Whilst one might argue that a dynamic and developing sense of eventled drama forms the central core of the literary narrative, it behoves the embryonic novelist to be cognisant of other, more ephemeral concepts that serve both to create and nurture the fictive bole that must lie at the heart of any convincing narrative exposition. If one accepts that all literature is, in essence, eschatological – that is, concerned with the ultimate end of things, with death and destruction, finality and …
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Who grabbed the keyboard there and how many dictionaries has he swallowed? Did you notice? Something changed. This is a non-fiction book. Dictates about point of view don’t really count here. You could regard this as a first-person narrative throughout. But it still has something it shares with fiction: a voice. I just altered that voice. A lot. It briefly belonged to someone else, someone who uses words I’d never write without a very good reason: ‘whilst’ and ‘cognisant’, ‘bole’ and ‘eschatological’. I sound like some pompous retired lecturer trying to show off his vocabulary, not ‘me’ at all.
Except that the ‘me’ you have here isn’t ‘me’ either. From the outset I decided to adopt a particular voice for this book in an attempt to give it some character and establish a relationship with you, the reader. Your novel will attempt the same. This is the voice of the book, not a character, though that comes into play. An overall tone, a feel, a sense of style.
For my chosen voice here I decided to present myself as a frank, argumentative, occasionally tetchy writer of popular fiction, one trying to make practical points in plain language in a classroom full of interested but slightly baffled beginners.
Practicality apart – it should make the book more readable – I did this for two reasons. I want you to understand that writing is a personal matter, and enormous fun once you let your own identity meld with that fictive – whoops, there he goes again – fictional voice on the page. I also need you to understand that everything you read here is opinionated and designed to be challenged. This isn’t one of those ‘The Top Ten Secrets of Writing a Bestseller’ tomes that attempts to construct a formula to take you from obscurity to the top of the charts in a flash. As you should know by now, I don’t believe in rules and formulae, and neither should you.
I’d also have to wonder why someone who knows the secrets of writing a bestseller isn’t writing one of them instead of a non-fiction work that will clearly shift considerably fewer copies.
More than anything though I need you to question everything you read here and ask yourself, ‘Is the old curmudgeon right?’ To prompt you to do that I try to take on the tone of one of those interesting but eccentric teachers you used to get at school, the sort who’d come up with insights but happily lob chalk at anyone who wasn’t paying attention. And usually miss.
Narrative voice shapes the reader’s response to a work. If it’s pompous, long-winded and overburdened with archaic and obscure words, most will tend to shy away, particularly when it comes to fiction. If there’s an aspect that interests them, something they can warm to or even a facet of the book’s tone they find horrifying in a fascinating way, they will be more inclined to extend sufficient patience to allow you to reel them in with your story.
The tone of the overall book needs to be fixed as much as possible from the very beginning. Those first few pages will tell the reader what to expect from your tale. You should have a firm grasp of the tenor and style of your narration from your opening paragraph, and of the different approaches that signpost how the audience will react to your story.
Here are the opening two paragraphs of Thomas Hardy’s gorgeously melancholic tale, Far from the Madding Crowd, first published in 1874:
When Farmer Oak smiled, the corners of his mouth spread till they were within an unimportant distance of his ears, his eyes were reduced to chinks, and diverging wrinkles appeared round them, extending upon his countenance like the rays in a rudimentary sketch of the rising sun.
His Christian name was Gabriel, and on working days he was a young man of sound judgment, easy motions, proper dress, and general good character. On Sundays he was a man of misty views, rather given to postponing, and hampered by his best clothes and umbrella: upon the whole, one who felt himself to occupy morally that vast middle space of Laodicean neutrality which lay between the Communion people of the parish and the drunken section, – that is, he went to church, but yawned privately by the time the congregation reached the Nicene creed, and thought of what there would be for dinner when he meant to be listening to the sermon. Or, to state his character as it stood in the scale of public opinion, when his friends and critics were in tantrums, he was considered rather a bad man; when they were pleased, he was rather a good man; when they were neither, he was a man whose moral colour was a kind of pepper-and-salt mixture.
There’s a wonderful authorial voice at work here, confident, informed, absolutely in touch with what he’s trying to do: begin the work through a portrayal of a character who will be central to the whole narrative.
There’s a ‘but’ coming. You can hear it. You know what it is too.
What does ‘Laodicean’ mean? And the ‘Nicene creed’?
Hardy was a good Victorian, one who grew up with the Bible, went to church regularly and, as a young man, wrote a sermon. In Revelation 3:14–16 Laodicea is revealed as a town with a lukewarm attitude to religion, and gets a suitable Old Testament comeuppance for yawning when God is looking.
I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm – neither hot nor cold – I am about to spit you out of my mouth.
From that short entry we have acquired the knowledge that ‘Laodicean’ is a very obscure adjective meaning ‘half-hearted towards religion’.
The Nicene creed is simply the creed of the Anglican church, the declaration of belief that runs something like this, depending on the version: ‘We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen …’
Simple question. If you were writing this scene today would you use those same words? My guess is not – unless you were deliberately creating a literary work replicating the literary style of late nineteenth-century England.
There’s nothing social or judgemental in avoiding Hardy’s language. Those terms simply lack the ability to communicate they once had. Victorians who read novels were middle to upper class and educated. School education was not made compulsory in England until 1880, and public libraries were confined to urban areas. Even if the rural poor who featured in Hardy’s work could read, they would find it difficult to be able to borrow or buy a contemporary novel. The privileged minority who spent the evening with a book in front of them had much the same cultural background as the authors they read. Many doubtless understood what Hardy was talking about without a second thought.
Publishing is quite different in the twenty-first century. Books sell to a mass market around the world. They’re a form of entertainment as much as a cultural art form – one more branch of that amorphous beast we know as ‘the media’. Consumers are besieged with information and possibilities from all directions. They’re perpetually short of time so many never pick up a book at all.
Hardy’s readers sat down by candlelight for a long evening with a weighty novel, trapped by their social circumstances, with no easy or quick method of escape. Today’s authors must battle with TV, the internet, a busy social life, and the car in the drive for people’s attention.
If you want to write a literary novel pitched at a literary audience, one that will understand biblical and arcane references without a second thought, that’s fine. But be aware of the course you’re taking. Popular fiction is designed to appeal to a general audience. The books that become huge blockbuster sellers only reach that status because they’re bought by people who don’t usually purchase books at all. The words and the style you use act as the gatekeepers for your story. Popular fiction demands a voice that welcomes all-comers. An archaic, ‘literary’ approach will limit your appeal, to publishers and readers alike.
Hardy could write as he wanted and be confident that most of the audience would be sufficiently well read to understand his allusions. Modern authors cannot make that assumption. You can look on that with regret or see it as an interesting challenge: how do you create a rich and textured fictional world populated by believable characters using a vocabulary that is, next to Hardy’s, necessarily somewhat restricted?
There’s more than a touch of snobbery in this area. ‘Literary’ fiction will on occasion look down on the ‘popular’ simply because it sells a lot better. I’d just ask a simple question. Imagine you want to write a story that has the depth, texture and resonance of a piece of good classic storytelling. Which do you think is easier? Managing that with a restricted vocabulary and a stylistic approach that is understandable and liked by a mass audience, some of whom rarely read books? Or producing a ‘literary’ novel for a small, intellectual readership, many of whom will know its arcane language and context already?
It’s tougher to be great in five hundred words than a thousand any day, and that is the test facing the popular novelist.
Choose your language carefully. If you want to reach a general audience use words that are commonly understood over obscure, archaic or – let’s admit it – flashy ones. Few people will be impressed by an author hell-bent on demonstrating his mastery of an arcane vocabulary. The line between being clever and coming across as a smartass is decidedly slender at times and easily crossed. That doesn’t mean you can’t challenge your readers from time to time or spark an idea that might set them off looking up something you’ve introduced into your narrative. But don’t push your luck. Their patience isn’t what it was.
The best modern writing is invisible. We barely notice the skill and structure behind it, preferring instead to enjoy the story building inside our heads. Unknown words and awkward phrases are narrative speed bumps, needless hiatuses that can, if they begin to happen too often, jolt the reader out of the work altogether.
Try to write good, clear English. Avoid linguistic howlers such as split infinitives – ‘to boldly go …’ Inverted, prolix sentence structures aren’t fashionable any more, or long paragraphs divided by colons and semi-colons, a practice common in Hardy’s day. Modern English is less ornate and complex than the language used in the classics of a century or more ago.
I wouldn’t get hung up about grammar. So yes, you can start sentences with the word ‘and’. And your characters, in dialogue, are free to mangle language as much as is necessary in order to reveal their character because grammar and speech do not necessarily mix. Writing is about communication, and in general fiction it’s the story that matters. You don’t need an academic tome on syntax by your side in order to write a popular novel, though it’s worth remembering that ugly prose is ugly prose in any context (not that clumsy writing has ever stopped a few people entering the bestseller charts).
Hardy’s style would need a little tweaking to join them now. If those opening paragraphs were submitted as general fiction today any decent editor would surely get back to him with two simple suggestions: change ‘Laodicean’ to something along the lines of ‘lukewarm and sceptical’ and ditch that word ‘Nicene’ altogether.
Would anything be lost? Let’s be honest. No. The change would actually make those two opening paragraphs better from the point of view of the average twenty-first-century reader. It would stop you scratching your head over a couple of obscure words that get in the way of focusing on the important matter: the character of Gabriel Oak, which is surely going to be central to the coming story. And you wouldn’t be thinking to yourself, ‘You know if this chap’s going to use words I’m not sure I can pronounce let alone understand perhaps I’m too stupid for this book and should be reading something else.’
Few writers have never heard the complaint, ‘I’m worried about the pace here.’ Yet pinning down what exactly a ‘lack of pace’ means can be very difficult beyond the obvious: ‘I’m in danger of getting bored.’
I doubt anyone nagged Victorian writers much on this subject. The classics of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are full of linguistic habits that will generally be frowned upon today. The use of extended and complex sentences, for example, is not a habit that will endear many writers to editors or readers. Take this very long sentence of Thomas Hardy’s from the extract we’ve looked at already:
On Sundays he was a man of misty views, rather given to postponing, and hampered by his best clothes and umbrella: upon the whole, one who felt himself to occupy morally that vast middle space of Laodicean neutrality which lay between the Communion people of the parish and the drunken section, – that is, he went to church, but yawned privately by the time the congregation reached the Nicene creed, and thought of what there would be for dinner when he meant to be listening to the sermon.
Perfect and elegant Victorian English. Hardy’s use of the colon is absolutely correct if a touch archaic. The punctuation of a comma followed by a dash looks more than a little odd to modern eyes. More than anything, though, it’s the prolix construction that gives away the age and the conspicuous artistry of the writer.
Far from the Madding Crowd was Hardy’s fourth book. It was first serialised in the popular Cornhill magazine and proved to be such a massive success that he was able to give up his job as an architect and begin to write full time. To readers of the day he was a successful and much-respected mass market novelist. Today he’s deservedly revered as one of England’s great Victorian writers. But emulate his style and you will be marked out as an oddity, beyond the mainstream of fiction. We don’t write that way any more.
What’s changed?
Modern writing tends to be much closer to spoken English. When we talk we do not speak in long, complex sentences. We construct ones that are short, pithy and much more direct than the flowery and intricate language that was once the lingua franca of fiction. We do this for a simple reason: people are much more likely to understand us this way.
A sentence like this – ‘Having wheeled his pushbike down to the seafront, Charlie looked around for Sally; nowhere was she to be seen’ sounds arch, unnecessary and jarring. Instead, a modern reader would prefer: ‘Charlie wheeled his pushbike down to the seafront then looked for Sally. She wasn’t there.’
Remember: fiction is now very popular in audio. Most commercial novels will end up being read by professional actors for the growing download business. Storytelling has, to some extent, rediscovered its roots in oral poets like Homer. It’s worth bearing that in mind and listening to your words as they appear. Hear them in your own head as you type. Even read them out loud before a final edit. It’s another way of experiencing the text. That word ‘perspective’ again.
The right words and some straightforward sentence construction will help your narrative flow. The precise style will have to be tailored to the nature of your story.
Back to Charlie and his town:
Inkerman Street was deserted as the boy wheeled his pushbike down towards the sea. The flat tyre was a problem he could deal with later. It was a heavy Thursday afternoon in August. The sky was heavy and unsettled. In the south a line of black, angry thunder clouds hung over the ragged green ridge of the Littledown hills. He thought he heard a distant rumble coming from beyond the Dunstaff spur. Then, as he wheeled the bike out into the open space of the Beggars’ Arms car park, he saw, a couple of miles out over the rolling, purple sea, a jagged spike of fork lightning arcing down to the angry waves.
Alternatively: ‘The bike had a flat tyre so Charlie wheeled it down to the promenade. The weather was turning. It looked as if a storm was on the way.’
Two takes on the same scene. Which is better?
Once again it’s an unanswerable question. That depends entirely on the kind of book you’re trying to write.
The first approach might suit a work that’s going to be full of atmosphere and foreboding, one that hopes to build a highly detailed world, perhaps with a series in mind. If the novel’s to be a fast, linear story the second would be better: straight short sentences, little in the way of atmosphere and description, lots of movement.