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Kristen Roupenian’s “Cat Person”: an Example of Post-Autonomous Fiction

July 12, 2020

guest post, Igor Livramento, Kristen Roupenian, literature, narrative, post-autonomous, writing

Today’s post offers an example of post-autonomous fiction, focusing on Kristen Roupenian’s “Cat Person”. The article is authored by Igor da Silva Livramento. He’s a fellow academic from UFSC, fellow author, fellow creative-writing advisor, and overall a great fellow. He’s also a composer, music theorist, and producer. Check out his papers on Academia.edu, his music on Bandcamp, and his personal musings on his blog – in Portuguese, Spanish/Castilian, and English.

Having explained what on earth is post-autonomous fiction, this time we’ll see an example of it, focusing on some of its literary specifics. Our example will be a most fascinating story. It appeared on The New Yorker, on December 4th, 2017.

I’m referring to Kristen Roupenian’s “Cat Person”.

What’s so interesting is that the story got more views on a single week than any other one published on the magazine that year. That alone is impressive, but the reaction it got is also worthy of mention.

This reaction was due to a narration technique we’ll explore, and such a technique as applied there increased its post-autonomous status.

Roupenian's "Cat Person" — Whether Roupenian’s “Cat Person” is good in a literary sense is irrelevant. Rather, its importance lies in that it’s indistinguishable from reality.

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How to Control the Narrative Pace

December 10, 2019

Fiction Writing Tips, Writing

affect, narrative, pace, writing

Controlling the narrative pace is an aspect of writing that most authors aspire to learn. However, it’s also a fairly misunderstood concept. To learn how to control the narrative pace you must know three things: how, when, and – most importantly – why.

First of all, a quick definition: The narrative pace (or narrative pacing) of a story refers to the speed at which the author offers the story. Obviously, this isn’t linked to the speed at which the events of the story occur.

Indeed, as we’ll see in this post, the discrepancy between the two is a key component. The difference between these two – speed of narrative versus speed of plot – is integral in figuring out how to control the narrative pace.

How to control the narrative pace — To learn how to control the narrative pace, you must understand three things: *how*, *when*, and – most crucially – *why*

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Narrative Antagonist: Do You Need One?

March 8, 2019

Fiction Writing Tips, Writing

antagonist, fiction, narrative, tension, writing

Recently someone left a review on my Narrative Nods android app. Part of their review was about that user’s narrative not having a narrative antagonist, and therefore, as he said, he didn’t need the option.

That review got me thinking. I realized that there must be many authors out there who probably don’t understand the concept of a narrative antagonist. As I explained in my article on the types of fiction characters:

The antagonist, as the name implies, functions as the force keeping the protagonist from achieving the given goal. The antagonist actively keeps the protagonist from achieving his/her/their goal. In other words, the antagonist’s opposition is not a result of error, tragic irony, or other such literary device – see information on the character type of the opponent, below.

This seems straightforward enough. However, I also mentioned in that article that:

In most complex narratives, the author can achieve the most powerful effect by having a character play a dual role. For instance, the protagonist and the antagonist can be one and the same actual character. Imagine someone who half the time works toward some goal (say, to find peace of mind over a past trauma), only to undermine his own efforts due to fear or suspicion.

This is probably the part about a narrative antagonist that many authors misunderstand. So, let’s take a closer look at this.

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