Introducing the Oulipo

The standard advice for writers who are feeling uninspired or blocked is to allow your mind to wander where it will or to just start writing aimlessly to see what happens. Therefore to suggest the opposite approach, that of imposing some constraints on your thinking, seems completely counterintuitive.

However, this is precisely the strategy advocated by members and followers of the Oulipo, which is the acronym for Ouvroir de littérature potentielle. This is roughly translated as Workshop of Potential Literature.

Note that term “potential” literature. You don’t have to write a whole work (though some have), but adopting constraints is a good way of saying, in effect, “Here’s an experiment I tried. Might there be any mileage in taking it further? Or can I use it to kick-start a piece of creative writing?”

The tautogram

For example, here’s an example of a technique known as the tautogram, in which every word starts with the same letter:

Almost any author advocates ambling around an arboretum.

I just made that up, and I wouldn’t suggest it’s a great piece of literature. However, I now have in my head an image of a writer walking around an arboretum, alone amongst the trees, jotting down ideas in a notebook with the pencil he always carries with him.Will those notes form the basis of a story? Or will the act of walking around itself lead to a story? For example, will he come across a hidden cave, will he get lost, will he trip over a fallen branch and break his leg? So many possibilities, none of which I’d thought of before I had a go at writing a snippet of text using the tautogram technique.

The N + x technique

Alternatively, applying an Oulipo technique to an existing piece of writing is a good way of revealing hitherto hidden possibilities.

For example, here is a line of text from a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne:

The people smiled mysteriously in the streets and threw bold glances at their oppressors

Here’s that line transformed by changing each noun to the tenth one further on in the dictionary:

The percussionist smiled mysteriously in the strikes and threw bomber glimmers at their orators

I think I have a seed of a nonsense story or poem (it sounds vaguely Jabberwockyish to me) or a science fiction story. What are “bomber glimmers” for instance? Some new, terrible weapon?

An interesting aspect of this approach is that Oulipo techniques are supposed to be objective. However, it is clear that the results of this “N+10” approach will depend on which dictionary I choose to use. Therefore there is a certain degree of subjectivity in play.

One of the things I’m going to try in my class on the subject (see below) is to ask everyone to process a piece of text using their own dictionary, and then compare versions. It should be very interesting!

Perverbs

Another approach is to use “preverbs”. These are a mash-up of existing proverbs to provide a new one. For example:

Don't count your chickens to spite your face

Don't cut off your nose before it gets dark

Each of these offers intriguing possibilities.

Different styles

Finally, a great Oulipo technique is to take a simple story and rewrite it in a different genre, or a different tense. One of the founders of the Oulipo, Raymond Queneau, did this in his book Exercises in Style.

For example, this is an excerpt from his basic story or template, which he called Notation:

Notation

On the S bus, in the rush hour. A chap of about twenty six, soft hat with a cord instead of a ribbon, neck too long, as if someone’s been tugging at it. People getting off.

Now here is the same extract in the form of metaphors:

Metaphorically

At the very heart of the day, tossed among the shoal of travelling sardines in a white-bellied beetle, a chicken with a long, featherless neck suddenly harangued one of their number, a peace-abiding one, and its parlance, moist with protest, was unleashed into the air.

And here is an official letter version:

Official Letter

I beg to advise you of the following facts of which I happened to be the equally impartial and horrified witness.

Today, at roughly twelve noon, I was present on the platform of a bus which was proceeding up the rue de Courcelles in the direction of the Place Champerret. The aforementioned bus was fully laden- more than fully laden, I might even venture to say, since the conductor had accepted an overload of several candidates, without valid reason and actuated by an exaggerated kindness of heart which caused him to exceed the regulations and which, consequently, bordered on indulgence.

As you can see, doing this is a great way of honing your creative writing muscles. I tried it myself. I wrote a short piece (nonfiction), and since then have been rewriting it in various ways. Here’s the basic story:

A Bang on the Head

In the middle of the night, I woke up (if you can call being semi-conscious being awake), walked purposefully towards the door to go to the bathroom — and almost knocked myself out.
The reason was that in the twin states of entire darkness and semi-somnambulance I was facing in a different direction from the one I thought I was facing. As a result, instead of walking through the door, I tried to walk through the wall.
The next few days brought nausea and headaches. After much prevarication I went to Accident and Emergency, where I waited petrified among people for whom “social distancing” means not quite touching you, and who wore their masks as a chin-warmer.
An hour and a half later I emerged into the twilight, secure in the knowledge that I had nothing more serious than mild concussion. I failed to do much writing, but I was pleased to have read a further 17% of my book.

And here’s a version of it in the form of a newspaper report:

I’m not a head-banger, claims man who banged his head

Last night, for no apparent reason, Terry Freedman, a resident of Ilford, Essex, banged his head in the middle of the night.
"I was on my way to the bathroom, when all of a sudden I banged my head on the wall. I thought it was the door."
A neighbour, who wished to remain anonymous, told us, "I don't understand it. They are such a nice couple, and he has never done anything like this before. His wife must be in bits."
A spokesperson for the hospital he visited said there was no lasting damage.
"The only real damage", said Freedman, "is to my ego. I feel such an idiot! Still, at least I managed to read quite a bit while I was waiting. Mind you, I was rather worried because people weren't wearing masks or obeying social distancing rules."

And here’s another version in the style of a hardboiled story:

Hardboiled version

A deadly game

TRIGGER WARNING

THIS STORY INCLUDES EXPRESSIONS AND ATTITUDES THAT SOME READERS MAY FIND OFFENSIVE.

Two am. Night enfolded the city like a cobra, the silence pierced by a few bored neon lights, a lonely automobile horn and the occasional scream. It was the kind of night where the only people not safely tucked up in bed were broads, bums and Brunos. And private dicks.

I’d been working on a case, trying to crack the conundrum of how to nail a flim-flammer they called The Fiddler. Real name Tony Vivaldi. I needed the bathroom.

I figured the light from the speakeasy across the street would be enough to see by. I figured wrong. Maybe it was the bourbon, maybe it was not sleeping too good, but I took a wrong turn. Next thing I knew I was trying to drill a hole in the wall with my head. I felt like I’d been hit by a tank.

For the next few days I was like a grizzly with a sore noodle, literally. In the end the old lady said, “Quit your beefing and go see the croaker.”

I hailed a hack. “Hospital.” I gritted. “And step on it.” I gave the cabby the fare, and five berries on top.

“Anyone comes asking, you ain’t seen me, right?” I grated.

“Far as I’m concerned, you’re the invisible man.”

I walked into the hospital, a real dive. Nobody was keeping their distance or wearing a mask. Maybe they figured they were in the last chance saloon anyway, so what the hell? A bull was loafing around nursing a gasper.

“Hey buddy”, I said. “How about you earn your money and tell these bums to obey the rules?”

“How about you shaddup or scram?”, be batted back.

I was about to have a real friendly discussion with him when a dame in a nurse’s uniform shimmied up. I reckoned she was in the region of 36-23-36 – just my kind of region1. She told me to follow her. I wasn’t gonna argue.

We went into a room and she closed the door, and started to move my arms around.

“Why don’t we do this at your place?”, I said. “We could put on some mood music and get real cosy.”

“I’m gonna have to take your blood pressure”, she replied.

“Don’t bother”, I said. “I can already tell you that it’s maxed out.”

She asked me how I got the bruise. I was too embarrassed to come clean about it, so I told her I’d been dry-gulched.

“I think someone slugged me on the back of my head with a 45.”, I told her.

“So how come the bruise is on the front of your head?”, she asked.

“I got a flexible skull”, I answered.

She laughed, then threw me out, telling me to take it easy.

A sedan flew by right through a puddle. It was like being under Niagara Falls.

“Hey, wise guy!”, I shouted.

But he was long gone.

I turned my collar up against a wind that must have been on vacation from Alaska. Just then, as I walked past the mortuary, my phone buzzed. In the blue glow the name Tony Vivaldi lit up.

It was gonna be a long night.

Glossary

Berries: dollars

Broads: women

Brunos: tough guys

Bull: policeman

Croaker: doctor

Dick: detective

Dry-gulched: knocked out

Flim-flammer: swindler

Gasper: cigarette

Hack: taxi

Noodle: head

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the following websites for the hardboiled slang:

Twists, Slugs and Roscoes: A Glossary of Hardboiled Slang

Hard Boiled Slang Dictionary

Well, that’s enough for now. Hopefully, you can see how imposing a constraint on yourself in whatever form can lead to something different and perhaps even exciting and good!

I’m running a one course on this. Here are the details:

Writing using constraints

You can read what students have said about my courses here:

Course testimonials