My satirical romcom Tiger Hugs now has a whole new opening chapter due to me deciding it needed one. I was reading about how important in media res is, and other hair-raising non-linear narrative ideas I’d never heard of. It’s the absolute antithesis to my straight line, emotional shift, suspense style. I blame Murakami.
After scoffing at the sheer incompetence, and then vowing to never write again, I did wonder whether just leaning a bit towards that pompous in-safe-hands authorial voice might just be the extra thing my novel needs to make it rise up the authonomy charts as quickly as some of its contemporaries.
So I missed the England game, spent all day and yesterday applying this descriptive voice to each character in turn doing a potted history in the style of the more successful novels all round. It felt a bit like that opening scene in The Wrong Trousers where they’re looking down on little people. That’s how it feels to me. However, it didn’t half make me laugh when I was writing it. You really had to be there. Anyway, Tiger H went up to 1590th place straight after uploading so maybe the authonomy algorithm loves it at least if no one else does.
Filed under: Fiction Tagged: | africa, chinese, comedy, feel good, Fiction, friendship, happy, in-media-res, linear, london, novel, odyssey, optimistic, romcom, Satire, scifi, time-machine, twist, uplifting
