The Credence of the Absurd
I find an intoxicating magic that can be chewed on whenever beginning a new book. I write because doing so allows me to be anyone, do anything and go anywhere. But writing absurdism gives a narrative its ultimate credence.
It might sound counterintuitive that absurdity lends credence to a story when the genre involves a deliberate abandonment of logic. Yet that is precisely why it is so compelling. When conventional logic is stripped away, narrative rules don't disappear, they simply change. Absurdity creates its own internal logic where a six-hundred-billion-dollar synthetic drug empire and a biblical background in adult entertainment can sit in the same room and directly contribute to a story’s authenticity.
This joy is especially apparent while writing my current book, Wasted.
When crafting a dark, absurdist autopsy of human ambition and political delusion, deadpan delivery becomes a remarkable tool, though needs to be done well. Dark absurdism works so effectively because a deadpan tone grounds the surrounding madness. When stakes become monumental and characters treat catastrophic events or horrendous secrets with the same emotional weight as a mild inconvenience, the universe opens to gargantuan possibilities, and it's this infinity that is so beautiful to embrace and chew.
If a character staggers through crud to admire a wall covered in faeces to discover a benzoate phenyl annealing breakthrough, it gives an economy based on extracted teeth as a means of financial laundering not just credence, but a ludicrous range of possibilities that make storytelling absurd, oddly believable and entirely unpredictable.
Refusing to treat extremes with solemnity results in a narrative that avoids melodrama and artificially inflated storytelling beyond what the situation or character development can support, grounding the madness through razor-sharp understatement instead.
This approach grants complete narrative license to take a scene in any direction and push boundaries without losing reader investment.
Wasted is a wonderful indulgence in this regard. It depicts a world teetering on the edge, populated by characters whose logic is entirely flawed yet completely watertight to them. Writing it highlights just how powerful dark absurdism can be: in a universe where new rules constantly unfurl, ridiculous possibilities are not only infinite, but strangely beautiful.
Being Absurdist Epica, Wasted is not the third Wrong Book, but will certainly pave the way for it.
