Applied Narratology: Restructuring Lived Experience
When raw documentation is not enough, fiction becomes a tool for investigation and structural analysis. By reshaping real-life events, such as trauma, systemic corruption, and personal experiences, into fictional universes, we shift from passive subjects within a system to omniscient authors of a text; we reclaim control over the narrative.
On this website, I share original short fiction rooted in lived experience, showing how character development, plotting, and dialogue can be used to deconstruct, process, and understand challenging realities. The truth isn't erased; it is transformed into a form that can be mastered and understood.
If you are alive, chances are you have heard politicians, spin doctors, journalists, and other wordy people use the term The Narrative a million times over the past two decades.
I fell in love with narratology, Genette, and Bakhtin in university in the 1990s, so I understand other people’s love of the concept because narrative is everything. And it is a great tool not just for analyzing works of literature, the world around us, or other structures; it is an amazing tool that can be applied to our own lives, all aspects of our life stories, and helps us see these lives from new perspectives by writing about them.
Today, writing, faction as well as fictional stories, is my go-to method to deal with issues and gain perspective and insights into how I actually feel, as opposed to how I think I feel. Writing stories, regardless of how bad they may be, enables you to step back and look at your life from the outside, so to speak, gain perspective, and work through whatever emotions, problems, traumas, or anger you need to process to become a better and stronger version of yourself.
We all have to find our way to keep on top of life’s sick and twisted ways in this world, and applied narratology is a great way to do so.
The Justified
Dive into my creative world of applied narratology and follow the monsters Herbert, Bernard, Oscar, and Berta on their quest to rid Denmark of single women from the private sector who do not show them the proper respect!
But what’s the point of writing fictional stories these days when anyone can write a story with AI, you may ask.
Well, AI is a tool, not a work process. Tapping some words and questions into AI does not make you a writer, nor does it take your brain through the creative process of writing.
The point of using AI to write is the product. The point of applied narratology is the process. And that’s a huge difference.
The goal of writing for yourself is not the end product, nor is it to become Shakespeare. It is a method that forces your brain into its creative corners from where you can:
Gain Perspective,
Heal emotionally,
Reboot,
Understand yourself.
And who doesn’t need that from time to time? I mean, the world may be a fine place and worth fighting for, as Hemingway said, but it doesn’t mean it is easy to live in.
This technique is not to be confused with Narrative Therapy – I am not a therapist. This type of narrative mastery isn’t therapy; it is the deliberate transmutation of raw fact into controlled literary form.