What new gimmicks have been invented in writing in the last 100 years

Looking at Movies from 30 years ago compared to today, you see a huge number of cool stylistic gimmicks that have been invented.

You have the jigsaw puzzle effect from Pulp Fiction

You have the backwards time from Memento

You have alternate history from Run Lola Run

etc.

Has anything similar been done to the art of writing?

How about the mix of real events in a news-reel style into the fictional action of a novel. See John Dos Passos’ USA trilogy for the earliest good example I know. Ragtime is a more recent example.

The non-fiction novel is a fairly recent invention. Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood is a fine example, as is Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, whose author I cannot recall at the moment.

Comic books are also less than a century old, and it has been argued that the better examples of manga and some American efforts can be counted as literature.

These are just the few examples I can come up with off the top of my head. You really ought to read more widely.

Is conversational tone a twentieth century invention? None of the 19th century books I’ve read use this (Austen, Bronte etc). If so, what was the first book to use this conversational style?

How about stream-of-consciousness? I think James Joyce was the first major writer to use it but if I’m wrong, feel free to correct me.

Cut-up.

Citizen Kane had a very non-linear storyline, as I recall.

NDP beat me to the punch when it came to mentioning stream-of-consciousness.

I think that one of the major effects on many novels nowadays has been the development of radio, television, and movies. Thanks to those particular entertainment media, I’m convinced that we have become more accustomed to a faster pace in novels today. The novels of the 19th century all seem to have a much slower pace than most of the stuff that I read today.

I think another stylistic development has been the use of multi-track storylines within the same novel. The Lord of the Rings leaps to mind rather easily here.

Another is the use of italics to indicate thoughts that occur within a character’s head. I can’t recall seeing this in any early 20th century or late 19th century novel or story.

There’s William S. Burroughs and his “Cut-Up Method” which involves taking text, cutting it up and rearranging the pieces. Also, there was a book called IIRC The Humument, which was an 19th Century novel that a 20th Century artist had painted over certain lines of text to create a new work.

Slaughterhouse Five was not only non-linear, but the non-linearity went deeper than being a gimmick.

The unreliable narrator (eg. Fried Green Tomatoes, Lolita) was first used in the 20th century I believe.

I think the third person omnicient narrator may be a 20th century invention- every book I’ve read older than that had a narrator, and was usually presented as a memoir or a series of notes.

Gonzo Journalism, Meta-Fiction and Magical Realism are from the last century.

While science fiction has many literary antecedents (HG Wells and even Cyrano deBergerac, to name two), “hard” science fiction is within the past century.

What is the history of the roman-a-clef?

Some of these effects that are proposed as 20th century innovations actually appear in the 19th century (and possibly even earlier–I don’t know much about 18th century literature).

For example, it’s strongly implied that that the narrator in Wuthering Heights is unreliable. 19th century writers played around with nested and layered narratives, which could include introducing the possibilty of unreliability, such as in The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, where the “editor” appends a note saying that “Poe” refused to finish the story because he didn’t believe Pym’s account.

The 3rd person omniscient p.o.v is definitely not a 20th century invention.

Multi-track narration, as in The Lord of the Rings, was frequently used by Victorian novelists, e.g. Trollope, Dickens, Eliot, etc.

Does Homer’s Odyssey count with both a track about Laertes and another about Odysseus?

Don’t you mean Telemachus, Odysseus’s son?

Are there any pre 20th century novels that are solely dialog? In particular I’m thinking of William Gaddis’ A Frolic of His Own, which, with the exception of a few legal documents, has no text other than what was spoken by characters.

Hmm, there’s the multiple narrative voices in Gravity’s Rainbow. (probably a whole lot of other new stuff in there too)

And the extensive use of typography to add emotion in Mark Danielewski’s House of Leaves

The Dictionary of the Kazhars by Milorad Pavic is a novel arranged as three parallel encyclopedias, each with entries describing events from three different points of view, and intended to be read in any order that the reader chooses.

Pale Fire by Nabokov has to count for something too. It’s certainly one of the most unique books I’ve read. It seems to be more than an unreliable narrator to me.

I haven’t read the Odyssey since high school, and don’t remember how it’s structured…but if Homer cuts back and forth between Telemachus’s adventures at home (isn’t Laertes the father of Oedipus?) and Odysseus’s hijinks abroad, sure, it counts for me.

W/r/t romans à clef, Aphra Behn’s Love Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister :eek: was written in the 17th century.

Blast it!! That’s the name, sigh.

It starts with Telemachos going to see Menelaos(as they’re spelt in my book). Then cuts to Odysseus at see and follows him home. Then back to Telemachus till he meets up with Odysseus. Then on till the end so I guess it’s not really back and borth repeatedly. Oh well, I was reaching.

I’m pretty sure the author’s publicity circuit on TV morning shows is less than a hundred years old.

Incidentally, all the effects mentioned in the OP were found in writing before the movies he mentioned. The jigsaw puzzle effect can be found in (say) Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, the story-told-backwards effect in Pinter’s play Betrayal, and what-if-x-had-happened-instead-of-y alternate history in all sorts of science fiction.

Well, except for the “news-reel style” part (and it’s not his fault newsreels hadn’t been invented yet), Thomas Nashe was doing something awfully similar in 1594.

Swear words.

Pick up any 19th-century novel, and you’ll see things like:

“You son of a _____!”

On the other hand, it’s rare to see a 21st-century novel where the author doesn’t say “fuck” at least 4 or 5 times.

I think the “unreliable narrator” thing goes at least as far back as BARON MUNCHHAUSEN.