Sophie White has opened up about Instagram, sequels and the inspiration behind her latest novel, Filter This.
The book follows Ali Jones, a young woman who is hell-bent on achieving her #lifegoals: 10,000+ Instagram followers and a win at the upcoming Glossie Awards.
So, when she inadvertently leads people to believe she’s pregnant – and gains thousands of followers almost immediately – she decides to roll with it, and that riding the ‘Mummy Influencer’ wave could be her ticket to Insta-success.
Elsewhere on Instagram, the biggest influencer in Ireland – and Ali’s idol – Shelly Devine has it all — at least on screen. But behind her carefully curated feed, Shelly has a secret. Not just from her followers, but from her husband, too.
As Ali’s lies spiral out of control, and Shelly starts to take a hard look at her life choices – and the two of them have to figure out what’s truly important before they lose what matters most.
Filter This was nominated for National Book Tokens Popular Fiction Book of the Year in the An Post Irish Book Awards this year – and Sophie told Her how she thought she had hallucinated the news when she got the call.
“I saw my editor was ringing me and I was like ‘ooh, I owe her a draft’,” she recalled. “I just wasn’t thinking at all about getting shortlisted because there were just so many really good books and I just felt a bit…I kind of talked myself out of it happening.”
“But when she told me [Filter This] had been shortlisted, I hung up the phone from her and was like, ‘wait, did that conversation even happen?’ I felt like I had hallucinated it,” she added with a laugh. “I texted her and was like, ‘that did just happen, yeah?’ And she was like, ‘yeah, yeah. We had that conversation’.”
She also opened up about the inspiration behind her hit novel – and how it came from “a few things converging” on her at the same time.
“I joined Instagram when I was promoting my first book and it was kind of at the behest of my publishers. I didn’t really have much interest in [social media] at all. But I took up Instagram and I was immediately obsessed with it,” she said. “I was like, ‘Oh god, this thing is like a slot machine in Vegas – it’s so addictive.’ I was very interested in that; in how sticky it is as an app. It’s so hard to get out of it.”
Something else which played a factor, Sophie explained, was the idea of mothering Instagram as “a kind of sub-genre of Instagram.”
“Especially even more so back then, I think, there was so much perfection being portrayed on there about motherhood and kids. It was practically a kind of play or performance that they seemed to be putting on,” she said. “I was like, ‘this is very misleading to anyone who is about to have kids.’ So, that all got me very interested.”
And the final piece of inspiration for what would become Ali Jones and Shelly Devine’s story was the novelist’s love for hoaxes and stories about catfishing.
“I love hoaxes and stories about catfishing and things like that. I have always just been really interested in them,” she said. “I started to wonder like, imagine if someone faked a pregnancy just to get big on Instagram.
“I kind of noticed how we have all started treating our lives like content. I’m very cynical, so I thought wouldn’t it be such a laugh if someone took it to that dark place?”
Filter This has been a massive hit with readers ever since it was released earlier this autumn (you can read Her’s thoughts on it here). And, in good news for fans, there’s more of Shelly and Ali to come.
Yes, Filter This 2 is on the way – the last novel currently planned in the Filter This universe.
“It was pretty much [the plan to have a sequel],” Sophie told us about why she decided to continue the Filter This world. “I guess I always felt like it would be quite tough to resolve the whole story in one book, in my head, unless it was going to be like, Dickens-length.
“I didn’t want to rush the playing out of the story and try and condense it, so from the very early planning and plotting stages, it was always two parts.”
The novelist added that she’s nearly finished the sequel at the moment – and it has “been brilliant” so far.
“It’s currently two [books], and I’m very committed to that. I definitely feel like everyone has a kind of attention span for a world,” she said. “And while I would never say never-ever [to revisiting the Filter This universe], I am ready to move onto a new world and a new set of characters.”
“The amount of work that goes into a book when you start writing it, it’s huge. But when you do a sequel all of that groundwork, you’ve done it – so there’s something lovely about returning to those characters you know really well,” she continued, before adding with a laugh: “But then there’s something like, we’ve all spent enough time together.”
Sophie White is nominated for National Book Tokens Popular Fiction Book of the Year in the An Post Irish Book Awards for her book ‘Filter This’. You can vote for your favourite at anpostirishbookawards.ie.
