Two sides to every story - except when there isn't... by Valerie-Anne Baglietto

Earlier this year, I left the cosy confines of North Wales and headed down to London to take my daughter to see Wicked. We both love the Wizard of Oz, so we’d been dying to see this musical for ages. I expected to enjoy it, but what I didn’t expect was that it would ignite something in my Writer’s Brain that I’m now finding endlessly fascinating. I mean, I already knew about POV, of course I did. After nearly two decades in this business, I’m hardly a novice. But now I’m thinking much more deeply, not just about POV but about perception.

We’ve had a couple of great posts on Novelistas Ink already about this subject, and I don’t want to repeat what Juliet and Annie put so eloquently. They’re well worth a read or re-read.

This particular post is the one about my own point of view about point of view (yes, I was trying to be too clever there).

View on Amazon

By the time I saw Wicked, I’d already finished the first draft of my latest book Four Sides to Every Story.

POV was something that had been constantly on my mind for several months, since the title for the book first popped into my head while I was staring out of a window on a train one day. (Seriously, what is it about trains? Didn’t JK Rowling come up with the idea for Harry Potter on a train?) Anyway – my story, which has a grown-up fairy tale romance at its core, didn’t just have the hero’s and heroine’s sides to take into account, there was also the fairy godmother to consider, and the hero’s stepdaughter. Their roles in the story were crucial, and it was imperative they narrated their parts, too.

But just like Wicked, it wasn’t enough simply to get into each character’s head for a scene or two. How the characters perceived the same unfolding story, and how they were perceived as people within that tale, were paramount. I don’t want to give too much away of the plot of Wicked. After all, if you haven’t already had the pleasure, you might want to read the book or see the musical for yourself. But basically, it’s the Wizard of Oz from a different angle, so it helps if you’re familiar with the landscape of Oz. And it shows us, in such a fiendishly inspired way, how a different narrator can turn an entire story on its head. An exciting concept for a writer. I came away with my head BUZZING. (Maybe my life is very quiet and I’m easily pleased.)

Propaganda is a powerful tool, not just in wars...

It can scramble our brains, make us forget to put ourselves in another person’s shoes. The same with gossip. How quickly we can think ill of someone, without knowing their side. And villains, after all, are the heroes of the stories we tell - in their own eyes. Recently, movies like Maleficent also help us to see a well-known tale from a different POV. I wanted to do something like that within Four Sides to Every Story. My fairy godmother is young, and not at all theatrical like the kind we’re used to. But we see the tale from her perspective too for once, as well as from the others involved. Although the plot of the book isn’t a modern retelling of an actual fairy tale, we all know the markers, the familiar thread, the way the story ought to unfold. But it doesn’t. It starts going very wrong. The path to true love becomes perilously rocky. And not everyone is telling the truth or letting us completely under their skin.

And that’s another thing. The trendy-but-not-new device of the "unreliable narrator". The omissions. The secrets they don’t share with the reader.

Ah, I learned to love that, too; although it wasn’t easy to begin with. It was too new to me - or so I thought. If you have more time to spare, make a large mug of tea or coffee and look the term up on Wikipedia. In essence, all fictional narrative is unreliable to an extent, because if we're using POV correctly then the story is filtered through the narrator's eyes, with his or her own life experience, prejudices, moral code, etc. But while I was working on Four Sides I hadn't researched the device, so failed to appreciate the history behind it, or the fact that I'd absorbed the subtleties of using it from many books I'd read in the past, including Agatha Christie.

Out of the four points of view in my story, there are various degrees of 'unreliability'. Ooh, the fun I had once I got into my stride. This was my Happy Book, as I nicknamed it. The one that was a joy to write after the torturous bit at the start when I couldn’t see beyond the first few chapters. I’m grateful to it for giving me those months of unadulterated pleasure. I’m indebted to the lessons it taught me.

Of course, in my earlier rom-coms, I tried to use POV as effectively as I could, too, but on the whole, the narrators were the ‘goodies’, even if they sometimes behaved badly. They always laid themselves bare to the reader. I received a tweet a couple of weeks ago which brightened up a rainy Sunday. It was from a fan of Fresh as a Daisy, which is over a decade old now, who said she still read it at least once a year. She liked the fact I had managed to make all the participants in a love triangle sympathetic. It got me thinking, and re-reading it myself. There were three ‘nice’ people involved, who made mistakes throughout the story, but none of them was out to hurt anyone. They were real and ordinary and exactly who they claimed to be, even if they didn't spill all their secrets out in one lump on the page; the idea being, the reader would perceive them as such and be sympathetic to their problems.

But that isn’t quite the case in Four Sides to Every Story. This is a modern fairy tale, with a twist.

I felt I had to go one step further than the way I normally approach the craft of writing POV. It reminded me of a still-life art class, with all the artists in a circle around a bowl of fruit. Each completed painting will look different, depending on the individual artist's perspective. And not just the image in their line of sight, but how they translate it in their heads, too, and how they choose to capture it pictorially. At the end of the day, though, it’s the same bowl of fruit.

So this is how I visualised the book in my head as I wrote it, with my storyline in the centre and my characters as the artists gathered around it. A floundering, surly hero. A heroine who isn’t just prickly with the other characters but with the reader as well. A fairy godmother who desperately needs things to play out the way the reader expects. And finally, a child, who perceives things as they truly are, without the complications, as only an innocent can.

One story. Four very different perspectives.

Wicked fun to write ;-)


Why not have a go playing around with POV, too, and take it a step further than you normally would? You never know, there might be a whole new chapter ahead of you. Just let me know how you get on! 

Valerie-Anne x

The Child Behind Every (Grown-Up) Writer by Valerie-Anne Baglietto

The other day I shared a picture on Facebook, a selection of classic Ladybird children's stories. It prompted the sort of response that led me to think, Ah FB isn't so bad, after all. It isn't just a bunch of people shouting out random things and being ignored. I suppose I was becoming a bit too cynical. Anyway, it got me thinking about books and childhood and the stories that shape us as we grow up.

Here at Novelistas Ink we're a very diverse bunch of writers. 

As you can probably tell if you're a follower of our blog. We're all good friends, though, and our lunches are infamous throughout North Wales. OK, slight exaggeration, but then we do write fiction. The common thread we share is our passion and love of writing. We're besotted with it. Head over heels. Can't get enough of it (or perhaps we can when we've got a deadline looming, or edits-from-hell to wade through, but on the whole we enjoy it).

Our genres range from witty romantic comedies to moving war-time sagas. From atmospheric historical novels to sparkling Regency romances. From plot-twisting, cliff-hanging romantic suspense to modern, grown-up fairy tales. And all that wonderful stuff in between such as contemporary YA or straightforward novels about relationships and marriage. I'm not sure anyone's written a spy thriller yet, but give us time and we just might.

But what steered us to write in our favourite genres?

What made us the writers we all are today? Was it the books from our childhood or the books we've read as adults, or maybe a mixture of both? I believe it's a mixture, but I also think we can't deny the power of those stories we've carried with us most of our lives. Those treasured tales that lodged in our hearts and never left.

As a girl, I spent hours in my small local library...

It was just round the corner from our house, so I often hid away in there after school or during the holidays. Sometimes with similar minded friends, but often alone. If I wasn't reading I was writing or researching. I've written stories since I first learned to misspell words, aged four. There was also a bookshelf in our house full of novels that looked like this, no dust jackets or blurbs, just the bare bones of a cover:

As an only child, I spent hours entertaining myself reading. My parents still own most of those books, and my own children's shelves still hold the favourites I loved to read over and over again.

A beautifully written and illustrated anthology

This anthology of classic fairy tales from around the world (see photo) is probably mine and my daughter's current favourite. I owe a great deal to this huge collection of stories. It was given to me as a gift by a family friend. Little did they know how much it would shape me and nurture a love of fairy tales that's stronger than ever these days.

Of course, I loved Enid Blyton, too. I had all the Famous Five and Secret Seven books.

I think those taught me how to pace a plot and keep a reader turning the pages. Those were the ones I read under the covers with a torch. Come on, admit it, we all did that. Maybe some of us still do.

Now admittedly, if you write erotica, you probably didn't read it as a child. Or maybe you used to sneak down the more adult books from the shelves at home when your parents weren't looking, and thumb through them for those, er, interesting bits. As a teenager in the 80s, I can still recall all those mini-series on TV based on the doorstop sex-and-shopping novels that were so fashionable...

Lace, Mistral's Daughter, Princess Daisy, etc.

These are the books my friends and I consumed and tried to emulate in our stories (I wasn't the only one of my gang who wrote fiction back then). It was a glitzy world we knew nothing about apart from what we read or saw on TV, but boy did we have fun trying to write about it! Then there was Virginia Andrews and Danielle Steele and Barbara Taylor Bradford... The list is quite lengthy and I could probably rattle on all day, but then this post would be too long, and the whole point of it was to provoke a discussion.

Do you think the books you read as a child have influenced your writing as an adult?

If so, to what extent? I think it's a fascinating subject to consider, both for established or aspiring writers.

Every now and again it's good to examine why we write what we write. Because doing it for the market alone will never truly make us happy if we don't pen (or type) our words with love, honesty or joy. We need to find that balance in our work in order to be healthy and well-rounded. We owe it to our readers as well as ourselves. They can always tell if we're short-changing them.

Just a small selection...

So maybe, if you're stuck in a rut right now, and don't know where to turn or what genre to aim for, it might help to travel back in time and remember the tales that inspired you and made you want to be a writer in the first place.

I can tell you, hand on heart, a few short years ago this is precisely what helped me.

Please leave a comment if you have something to add, I'd love to hear your views on the subject.

All the best,
Valerie-Anne x

Valerie-Anne Baglietto's latest release is the full-length novel FOUR SIDES TO EVERY STORY.

Romance, magic and vintage fashion in the sleepy Cheshire village of Fools Castle, where a young fairy-godmother who normally gets things very right suddenly starts getting them disastrously wrong.

A modern, grown-up fairy tale perfect for fans of Sarah Addison Allen and Cecelia Ahern.

Amazon US - view here
Amazon UK - view here

www.valerie-annebaglietto.com
Twitter: @VABaglietto
Facebook: Valerie-Anne Baglietto Author

The Story Behind the Book: 'Why Do Fools Fall In Love' by Louise Marley

I was originally given two days to come up with the idea for Why Do Fools Fall in Love. My agent wanted to sell it as part of a two-book deal with Smoke Gets in Your Eyes. In the end, the deal with the proposed publisher fell through and I signed with someone else. But this is how I came up with the story.
 

Whenever I write a book I always start with a subject that interests me. In this case it was the film industry. I knew I didn’t want to write about Hollywood, because I didn’t want the story to be too glitzy, so it had to be the British film industry.

 

I liked the idea of two attractive men, who were complete opposites in personality, competing for the same woman. But who was this woman?

I remembered that old movie, the Bodyguard, and briefly thought about having a female actress and a hunky male bodyguard. I dismissed that idea for being too obvious, but then had the idea to switch the sexes. What if I had a too-handsome-for-his-own-good actor being forced to put up with a minder, because wherever he goes he inadvertently gets into trouble? What if the female bodyguard was equally reluctant to take on the job, feeling she’s being forced to ‘babysit’ an actor who’s too stupid to duck when women throw themselves at him?

Researching the book was remarkably easy. At the time I was living in a tiny village just outside Bath (a magnet for any production company wanting to make a costume drama), and I spent a day watching the BBC film A Respectable Trade.

Although I came up with the synopsis over a couple of days, the book itself took a year to write and was eventually sold to Poolbeg Press. When the rights reverted back to me, I republished it as an ebook with Amazon KDP. It has now sold over 40,000 copies.

Not bad for a book thought up over a weekend!

 

 

 

 

Good Husband Material by Trisha Ashley

Trisha has been tagged by fellow writer Annie Burrows to participate in The Next Big Thing, where authors tell you all about their next book. So here she goes!

What is the title of your next book?

Good Husband Material. This is actually a fresh new edition of my very first romantic comedy, which has long been out of print.

When will the book be published?

28th March 2013 (You can buy it here)

What genre does your book fall under?

Romantic comedy, generally.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Her first love was all wrong, so why doesn’t marriage to Mr Right make her happy?

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your book?

The origins of this book go a long way back in time. When I first began writing adult novels, they were satirical ones and this started out as an exploration of the effect moving to the country could have on a marriage that had seemed pretty rock-solid beforehand. I wrote the first draft in two weeks and called it My Place in the Country. It went on to be shortlisted for the Constable trophy, then a prestigious prize for an unpublished novel, but didn’t find a publisher until my agent took me on and pointed out that I was writing romantic comedies without any romance in them.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters?

Well … I’ll have Johnny Depp for Fergal! But I need a tallish, sassy redhead for Tish and I can’t immediately think of one.

What other books would you compare this story to?

I wouldn’t, there wasn’t anything quite like it when it first came out. Now, I expect there are, but I will leave comparisons to others.

Generally, my recent novels have had more comparisons with Marcia Willett and Rosamund Pilcher than any other authors, but my favourite description is ‘Midsomer Murders meets League of Gentlemen!’ My first four novels, including Good Husband Material, still have a very satirical edge to them. I think I mellowed a bit after that. But my readers like a wide variety of other authors and I’m just happy to be one of them.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

I was doing the Earth-mother, Good Life thing in the middle of a town when I wrote the first draft, growing herbs and fruit, baking my own wholemeal bread. I dreamed of living in the country and then started speculating about what effect such a move would have on a couple who seemed on the surface to be a perfect match, but underneath wanted very different things.

What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?

The gorgeous Fergal? That the heroine doesn’t realise she has red hair? The fact that I immortalised my beloved parrot in it? I think what I like most about the heroine, Tish, is that she’s such a bundle of contradictions: for instance, she says she doesn’t want pets (too unhygienic, for a start) but when a dog and a parrot are foisted onto her, it is clear that despite what she says about them, she actually comes to adore them.

Trisha’s next new novel, Wish upon a Star, will be published in early November 2013 by Avon HarperCollins.

The Next Big Thing by Louise Marley

I've been tagged by fellow writer Juliet Greenwood to participate in The Next Big Thing, where authors tell you all about their next book. So here goes.

What is the title of your book?

My new book is called Breathless. The heroine is Lainey Jennings, a diving instructor who is obsessed with finding a long-lost wreck called the Mary Eliza.

You can find the book on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00A9GHS5A

Where did the idea come from for the book?

Lots of different ideas collided to inspire me to write this book. The history of the Mary Eliza was loosely based on a real life ship called the Swan, which sank off the Isle of Mull in 1653. The idea of a warship sinking with its looted cargo came from the true story of the siege of Dundee in 1651. Although I expect my interest in wrecks really began with the raising of the Mary Rose, a Tudor warship which sank in 1545. As a child I remember watching on TV as her hull was finally brought to the surface after 437 years on the seabed.

I’m also fascinated by family history, and the way stories can become garbled as they are passed down through the generations. My grandfather used to love telling me tales about our seafaring ancestors, who had lived in the same Hampshire village for more than four hundred years. This gave me the idea for the character of Joseph Halfpenny, who is convinced he is descended from a notorious smuggler - even though he can’t actually prove it! Running alongside Lainey’s story I have included extracts from a journal written in 1695, which tells the story of this smuggler.

What genre does your book fall under?

My story is a blend of murder mystery and romantic comedy.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

Lainey is described as being small, athletic and with short black hair. If I were to choose an actress to play her, it would probably be Ginnifer Goodwin, who plays Snow White in Once Upon A Time.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

I usually take a year to write a book.

What else about your book might pique the reader's interest?

Aren’t smugglers and shipwrecks enough? I’m also fascinated by celebrity culture and my books often have a character who is a celebrity. In this book it’s Zac Nelson, a marine archeologist and TV presenter, who is famous for his documentary series on shipwrecks.

The next author I’ve tagged to tell you about her new book is my fellow Novelista, Valerie-Anne Baglietto.