Over the summer I had the pleasure of reading Colm Toibin's Brooklyn. For all the routine of his female protagonist's days, I found myself compellingly drawn less into the narrative and more with the narrative. A personal lover of jazz, there is a rhythm here that pays homage to another time, another pace.
10. So, musicality is one technique for drawing the reader on.
9. Formatting is another.
But the myriad of ways in which this can be done are magical. First, look at Passoa's The Book of Disquiet. Here he presents the internal thoughts of a man simply sat at his office desk and yet, with the first person narrative segmented into journal entries, each new entry revives us.
So Diary format makes 8. Conversational tone makes 7.
Over the course of his literary career, Passoa himself wrote in many different and contrasting styles. But going to the top of my list of a single book that does this superbly would be English Passengers by contemporary novelist Matthew Kneale.
So a variety of voices and styles makes 6. That'll keep readers on their toes.
Steering back to formatting, I recently turned the final page of Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Note, I say page and not chapter, for there are no chapters. Now how does a book about the end of the world with the narrative consisting of a man and boy waking, eating, walking, scavenging, surviving and sleeping become an international bestseller? Well, it's not the sole reason but my god the formatting of the book was a genius move, ensuring that the pace was maintained throughout. And what did he do? He (or some clever editor) divided the book into capsules. For every two pages, there were maybe three or four capsules of narrative.
That makes Fragments no. 5.
Still staying with The Road, another marvel of this book, and an explanation for what keeps it so pacy, is the economy of language. One case in point is that McCarthy doesn't bother with pronouns. Would you, if it were the end of world?
So Language, be they alliterative or grammatical shortcuts, makes 4.
Still in the language department, I'll place idioms (3.) in a separate category of their own. Why? Because it's a very subjective thing. if you're familiar with the idiom, then you're winging you're way through. if you're not, you're stumbling.
And with the launch of the ipad and a facebook novel already published, things are only going to get pacier. For sure, with all the media invention of recent years, there will become sanctioned ways of approaching this, by necessity of the demands of producing to scale. But in the new burgeoning world of self-publishing who knows what jewels will sparkle.
But, before we get too far ahead of ourselves, let's give a nod to that old stalwart Dialogue (at number 2). Flicking through McCarthy's The Road, you'd be forgiven for thinking that there is no dialogue. there's certainly no he said, she said. no quotation marks. But it's there.
A friend of mine says when it comes to reading that she is panning for gold, which leads me on to a rather idiosyncratic technique for a pacey read, making my number 1. spot:
Grafittied second-hand books. Those passages highlighted by a stranger or a friend. The scribbled notes of a student in the margins. Mmmm.
For me, the novel form offers something essential - a beginning, a middle and an end in a world of endless possibilities - and i'm excited about all the new ways we can meet the wants of current generations while the form fulfils a need.
So, what next?
Well, i'm looking forward to the capsule novel, uniting the techniques and riches of the novel, the short story and verse. How about you?
Nicola,
It's picture book 4-8 years, but pushing more to the upper end of that age range. So maybe it might fit into the Easy Reading bracket, where children are starting to read on their own.
Having said this however, I am still aiming to edit it all down to 1500 words, preferably less.
With regard to pronouns, I tend to use them once I have already made reference to names and objects in a paragraph.
I have only read McCathy's The Road, and I'm very interested to see if he has always written in the way that he does. I stumbled a few times with his sentences, in that where I thought a comma would be, he broke the sentence and started fresh with another, often making some sentences very short and somewhat fragments. I got used to this style though and ended up liking it. I wonder if this is down to style or is a cultural thing, as his writing reminds me of the Beat writers style; fragmented sentences.
'No Country for Old Men' is next.
Hi Mark,
thank you so much for your comment and compliment. Both very much appreciated. I haven't read Tan's The Red Tree but i will now.
Of course there are factors that you need to bear in mind when writing in a particular form. What age group will the picture book be aimed at? What parents want their five-year-old grappling with.
I could wade in and give you my personal opinion on this but I'm going to try to do one better and speak to the Bloomsbury picture books editor and get her take.
Please watch this space and I'll get back to you with, if not the definitive answer, a specialist's advice.
Warmest,
Nicola
PS thanks for the iplayer recommendation. I will definitely check it out, and link through to it on our twitter account.
Nice blog, as always. I think I made reference to McCarthy in the blog entry, 'Writers Who Don't Read.'
It only occured to me that there were no chapter breaks or quotations marks when I was halfway through the book. Maybe it was for this reason, the lack of chapters, that I had read half of it in one sitting - along with the engaging story - of course.
Oh, has anyone been watching BBC4's 'The Beauty of Books' Series?
The one I caught the other night was part 3 - of 4 - called, 'Illustrated Wonderlands' and the relationship between writer and illustrator. it was very interesting. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00ykww2
I'm sure you can catch up with the previous episodes from the series online with the BBC's player.
I was also wondering if anyone of my fellow aspiring writers can help me? I'm currently writing a picture book. I have the characters and setting and a basic idea of what my child character's problem is.
I know my beginning and my end. My child protagonist has wants, which pushes the story along. The monster/creature in the book also has wants and problems.
I know that I have to let the child fix/mend/solve her problem by herself without the help of adults, but I was wondering - and I feel silly asking this - but was wondering if I can let the monster help her?
Writing a picture book is about the hardest thing that I have ever tried to write in my life. Fun, yes, hard ... very.
Also, my monster dies at the end. My partner thinks this is a bad idea, especially for kids, and hates it whenever I kill off a character in whatever it is that I am writing. I can't help it. Sometimes when I write, I wonder who is going to meet their end and how this will affect the protagonist.
Is death in a picture book a bad idea?
Has anyone read Shaun Tan's 'The Red Tree'?
The little girl in that is pretty much on the verge of taking Prozac.