narrative experimentation

Editing Needle’s Edge has taken longer than the time it took to draft the damned thing. Typical, I suppose, but demoralising all the same. Drafting is a rush; editing is a grind. In video game parlance, this is the endless dungeon crawl. Kill the same mob again and again, collect marginal XP, and hope that –eventually – you level up.

Recently, I wrestled with the narrative structure, which was starting to feel like Inception with a side order of Russian dolls. Flashbacks within flashbacks within flashbacks. I diagrammed it, mostly to convince myself I hadn’t lost the plot (see exhibit A, below).

**Image**: *Chronological and Sequential Timeline Abstraction*

Here’s the lay of the land—without spoilers, of course. The story begins [1] in medias res, with Sarah-slash-Stacey already entrenched in her daily grind. Then comes [2] the flashback, showing how she arrived there. Midway through, we plunge into [3] a deep flashback of her childhood, before [4] snapping back to the mid-flashback, then finally [5] rejoining the present-day storyline until [6] the bitter – or possibly bittersweet – end.

Naturally, I subvert as many tropes as I can, though no one can write a tropeless story any more than they can write one without words. (I’m sure some post-structuralist is trying right now, but God help their readers.)

The hardest part wasn’t constructing the labyrinth but finding my way out again – reengaging with the present-day thread after chapters of detour without resorting to that televisual clanger: “We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.”

Editing a book like this is less polishing and more archeology: chiselling away sediment, brushing off centuries of dust, desperately hoping not to snap the artefact in half. With luck, the grind pays off. If not, at least I’ll have a lovely flowchart to show for it.

The novel Propensity is divided into three sections, each with fifteen chapters – because symmetry is pleasing and my OCD deserves a biscuit. The first third plays it straight. More or less. A novel in the classical sense. You know – plot, people, dialogue, the odd existential quip. The middle third begins to fray at the edges, like an overstretched cardigan at an avant-garde poetry slam. And the final third? Well, it abandons form like a cult member in a cornfield, embracing the experimental, the elliptical, and the structurally suspect.

Chapter 28 is where the wheels come off. Or rather, where we slap on entirely different wheels – hexagonal ones. It takes the form of a standardised test. Yes, a literal test. Multiple choice. But fret not – there’s no grade, no timer, no Scantron sheet. Just questions. Absurd ones. Possibly even meaningful ones, though that’s above my pay grade.

Is it serious? Not remotely. Does it “advance the plot”? Hardly. Does it offer deep character insight? Not unless you’re profiling the author. But it does serve as a playful rupture in the narrative – a breather, a jab, a meta-giggle at the expense of structure and expectation. And let’s be honest: if you’ve made it to Chapter 28, you probably deserve a bit of a reward for tolerating everything prior.

As for spoilers: yes, technically, there are some. But without context, they’re like IKEA instructions written in Sanskrit. You might glimpse the shadow of something meaningful, but you’ll have no bloody idea what you’re looking at. No harm, no foul.

You can view Chapter 28 (along with several other amuse-bouches) for free on the Propensity book page. It’s downloadable as a PDF. No catch. No mailing list sign-up. I don’t want your email. I want your confusion.

Now, go take the test. Or don’t. It’s not graded. But it is a chapter.

Tag: narrative experimentation

Needle’s Edge: Narrative Origami

On Chapter 28: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Standardised Test