Writing in bloom

Life has overtaken the blog recently. Which is a good thing, I suppose! Anyway, lots has happened over the last month or so. My main piece of news is that I have signed up to do a creative writing course with the literary agent, Curtis Brown.

Flowers and books: two of my favourite things!

I a hit a blip with my novel-in-progress back in January and decided that I needed help (or possibly a new job). Assistance came in the form of an email advertising a six-month online course. I decided this was make-or-break for my writing career (like to raise the stakes for myself) and applied for a place.

Character study

I am immersed in what I hope will be the final edit of my second novel. At this point in the process, I am trying to look at the 'arc' of the story, while also teasing out some of the underlying themes. It's structural work, quite different from the nitty-gritty detail which has occupied me up until now. The question I keep pondering is what my central character - a young wife stuck in a dysfunctional marriage - has learnt about herself over the course of the novel.

Lily James as the charming Natasha Rostova
Credit: BBC / Mitch Jenkins

Last night, watching the latest instalment of the BBC's excellent War and Peace series, I witnessed the sad decline of the charismatic Natasha, as she struggles to reconcile her sexuality - her lapse in judgement regarding Anatole - with a greater sense of purpose. Within the confines of a novel, characters are usually obliged to travel in some metaphorical sense, during which journey they undergo a kind of moral or spiritual transformation. Tolstoy's War and Peace is no exception.

Poetic truth

Notes from the Henley Literary Festival 2015

My favourite event in Henley's social carousel has come round again. For one glorious week (the sun always shines), I swan about the Henley Literary Festival on my own little voyage of intellectual discovery. This year I am attending talks on subjects as diverse as babies being born to mothers incarcerated at Auschwitz, black holes, the debutantes at Bletchley Park and an Indian suffragette. Every year I fall under the spell of the written word, marvelling again at its power to capture the gamut of human experience and inspire emotion.

Jane's memoir was a way
of 'unburdening' herself

It doesn't matter whether it is fiction or non-fiction: a good piece of writing is always authentic or truthful in an artistic sense. Whilst talking about his latest novel (The Dust that Falls from Dreams) on the Great War, author Louis de Bernieres told us how he toyed with writing a biography of his family, but decided he didn't want to upset his father. "I've gone back to the normal plan which is to tell colossal lies," he said. "But there is poetic truth [in the book]." His guiding principle was to recreate what individuals felt as they became caught up in the war.

Heroic defeat

Imagine what it feels like. You wake up on Monday morning feeling flattened. Perhaps for a few seconds there is blissful oblivion, but then the full weight of your disappointment crushes you like never before. This is Ed, this is Nick, this is Nigel and all the MPs who lost their seats last week. The political casualties of the general election are facing up to their failures, after six weeks of campaigning hype, nerve-bending adrenalin and exhaustion. Their bid to change history, to alter the course of their own lives, has come to nothing.

Being shown the door on election night

Of course these men and women are thick-skinned and tough - to survive in modern politics you probably have to be - but I imagine public defeat still makes them feel empty and demoralised. Where they may differ from us ordinary mortals is in their ability to pick themselves up, dust down their political colours and get on with their lives. 

Reading for pleasure

Tuesday night found me discussing my novel, A Sister for Margot, with a book club from Nettlebed. The prospect of talking about my work with a group of strangers is always daunting, but the group's relaxed vibe made for an enjoyable evening. There's something about a book club that oils communication (or was that the wine?) and leads you down conversational alleys you may not have visited before. In two hours, we covered blighted potential, use of the present tense in A Sister for Margot, ebooks, the war dead and the devastation of Typhoon Haiyan.

Books could keep you out of prison

I know from my own book club that discussion of a story or plotline is often a jumping-off point for more personal revelations. It is a cliche to say that women love to chat, but book clubs provide a few extra ingredients: literary analysis, escapism, a window on another world and the chance to exchange ideas. Girls consistently outperform boys at school and the popularity of book clubs amongst women perhaps harks back to a fondness for structured study and analysis.

Dissenting voices

There are so may ways of telling a story. In the weighty tomes of Victorian England, authors like George Eliot took you by the hand and led you sententiously through the novel. Eliot's all-knowing, all-seeing 'voice' helped to shape your response to the characters, and ultimately the book itself. 

Books of old: "Dear reader..."
© Photographer: Simon Lawrence | Agency: Dreamstime.com

As children of the modern age, we have rebelled against this kind of handholding. In The Art of Fiction, the writer and literary critic, David Lodge, explains that an intrusive, authorial voice claims "a God-like omniscience, which our sceptical and relativistic age is reluctant to grant to anyone". Modern fiction, he says, tends to present the action through the consciousness of the characters, or "by handing over to them the narrative task itself". 

In other words, readers of modern fiction are more accustomed to a quiet, third-person presence who moves deftly in and out of the characters' thoughts, or a first-person narrator who tells the story from their own point of view. This is not to say that the first-person narrator is a modern invention - in Great Expectations, Charles Dickens tells the story through Pip with great ingenuity. Despite the immediacy of the first person, somehow we can still feel Dickens' judgement of Pip coming through. 

Undeniably, however, there is something modern and spontaneous about the first person. It pulls us into the book with its confessional tone. There is no standing on ceremony. The authenticity of the first person can instantly bring a story to life. Immersed in the tale, we find it easier to forget that we are reading a work of fiction.

Nevertheless, there are limitations. The author, adopting the voice of a first-person narrator, has to stay in character. There are can be no sweeping descriptions of landscape (unless the narrator is prone to such diversions) or jumps into the minds of other characters. By contrast, a third-person telling allows the author to stand back, play God and pull all the strings. 

Now we come to my dilemma (and here I switch into the first person). I am in the process of writing a novel about an ex-patriate community in Jakarta during the 1970s. On a whim, I decided to write it in the first person. I wanted the novel to open with all the immediacy and distinction of a single voice. But, for the reasons above, I keep toying with re-writing the book in the third person! My view on which perspective works better changes from day to day.

So I am putting it to the vote. Below, I have included two versions of the same opening passage. If you have time, take a read of both and let me know which you prefer in the "Add a comment" box at the bottom of the page.

First Person

We arrived at dusk. Flaming Nora – what a trip! Forty-eight hours door-to-door, with fourteen pieces of luggage and a wooden crate. We were only off the plane five minutes before the sun deserted us, tunnelling down into another part of the world. Jakarta! Truthfully, I had barely heard of the place until a few months ago and here I was, one dark night.

Outside the airport window, the jumbo jet had melted away into a twinkle of lights. They swam before my eyes in fluorescent waves. Oh Holy Mary, Mother of God, grant me one cigarette, please! My fingers were twitching in my lap. And where in the hell was Daniel? I gazed out across the filthy floor of the arrivals hall and spotted him in the distance talking to some airport bloke in a cheap uniform. Daniel’s spine was stooped, his head hangdog. He looked as old as my dad. Something was wrong. Hauling myself to my feet, I tottered over.

Third Person

They arrived at dusk, a husband and wife. What a trip! Forty-eight hours door-to-door, with fourteen pieces of luggage and a wooden crate. They were only off the plane five minutes before the sun deserted them, tunnelling down into another part of the world. Jakarta! Louise, the wife, had barely heard of the place until a few months ago and now she found herself listening to crickets trilling in the trees outside the window.

On the runaway, the jumbo jet they arrived on had melted away into a twinkle of lights. They swam before Louise's eyes in fluorescent waves. Oh Holy Mary, Mother of God, grant me one cigarette, please, she prayed, as her fingers twitched in her lap. The sound of raised voices caused her to look up. Where in the hell was Daniel? She gazed out across the filthy floor of the arrivals hall and spotted him in the distance talking to some airport bloke in a cheap uniform. Daniel’s spine was stooped, his head hangdog. He looked as old as her dad. Something was wrong. Hauling herself to her feet, she tottered over.

Emma Clark Lam is the author of A Sister for Margot