ABSTRACT

This article focuses on an object-oriented approach to creative writing and relates object characters in short fiction to aspects of Martin Heidegger’s tool analysis and Graham Harman’s OOO: Object-Oriented Ontology. By briefly referring to certain contemporary short fiction examples, and through a longer exegetical approach to some of my own object-centred work, this article encourages short fiction writers and creative writing tutors to start seeing objects as potential creative stimuli for more object-centred texts, as tools which rebel against their users and against other objects, and as extensions towards form and language. By not exclusively modelling objects on humanness, but on qualities deriving from their own thingness as well – an object’s expressive appearance, function and less explicit qualities – object characters are offered more space in a usually anthropocentric creative writing context.

KEYWORDS

Objects, creative writing, short fiction, experimental writing.