in verse

I’m going to share something that happened to me writing-wise where I decided to completely change the style of writing for a new novel that I’ve written. For a long time I’ve wanted to write a verse novel, after reading great ones by Sarah Crossan, Louisa Reid and Gráinne O'Brien to name a few. I also have always felt like my writing was close to a kind of poetry and it is hard to say that without sounding very pretentious but that’s how I feel. I try to write in a semi-stream of consciousness way and I had a feeling that I could write something in verse that made an impact on the reader.

So I wrote a novel in verse, I really liked the characters and the theme and how it ended and everything but what I found was that I kept coming back to it to add more things here and there. As I did this, I noticed that the word count was creeping up and up and I felt like I had to make a decision, keep it as a verse novel (I really liked it that way), or convert it to a prose novel.

In the end I decided to simply make a copy of it and convert it to a prose novel. I have just finished the prose novel a day before writing this blog post. It took me a long time, a lot longer than I thought, but I really loved it, re-writing it and turning it into a prose novel. I found that the covnersion process really helpful to get my voice across in a way that I really wanted it for my protagonist, which is a kind of combination of Pony Boy and Holden Caulfield I guess. It also made me aware how much respect I have for authors who write in verse because it is extremely difficult and I don’t think I have the skill set to do it yet, as much as I wanted that story to become one. I feel like I struggle to put things down in a concise, effective way that a verse novel reqiures and maybe I rattle on too much but I found that I wasn’t getting across the voice I wanted in that format for that particular character.

I am not advising anyone to write in verse, but what I am saying is that it was a very fun challenge for me to write in verse in the first place and an even bigger challenge to convert it to a prose novel. I think I’m happier with it as a prose novel and I don’t think I’ll try this process again, even though it was kind of by accident. I hope to be able to write a verse novel I’m happy with in the future as I really enjoy reading them and as a librarian I know how effective they can be to hook students who claim they can’t find anything to read.

Again, the challenge was really fun and I really hope that these characters see the light of day at some point in the futre.