than the human experience, it will ultimately be the filter of your consciousness which will set your work apart. As a jumping off point, though, I’ve prepared this list of techniques which have worked for me.

1. Establish the World

Surrealism doesn’t work unless the reader has at least some notion of what’s real within the world of your story. My most recent novel, American Narcissus, takes place in a near-future Los Angeles which doesn’t differ too vastly from the one that exists today. It’s established early on that this isn’t a world with flying cars or extraterrestrials serving coffee at Starbucks. You know that Harry Potter isn’t going to show up in the Millennium Falcon, or whatever. This way, when the weirder elements are introduced—red-clad soldiers assaulting civilians in broad daylight, or the Berkeley bear mascot appearing in random places—the reader knows that these things are strange without having to be explicitly told.

2. Don’t Get Too Weird

The key to surrealism is keeping it somewhat close to the reality you’ve established. If you diverge too much, it isn’t surreal anymore; it’s just plain weird. You want the reader to have a sneaking suspicion that something isn’t quite right. A quiet, nameless dread. When things get too crazy and outlandish, it will pull the reader out of the story. If you don’t believe me, go check in on the Bizarro scene and see how those folks are doing. What, you’ve never heard of it? Exactly.

3. Keep the Mood Consistent

Tonal inconsistencies are a problem in and of themselves, but they’re especially deadly when writing surrealistic fiction. If the mood of your story shifts when the surreal elements are introduced, you’ll draw unwanted attention toward them. Surrealism suffers under scrutiny. It loses its biting chill. The incongruence should be created by what is being described, not how it’s being described. Your narrative style shouldn’t be any different when writing about hallucinatory phantoms than it is when you’re writing about someone smoking a cigarette or getting out of bed.

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4. Introduce Potential Unreliability…

A lot of the surreal occurrences in American Narcissus happen in the chapters which follow Arden, the most sensitive and perhaps most troubled of the four main characters. Arden has a pretty debilitating substance abuse problem, and his mind has suffered extensive damage from taking way too many hallucinogens during his time in college. He’s the only one who seems to notice the aforementioned red soldiers, and he experiences semi-frequent hallucinations (breathing walls, dancing clouds, distorting colors and shapes) which can be assumed are the result of acid flashbacks. It’s entirely possible that the red soldiers are nothing more than the paranoid imaginings of a broken, drug-addled mind.

5. …but Don’t Confirm It

Possible, but not certain. If all the surrealism was relegated to Arden’s chapters, then it’s easily written off and thus ceases to be surreal. But there’s a pale, dark-eyed man with a spooky grin and too-long fingers who keeps showing up, and all the main characters have interactions with him. This casts a shadow of doubt on the degree to which Arden’s hallucinations are in fact hallucinations. Surrealism is all about doubt. It’s about questioning what’s real. The answer is only significant inasmuch as there isn’t one. 

Check out Chandler Morrison’s American Narcissus here:

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