Joy!  Last week I posted about finding Joy in Poetry   and invited you to let me know if there was anything poetry-related you’d like me to blog about, And – joy oh joy – I had a request from Jen to explore why I have chosen to write verse novels rather than traditional prose novels. Thank you so much for the question Jen.

Simply: I write verse novels because I love them so much.  However, not all of my novels (or other work) is written in verse, and the reasons for that can be varied.

Firstly, why verse. [NB What follows is partly a rework of a post I wrote way back in 2011, though I’ve updated it ].

I must admit that I didn’t so much choose the form as it chose me. From the time I read my first verse novel (It was Jinx, by Margaret Wild), I had been fascinated with the form, and knew that eventually I would try my hand at writing one. However,Pearl Verses the World (my first verse novel) came like a bolt from the blue, insisting it be written, and be written in verse. There was no conscious decision to try to write a verse novel – rather a story came to me, as a series of poems, and I sat down and wrote it down. Along the way I did a lot of thinking about what would happen to this very insistent character, but there was never any question that her story would be told in verse. And I think it works.

My second verse novel, Toppling , was similar. This time there was a wee bit more intention. I’d finished writing Pearl, and when the idea for a story about a boy who topples dominoes came, I hoped that it was story which would lend itself to the verse form. Fortunately for me, it did.

Since then I’ve written four more verse novels which have been published (Roses are Blue, Worse Things, Queen Narelle and The Riding Gallery) as well as two others which are yet to be published.  I hope I will write, and publish many more.   However, I don’t write exclusively in verse form, simply because it is not a form which lends itself to every story.

For me, a story will work well in verse if:

1.       It is a character-driven story, rather than plot-driven. Yes, of course a verse novel needs a plot, too, but it is the characters of Pearl , John, Narelle and more which drive my own verse novels. For this reason I write in first person, a voice which works well for verse noels.
2.       It is high on emotion. The verse form is wonderful for exploring emotions in a way which takes 4the reader close into the emotional vortex of the character. It is also excellent in allowing the reader to imagine the emotion for themselves rather than needing to be told how the character feels.
3.       Setting can be simply defined. For me (and remember every writer is different) I struggle to write detailed descriptions of setting in the verse form. My poetry is about emotion, and so the feel of Pearl’s home, or John’s school is far more important than its physicality. Having said that, in my most recent verse novel, The Riding Gallery, setting was really important because it is a historical novel, set in St Kilda during WW1. So I had to work extra hard to ensure both that the setting was clear and that it was accurate.
4.      The plot is not overly complicated. Lack of complication does not mean lack of depth. What  I do mean is that the story in a verse novel tends to be fairly linear – with subplots kept to a minimum or forming part of the main plot. My verse novels generally have subplots – the friendship between Pearl and Mitchell, for example, and the uncovering of Ky’s story in Toppling, but these happen against the backdrop of the main plotline.
5.     Lastly, the key consideration when choosing to write a verse novel is whether the story can be better told any other way. If a story can be told in prose, it probably should be. Why? Because the verse novel is hard to write and hard to sell. I confess to having unsuccessfully tried to rewrite one of my prose novels as a verse novel following the success of Pearl – and failing. The story needed to be told in prose, because it could be. Could Pearl’s story – or John and Dom’s –  have been told in prose? I don’t think so. But that of Garth (the hero of the unsuccessful attempt) needed a level of dialogue and of description which the verse novel couldn’t lend.  I later worked on that story back in its prose form – which is where it started out – and it was published as Brace Yourself.

Since I have started writing verse novels I have also had three prose novels published – Australia’s Great War: 1915, and My Australian Story: Bushfire were both commissioned by Scholastic Australia as prose historical fiction; Looking Up came to me as a prose story, was written that way and published by Fremantle Press.  Even though I love writing in verse, I like the challenge of shifting between forms, too.

If you are interested in the verse novel form, you might like to see what some other verse novel enthusiasts have to say, at the following blog posts:

Lisa Schroeder on Writing in Verse:

Susan Taylor Brown’s Thoughts on Verse Novels

Thanks again for the question, Jen. I’ve enjoyed revisiting this topic.

If YOU have a question or topic for me to cover, let me know!