Kwan Ann Tan: 'I was surprised at how deeply I could dive into each aspect of this world'
RELATED COURSES
BY Katie Smart
8th Jan 2026
In this interview Kwan Ann Tan, author of the debut dystopian novel The Waiter, shares her advice for mapping out multiple narrative threads.
'Reading a lot helps, it’s not a groundbreaking piece of advice but it’s important. It doesn’t really matter if it’s widely and broadly or narrowly and deeply, as long as you’re thinking and absorbing other ideas to form your own.'
We caught up with Kwan Ann to discuss her time studying with us, the inspiration behind her debut novel and her favourite speculative fiction books.
Your debut novel The Waiter is out now from The Emma Press, it is a work of interactive fiction. The novel follows a ‘choose your own adventure’-esque structure with multiple endings. What were some of the challenges you faced when you were mapping out multiple narrative threads, and do you have any advice for writers experimenting with an unusual structure?
As you might expect, the biggest challenge was really plotting out the entire structure and making sure that there weren’t any overlapping or contradictory sections. I did it both physically with index cards and also with a free to use interactive fiction software, Twine. Narratively speaking, it was also challenging to make sure that the actions you took didn’t seem too strange or ‘out of character’ for the narrator, ensuring that it’s tonally even across the entire thing.
When you were writing the 11 different endings, did any surprise you in a way you weren’t anticipating?
Definitely! Because I was plotting as I went, naturally following each of the branches as they presented themselves, I was surprised at how deeply I could dive into each of the aspects of this world through this structure. When writing the endings themselves, I think it was a little less surprising because of how thorough the planning needed to be, so I knew exactly what needed to be done and in what order, and that took away the surprise element a little I suppose!
Can you tell us a bit more about the world of the near future London you created and the inspiration behind the ‘Waiters’ – humans who have no recollection of their lives before becoming Waiters whose job it is work in the menial tasks people do not have time for such as waiting in line and domestic duties?
The inspiration behind the Waiters is really all around us – we live in a world where we can buy something at 11pm and have it arrive the next day, where food turns up on your doorstep in 30 minutes. These are not new concepts and certainly have been considered by many other writers, but I wanted to take the idea to its limit. What will continue to exist in a world undergoing apocalyptic change? What will people value, and how will corporations extract or manufacture value from a world like this?
What are some of your favourite speculative fiction books?
There are too many to count! Some recent favourites: You Dreamed of Empires by Álvaro Enrigues, The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa, and On the Calculation of Volume I by Solvej Balle.
In 2021, you were awarded the Elizabeth Zott scholarship to study on our six-month online Writing Your Novel course. How did winning this scholarship and studying with us impact your writing journey?
It was a great opportunity to find community with other writers and taught me a lot about what direction I wanted to go in with my writing. It was also lovely to speak to some of the tutors on the course and see their approach and how they think when it comes to aspects of craft like plot and style.
Do you have any advice for the people reading this who are preparing to apply for scholarships or prizes for unpublished writers?
I would say that it helps to have a clear idea of what you want to work on and what you’re trying to do with the work. Having that vision and ambition, even if the work is unpolished, seems to be what separates something average from something with promise. Reading a lot helps, it’s not a groundbreaking piece of advice but it’s important. It doesn’t really matter if it’s widely and broadly or narrowly and deeply, as long as you’re thinking and absorbing other ideas to form your own.
Your second novel is coming out next year and it has been shortlisted for the Epigram Books Fiction Prize. What can readers expect from your next book?
A Family of Inconvenience is, as the title suggests, going to be a family saga. However, my approach is playful rather than serious, expanding the focus to extended family members, who each have their own problems and dreams. Each chapter follows a different individual, totalling around 18 perspectives. The family must confront the realities of ageing parents and useless children, hoping that each generation will improve on the one before.
Get your hands on a copy of The Waiter, out now from The Emma Press.
Kwan Ann was awarded the Elizabeth Zott Novel-Writing Scholarship for Writers of Colour to study on our online Writing Your Novel – Six Months course in 2021.
The books linked in this blog can be found on our Bookshop.org shop front. Curtis Brown Creative receive 10% whenever someone buys from our bookshop.org page.