Kluge is also one of the major German fiction writers of the late-20th century and an important social critic. His fictional works, which tend toward the short story form, are significant for their formal experimentation and insistently critical thematics. Constituting a form of analytical fiction, they utilize techniques of narrative disruption, mixed genres, interpolation of non-literary texts and documents, and perspectival shifts. The texts frequently employ a flat, ironic tone. One frequent effect approximates what Viktor Shklovsky and the Russian formalists identified as defamiliarization or "ostranenie". In an interview with "032c" magazine, Kluge described his point of view on writing with a quote by Georg Büchner: "I've always wanted to see what my head looks like from above." Kluge explains that when "writing literary texts, you look—if you're going about it correctly—down to yourself, to your head from above. Then you no longer have a relationship with yourself. At the most, you have trust in yourself that a text will emerge from this and that you still have the sovereignty and the strength to throw it away if it amounts to nothing." Kluge has used several of his stories as the bases for his films.