In 1917, Russian Formalist critic Viktor Shklovsky introduced a concept that would fundamentally change how we think about art: ostranenie-defamiliarization, or “making strange.”

His insight was radical: The purpose of art isn’t to make us comfortable. It’s to make us see again.

We spend our lives on autopilot, perceiving the world through habits and categories. We don’t see a chair-we see “chair,” the concept. We don’t experience morning coffee-we execute a routine.

Defamiliarization strips away that automation. It forces us to perceive familiar things as if encountering them for the first time.

For storytellers, this technique is worldbuilding alchemy. It can make the mundane magical, the invisible visible, and the ordinary utterly alien.

The Problem: Habitual Perception

Your brain is an efficiency machine. It takes shortcuts constantly to conserve energy.

When you walk into your home, you don’t consciously notice every object. Your brain runs a quick check: Everything where it should be? Yes. Moving on.

This is useful for survival but deadly for perception.

Shklovsky argued that this automatization makes life feel shorter, thinner, less real. We sleepwalk through experience.

For storytellers, the challenge is this: If you describe something in the expected way, readers’ brains will run the same shortcut. They’ll recognize the category without truly perceiving the thing.

She sat in a chair in the kitchen.

Your reader’s brain files this away without really visualizing anything. “Chair. Kitchen. Person sitting. Got it.”

But what if you forced them to see the chair?

Shklovsky’s Solution: Make It Strange

Defamiliarization disrupts habitual perception by describing familiar things in unfamiliar ways.

The goal: Make readers perceive rather than recognize.

Technique 1: Describe function without naming

Instead of calling something by its familiar name, describe what it does or how it’s used.

Tolstoy’s famous example from War and Peace-he describes a church service from the perspective of Natasha, who doesn’t understand religious ritual:

The priest came out with a shining metal cross and began waving it back and forth while singing in a strange language.

This is defamiliarization. We know what’s happening (a church service), but seeing it through Natasha’s uncomprehending eyes makes us perceive the strangeness of the ritual.

For worldbuilding:

The morning alarm was a rectangle that screamed light and sound until you slapped it into submission.

Instead of “phone.”

Technique 2: Shift perspective radically

Show a familiar thing through eyes that don’t share our assumptions.

In Gulliver’s Travels, Swift makes humans strange by showing them from the perspective of tiny Lilliputians or giant Brobdingnagians.

For worldbuilding:

Sci-fi and fantasy excel at this. In Speaker for the Dead, Orson Scott Card shows human customs through alien eyes, revealing how arbitrary and bizarre our social norms actually are.

“They cover their bodies except when engaging in reproductive activities, yet they display images of uncovered bodies everywhere. We do not understand the logic.”

Suddenly, human culture looks alien.

Technique 3: Hyper-literal description

Describe something with such precise, unfamiliar detail that the familiar becomes strange.

The hand moved in a complex series of articulated movements-five appendages curling independently, the opposable digit pressing against the others in coordinated sequence-to grip the cylindrical container.

This is just “picking up a cup,” but described as if by someone who has never seen a human hand.

Technique 4: Strip context and implication

Remove the cultural or contextual meaning, leaving only the physical reality.

In The Stranger, Camus describes a funeral in flat, observational detail devoid of emotional significance:

People I didn’t know filed past the coffin. Some cried. The sun was very hot. I noticed the undertaker had a red nose.

The familiar ritual of mourning becomes strange because the narrator doesn’t perform the expected emotional response.

Why This Matters for Worldbuilding

Defamiliarization is essential for three storytelling challenges:

1. Making our world feel alien

If you’re writing realistic fiction set in contemporary society, how do you make readers actually see the world instead of sleepwalking through it?

Defamiliarize the mundane.

Douglas Coupland in Generation X:

“I am doing ‘McJobs’-low-pay, low-prestige, low-dignity, low-benefit, no-future jobs in the service sector. These jobs are called ‘McJobs’ because they are unstimulating and soul-deadening.”

He’s describing something millions of people experience, but giving it a name and framework makes readers suddenly see what was previously invisible.

2. Making alien worlds feel real

Science fiction and fantasy face the opposite problem: how do you make the unfamiliar feel believable?

Answer: Defamiliarize it from within.

Show your fantastical world through a character who finds some element of it strange, and readers will accept the reality of everything else.

In Harry Potter, Harry’s muggle-raised perspective lets Rowling defamiliarize the wizarding world. We see magic through someone encountering it for the first time, which makes it vivid and strange rather than just a list of fantasy tropes.

3. Creating thematic depth

Defamiliarization can reveal hidden truths about familiar things.

In 1984, Orwell defamiliarizes political propaganda by naming it “Newspeak” and “doublethink.” Suddenly, readers recognize these patterns in their own world.

In The Handmaid’s Tail, Atwood defamiliarizes patriarchal control by literalizing it in the Republic of Gilead. The familiar becomes horrifyingly strange-and therefore visible.

Practical Applications

For mundane settings:

Instead of:

She drove to work, thinking about her day.

Try:

She guided the two-ton metal box down a precisely painted line at seventy miles per hour, surrounded by dozens of strangers doing the same, all trusting that no one would swerve three feet to the left and end multiple lives instantly.

Defamiliarization makes us see how absurd and dangerous our normal is.

For genre worldbuilding:

Instead of:

The tavern was full of adventurers looking for quests.

Try:

The common room smelled like the hiring hall it actually was-desperate people selling their willingness to die for money, brokers taking their cut to match them with wealthy cowards who wanted problems solved from a safe distance.

Defamiliarization cuts through genre cliché to make the scene real.

For character perspective:

Instead of:

Marco hated rich people.

Try:

The woman’s shoes probably cost more than Marco’s rent. Not shoes-objects that touched the ground for a few months before being discarded. The thought made his jaw ache.

Defamiliarization makes class resentment visceral instead of abstract.

When Defamiliarization Backfires

Overdoing it

If everything is defamiliarized, readers get exhausted. Use this technique strategically, not constantly.

Being unclear instead of strange

There’s a difference between making something strange and making it incomprehensible.

Bad defamiliarization:

The zornak plinked its wufflers across the grebbit.

This isn’t defamiliarization-it’s gibberish.

Good defamiliarization:

She moved her fingers across the smooth white rectangles, each one making a different clicking sound and causing a different letter to appear on the glowing screen.

We know this is a keyboard, but seeing it defamiliarized makes us notice how strange typing actually is.

Losing emotional truth

Defamiliarization should create insight, not detachment.

Camus’s flat funeral description works because it reveals Mersault’s alienation. If every emotional scene is described with clinical detachment for no thematic reason, readers will disengage.

Genre-Bending Through Defamiliarization

Some of the most innovative storytelling comes from applying defamiliarization to genre conventions.

Ted Chiang’s “Story of Your Life”: Defamiliarizes time and causality. What if you experienced your entire life simultaneously? The familiar becomes strange, and the strange becomes profound.

N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy: Defamiliarizes apocalypse. What if the world ended regularly, every few centuries? The extraordinary becomes routine, and routine survival becomes extraordinary.

Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation: Defamiliarizes nature itself. Familiar ecosystems become alien through slight wrongness-colors that shouldn’t exist, dolphins that might not be dolphins.

The Exercise: Defamiliarize Your Setting

Take the primary location in your story. Write three paragraphs:

Paragraph 1: Familiar description Describe it conventionally, using standard names and categories.

Paragraph 2: Alien perspective Describe it as if seen by someone (or something) that doesn’t share human assumptions. A visiting alien, a time traveler from the distant past, an animal, an AI.

Paragraph 3: Hyper-literal Describe it with such precise physical detail that familiar objects become strange.

Then, in your actual story, use whichever version creates the right effect.

Why This Works: The Neuroscience

When your brain recognizes a familiar pattern, it releases a tiny hit of dopamine-I know what this is, pattern matched, moving on.

But when a familiar thing is described unfamiliarly, your brain gets confused. The pattern doesn’t match. This creates a moment of heightened attention-Wait, what is this?

That attention is the difference between reading and experiencing.

Defamiliarization forces readers out of autopilot. It makes them conscious participants rather than passive consumers.

The Paradox

Here’s the beautiful contradiction at the heart of defamiliarization:

Making something strange makes it more real.

When you strip away the habitual labels and familiar descriptions, readers actually see the thing itself. The chair, the phone, the funeral, the city-whatever it is becomes vivid and present instead of just a category their brain filed away.

This is what Shklovsky meant when he said art exists to make the stone stony.

Not to make stone unfamiliar-to make us feel its stoneness again.

Application to World & Character

This technique works beyond physical description:

Defamiliarize emotions:

Grief wasn’t sadness. It was walking into a room and forgetting why, then remembering, then wishing she could forget again.

Defamiliarize relationships:

Marriage was two people who’d memorized each other’s patterns, performing a choreographed dance so practiced they’d forgotten they were dancing.

Defamiliarize social structures:

“Democracy” meant asking millions of people their opinion, then letting a few hundred ignore it.

Each of these takes something we think we understand and forces us to perceive it fresh.

The Ultimate Goal

Defamiliarization is how you make readers see your world-really see it-instead of just recognizing familiar tropes.

It’s the difference between:

  • Reading “She walked through the cyberpunk city”
  • And actually perceiving neon-lit rain-slick streets, corporate logos larger than buildings, the smell of street vendor synth-meat, the weight of surveillance eyes

The first is a category. The second is an experience.

Make the familiar strange. Force perception over recognition.

That’s when worldbuilding becomes world-seeing.

Next in the series: Setting as Character - When place has agency and shapes the story as much as any protagonist.