From early on the title for the next novel comes to mind.

At other times, the last chapter has been written, the entire story endlessly edited and still the title remains elusive.

T.S. Eliot might have considered that the naming of cats is a difficult matter but I can assure him that the naming of a novel can be equally challenging!

And this is the situation that I am currently in, trying to come to a firm choice about the title of my fifth novel, close to its completion.

It’s always said – pretty obviously -that a novel must pull the readers in.

And by that, pull the correct readership in for the novels that suit a particular demographic.

And genre.

Very specific genres automatically suggest the type of title to suit. Horror, romance, cosy crime et al have obvious features and styles that a title can easily serve, attracting appropriate readers.

And such titles will be reflected, no doubt, in the cover image.

But if an author’s novels are less genre specific – like mine – the task is far harder, I find.

And it needs to be memorable. You want a reader to be able to hold a title in their head and hopefully recommend the novel to someone else if they’ve enjoyed reading it. A title that is too convoluted or, possibly worse, too vague and unspecified, is so easy to forget.

Then there’s the need for some originality.

Of course, with the number of novels that have been published over centuries and the proliferation of new books coming out – especially now with the resources of self publishing online – it’s impossible to be sure of finding a title that is entirely unique.

Yet the novels that are remembered, that have lasted the test of time for their quality and popularity all seem to have titles that are both unique and memorable.

And, on the whole, simple!

I mean …..Jane Eyre, Bleak House, Great Expectations, The Great Gatsby, Emma, Sons and Lovers, The Go-Between …

And yes, all these are principally composed of two words. Two nouns.

So perhaps this is a guide when choosing a novel title.

There are, of course, exceptions – Far From the Madding Crowd, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Pie Society, We have Always Lived in a Castle.

None of these initially seem to trip off the tongue – and take up a lot of space on the book cover – but that has not daunted their popularity.

So the idea of a short title being best is an argument soon destroyed by this evidence …

Yet, glancing at my overstocked book shelves, it’s true that shorter titles by far dominate.

Or at least they do on my shelves – which might actually say more about the genre of books I acquire and read rather than being a rule generally applied.

There do, after all, seem to be a lot of suspense, police procedural, domestic noir, gothic novels etc with more abstract and longer titles – along the lines of (I’m inventing these!) The Last Time I saw her – or I Know Where You Are or As Long as It Takes Me or According to the Rules of the Game.

I stress that all the above have just come out of my head and I apologise if anyone reading this is thinking of using one of them for their own novel – you can have it with my blessing!

Looking back again to late 18th and 19th century novels, there seems a definite preference for simplicity, brevity and, basically, going straight to the protagonist or premise to make the concerns of the novel patently clear:

Tom Jones, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, David Copperfield, Silas Marner, Middlemarch, Jude the Obscure – so nothing at all vague or ambiguous in such titles.

Which brings me back to my own difficulties in finding a title for novel number 5.

Let’s consider its ingredients: WW2: London: Conscientious Objection: Love: Family Obligations: Social Change.

Anything come to mind? No – me neither!

Actually, I had alighted upon a title right at the start of writing this novel but have since found several books with identical or similar titles which relate to WW1 – and as I now have that knowledge rather than stumbling over it after publication, it no longer appeals.

So what was going to be called By the Green of the Spring – a quote taken from a Siegfried Sassoon poem called Aftermath – currently remains untitled.

Suggestions would be welcome!

I am hoping that while completing and working through endless edits over the coming months, I will suddenly become enlightened and arrive at a title that is suitably succinct and relevant and tugs at readers’ interests.

It seems there is only one thing more difficult than coming up with a good title – and that is writing the blurb for the back cover and a synopsis for the press release ahead of publication.

Now those two tasks really do stretch patience – but more of them another time!

The post WHAT’S IN A NAME ….? appeared first on Jude Hayland.

Time is outside our control. There’s no fast forward or – more regrettably – dash back to the past to live over another day, week, year.

But in the world of novels, the author has the power to wield an authority upon it that is very freeing – but also raises all sorts of questions and dilemmas.

In saga novels, numerous generations might live their lives and be encapsulated in some 400 pages or so.

D.H. Lawrence’s The Rainbow, for example, Arnold Bennett’s The Old Wives’ Tale. In the latter – a favourite novel of mine – the reader meets the protagonists in their teenage years and stays with them until old age, the story set against the changing historical and social contexts of the times. So there are numerous leaps over years – even decades.

But what about novels spanning just a few years? How does the author decide which years to skip over and which to allow focus and detail?

I am finding this is a puzzle for me at the moment writing my fifth novel.

Starting in September 1940, the story spans the subsequent years of WW2 from the perspective of my protagonists – all of whom live in London.

Obviously, the historical and social contexts of the time are crucial – but there’s a balance in not allowing the story to be so overwhelmed with war detail that the reader becomes irritated and wishes the author had not done quite so much research into events!

So what to include, reference and highlight – and which months of which years to skip over and where to hover and expand – become the challenge.

Looking back on real life – the lives we are all leading – it seems that it’s not so much particular years that are recalled in detail as specific events and moments. Unless we are faithful diary recorders, it’s unlikely that we will have a clear picture of the contents of every year of our lives. We will probably remember births, deaths, losses, gains, holidays, home moves- and then, with due consideration, eventually attach a year to the memory.

But back to my protagonists.

The context of the novel’s WW2 setting inevitably calls out for certain events to be recorded or at least remarked upon- the fall of France, the blitz, the fears of invasion, the introduction of rationing, Pear Harbour and its consequences – and more.

But, having reached the end of 1943 in my initial draft, how many months can I skip over without the reader suddenly thinking hang on, what have Harriet and Ralph and Florence and Edith and Connie been getting up to for half of 1944? – if I suddenly fast forward to summer or autumn of that year?

Or will the transition not trouble the reader at all – just implicitly accepting that, like our own lives considered in retrospect, not every day of the 365 or 6 in a year is significant or bears examination?

Take Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte takes Jane off to Lowood School at the age of 10 and does not pick her up again until she is 18 or so. The first person protagonist boldly declares to her readers that:

Hitherto I have recorded in detail the events of my insignificant existence to the first ten years of my life, I have given almost as many chapters. But this is not a regular autobiography; I am only bound to invoke memory where I know her responses will possess some degree of interest; therefore I now pass a space of eight years almost in silence: a few lines only are necessary to keep up the links of the connection.

Actually, this is incredibly helpful.

My novel is not first person – and I think if I started to use words like hitherto I would swiftly be losing my reader’s attention – but that phrase will possess some degree of interest is instructive. As is a few lines only are necessary to keep up the links

If Charlotte Bronte can abandon eight years in her narrative because it holds little interest for the reader, I think I can follow suit with a less drastic fast forward over months.

After all, much as a reader needs to believe in the reality of the lives of characters (with the possible exception of readers of fantasy/paranormal/zombie et al genres!)we don’t need to seem them in all their prosaic daily and dull actions and activities.

And let’s face it, hours of our lives are composed of exactly that – methodical, routine and extremely banal moments that really defy even the best of writers to render as fascinating.

And before anyone quotes James Joyce’s Ulysses at me – a masterpiece that I have to confess I have never managed to read all the way through – I’m moving on and following Bronte’s recommendation in order to focus on moments that possess some degree of interest as I reach for the finishing line of novel number 5!

The post TIME, TIME, TIME … appeared first on Jude Hayland.

A day that has, inevitably, like so many other traditions, radically moved away from its original form, its 16th century origins.

Then, it was not, naturally, an event about flowers sold at inflated prices and cards and special Sunday lunch menus cashing in on the day.

In fact, it was not even about mothers at all.

With its roots firmly in religion, it was the fourth Sunday in Lent when people visited their mother-church in the local parish where they had been baptized and was originally called Refreshment Sunday.

Falling in the middle of Lent, a time of fasting and abstinence, there was a licence given on this one day for breaking that fast.

Slowly evolving into something closer to our own understanding of the day, Going a-Mothering became the annual Sunday when servants and apprentices were given the day off to visit their mothers as well as their home churches.

Picking wild flowers and baking Simnel cakes became synonymous with what was called Mothering Sunday and in 1914, the British government officially recognised Mother’s Day, still to be celebrated on the fourth Sunday of Lent – and thus it found its way into diaries as a day devoted- ideally, anyway – to appreciation and recognition of mothers and motherhood.

19th century literature seems to provide us with mothers who are either impossibly saintly and wise (think Marmee in Little Women), embarrassingly awful, feckless or incompetent – Jane Austen serves us well on this score – or absent from selfishly dying and depriving our protagonist of a loving maternal figure – Jane in Jane Eyre, Oliver in Oliver Twist, Pip in Great Expectations …I could go on. Absent mothers seem to be a popular trait of classic novels, conveniently casting our hero/heroine into murky and unpleasant waters without the support of maternal care.

More contemporary literature also gives us absent mothers and their death or disappearance is also often used as the catalyst for the main character’s subsequent life, again a useful tool for the novelist – Donna Tart’s The Goldfinch, Valerie Martin’s The Confessions of Edward Day and, dare I mention it, my own The Odyssey of Lily Page come into this category by making use of this propelling cause.

Then there’s Carol Shields’ novel, Larry’s Party, where it’s a notably absent Grandmother who casts a curious shadow over proceedings …

Which conveniently takes me to where I want to reach – which is beyond current mothers being feted on Mother’s Day but back to their mothers, and theirs and .theirs and…to our forefathers – or rather to our foremothers as I like to think of them.

Our Great Grandmothers, and our Great-Great Grandmothers and all the Greats lying behind them had, to put it mildly, such very different experiences of motherhood that I feel they deserve our attention on today of all days. They merit a focus, those women who are entirely absent from our lives yet crucial to our very being.

Their lives – our Edwardian, our Victorian – and earlier – foremothers endured, no doubt, endless uncontrolled pregnancies, long and painful labours and deliveries, the threat of infant and maternal mortality before they had even carried a baby safely home – and a home that was no doubt (except for the very few) overcrowded and absent of any labour-saving devices.

Husbands, however loving, were hardly likely to have been ‘hands-on’ with the child-care and the main support would have been to turn to the oldest daughter, no doubt still a child herself, for help.

My maternal Grandmother was the oldest daughter in a family of eight surviving children. She used to say that she only had one child herself – my mother – as she felt she had already spent a decade or more in caring for her siblings.

And what were their rights, these women, our Edwardian and Victorian Great and Great- Great and Great-Great several times over?

Minimal.

No vote.

No salaries.

No child allowances.

And little time, no doubt, simply to enjoy their children, delight in their very existence, watch their progress and development. And those children would have had to grow up fast – to make room for the next baby at the breast, the next toddler clambering for a space on mother’s knee.

Our Greats and Great-Greats et al must have been extraordinarily strong women.

Strong and resilient. Social and domestic circumstances forced that upon them. Choice was rarely theirs.

So today seems a good moment to pause and think of them, think of the long line of mothers trailing behind us, connecting us to their lives, to the generations of women for whom, possibly, a bunch of wild flowers and a simnel cake were hotly anticipated gifts from their many offspring on the fourth Sunday of Lent.

Whether anyone cooked them a Sunday roast or made them stay in bed for an extra hour for a cup of tea and slice of charred toast is, however, highly unlikely!

The post Let’s Hear it for the Great and Great-Greats … appeared first on Jude Hayland.

2026 has been declared the National Year of Reading.

The idea is to encourage people to discover – or re-discover – a love for reading and find a place for it in our lives.

Evidently, there is a considerable decline in reading for enjoyment and no doubt the distractions of screens and social media has a great deal to do with this.

As a total bookaholic, it’s hard for me to believe that it’s possible to go through a single day without having a book on the go.

A story to retreat into – on a train, a bus, before sleep, on waking – at any moment, in fact, that is not filled with the other obligations of life.

Writers are always, naturally, readers. And next week I am visiting the Bournemouth Literary Luncheon club to give a talk entitled Avid Reader – Ardent Writer.

And preparing my talk has meant that I have been travelling back decades to think about the books and authors that have shaped my reading and, inevitably, my writing.

My childhood reading was probably very similar to others of my generation.

Ameliaranne and the Green Umbrella and various other tales about the Stiggins family were my initial venture – anyone else remember these stories published back in the 1920s? (and no, I am not THAT old!) I think it was the illustrations that appealed as well as the essential family nature of the tales.

Milly Molly Mandy, The Naughtiest Girl in the School, The Family from One-End Street, Mallory Towers tales, took my attention for a few years, progressing through everything Noel Streatfeild, Pamela Browne, Ruby Ferguson and, more importantly given my obsession with ballet, Lorna Hill wrote.

Of course there was no YA genre as I was growing up. So I made the transition to adult novels via Jean Plaidy, Catherine Cookson and Miss Read among others.

I had arrived!

The whole gamut of literature now awaited me and soon it was Thomas Hardy and Charlotte Bronte suitably interspersed with Lynne Read-Banks, Margaret Drabble, L.P. Hartley, Arnold Bennett and the occasional Somerset Maugham that caught my interest.

An English Literature degree followed by a teaching career – my choice of career dictated by my wish to be allowed to go on reading out of necessity as well as pleasure – naturally further widened my reach.

I won’t go on with the lists – although the members of the Bournemouth Literary Luncheon Club may well be subjected to a few more next week – you get the idea. (although how can I resist mentioning to you Penelope Lively, Anita Brookner, Jane Gardam, Dorothy Whipple …sorry, will stop!)

Reading is simply part of who I am.

And as I think about my life in books, so to speak, it’s clear that the kind of stories and themes I have always enjoyed reflect those I choose to write about.

There’s no science fiction or speculative fiction, rarely crime and never fantasy or horror in my reading choices. In fact, going right back to Amelianne Stiggins, through Milly Molly-Mandy, The Family from One End Street et al, to arrive at my adult fare of Anne Tyler and Anna Quindlan and all of the above, clearly connects themes of family and relationships and the complexities of our domestic lives. I write novels rooted in reality and I choose to read novels with similar concerns.

Do all writers? Possibly. Probably.

This week was, of course, World Book Day and watching numerous primary school children going to school dressed as Princess Pea or Mildred Hubble or Elmer or whoever, made me wonder which character adults would choose if they had to go to work dressed as a protagonist from one of their favourite novels.

It could be most entertaining looking down the train carriage, inspecting the bus stop queue, peering into cars stationary in traffic jams, to guess the book choice of fellow commuters – and possibly reveal a considerable amount about one’s work colleagues!

Perhaps it should become A Thing – some entrepreneurial type should insist that World Book Day next year embraces not only children but adults too.

It could well provide the key to encouraging people to engage once more with books – and ensure that reading really does take off once more for grown ups as well as children!

The post A Year – A Day – of Reading appeared first on Jude Hayland.

Born on 16th December 1775, countless admirers of her novels and numerous Janeite societies across the world are marking the day with enthusiasm and reverence – and no doubt there’s been an increase in her online sales as her name is brought to the forefront of people’s minds just in time for a Christmas purchase.

Her novels are, of course, endlessly discussed, praised and analysed – for very good reason.

They are brilliant.

And there are inevitably many commendable film and television versions so that access to her stories is everywhere. Her characters are so vivid and memorable, her plots satisfying, so that they transfer with some ease to the screen.

But it’s not the same.

However good and faithful to plot, character and event, watching a screen version can only serve Austen in a peripheral, limited way.

For it’s her language, her extraordinary range of humour, her ability to define character so precisely that are the jewels of Jane Austen. Her exquisite narration as well as her dialogue are ever compelling and brilliant.

And like all great writers, her economy of expression matched with such clarity and apparent ease have to be read to be appreciated.

And in common with great writers, her characters are timeless and ever relatable.

We all know or have known a Mrs Elton – Emma – with her appalling self-importance and obsession with social standing that causes her dialogue to be inflated and self-serving:

Life would be a blank to me without music …I am dotingly fond of music – passionately fond.

Then there’s the eponymous heroine Emma herself. Considering it presumptuous if a certain family in the village invites her and her father to their party, she is most annoyed when they subsequently fail to receive an invitation:

She felt that she should like to have had the power of refusal.

That phrase so often comes to mind – the desire not to be left out yet the wish not to go! I defy anyone who has not experienced this feeling!

In Emma again, the pertinent observation that There are people who the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves leaps off the page as we all think easily of someone conforming to this just as One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other from Persuasion and Nothing ever fatigues me, but doing what I do not like – from Mansfield Park, echo with similar truths.

Then there’s the delightful remark of

I always deserve the best treatment because I never put up with any other

– a very accurate declaration from Emma by the heroine herself before she comes to self-knowledge and understanding later in the novel and is fortunate to gain the delectable Mr Knightley into the bargain. He is just about my favourite Austen hero – leaving aside, naturally, the portrayal of Mr Darcy in a certain film version of Pride and Prejudice …!

But that’s the point, really. If I am speaking simply from the experience of reading the novels, Mr Knightly wins hands down as my gallant and gracious hero – he is thoughtful, sensible, intelligent, interesting, loving, generous – and forgiving. The ideal man. The reader’s impression is built up over days, even weeks, of reading rather than the immediate impression that encountering the face on the screen provokes.

And not wanting to ignore the women, it’s Fanny Price in Mansfield Park and Anne Elliot in Persuasion who gain my admiration, both of them not the conventional idea of heroines at all but portrayed with such poignancy by Austen.

For however sublime the screenplay, the direction, interpretation, costumes, settings and size of budget, skilful actors will give us their idea of a character – their appalling Mr Collins, their quick-witted, elegant Emma, their long-suffering Charlotte – and so on.

Whereas reading the novels allows us to create our own images and match them to people, perhaps, in our own lives, understanding their foibles, obsessions and idiosyncrasies, their frailties and vulnerabilities, watching their development and progress towards some sort of fulfilment. The actor does not get in the way – instead, Austen speaks directly to us as her readers.

So Happy Birthday, Jane!

Thank you for endless pages of pleasure, of entertainment, of deep thought and equally hilarious irony and humour.

And I recommend that you just pick up any Austen novel and turn to any page, to be guaranteed something of value, of worth and delight. Even for just a few precious moments.

For after all, as she tells us so truthfully and simply in Mansfield Park:

Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings

So why not spend some of those busy nothings in her very good company?

You won’t regret it!

The post Happy Birthday, Jane! appeared first on Jude Hayland.

Most attach themselves firmly to a particular age or stage of growing up,

Childhood games give way to adolescent interests and gradually morph into the preoccupations of adulthood.

So I find it consoling to think that something I enjoyed doing from a very young age still sustains me as a source of pleasure now that I am …well, a woman in the possession of quite a number of accrued years.

Libraries.

A visit to a library.

My earliest memory of a library stems, probably, from before I could even read.

I remember a very old building, small, squat, near Woolworths in Pinner.

There, I must have acquired my first library cards as my mother acquired books on my behalf.

Soon, however, there was great excitement in Pinner!

The old library was replaced in another location in the town with the splendid, parquet-floored new public library – enormous it seemed to me – and that was the place where I was to spend aeons of time over the next 20 or so years.

For libraries have always been safe spaces. Harmonious places.

Somewhere to spend an hour or so after school or before a ballet class or awaiting your mother or father to arrive to take you home. Places to do your homework or revise for your exams.

Places to draw your excitement as you spot a new Lorna Hill or Pamela Brown or Noel Streatfeild novel that you have not read!

And then later, that transition into the adult section – no YA shelves when I was in my teens, of course – and the gradual discovery of L.P. Hartley and H.E. Bates and Lynn Reid-Banks and Margaret Drabble and so many more.

Such delights – and free delights! – waiting to offer escapes into other worlds. To learn about other lives.

Of course, at one time our high street chemist, Boots, was the provider of the Boots Booklovers Library.

Researching for my fifth novel, set in London in WW2, has sent me down the path of finding out all about this wonderful institution that was so familiar to readers in the first half of the 20th century.

Subscription and circulating libraries were a feature of 19th century England with Mudie’s Select Library and W.H. Smith establishing themselves in the Victorian era. Then Jesse and Florence Boot opened their first libraries in their two Nottingham chemist shops and provided attractive and comfortable surroundings with the addition of in-store cafes to lure potential readers and subscribers. Very soon, their bookish empire had grown until there were numerous Boots Booklovers’ libraries all over the country.

And what could be better? A pleasant morning spent choosing books followed by coffee and scones with a friend, sitting at a table covered with a hand embroidered cloth – idyllic!

So yes, Boots’ subscribers were mainly middle class and mainly female and they could choose between either Class A or B subscriptions, the former costing an annual 17s 6d. whereas the latter cost 10s 6s.

Class A subscribers could borrow any book they chose whereas Class B readers were confined to books over a year old. A certain class divide here that spoke to the status quo of the times!

In my new novel, the character of Connie works at Boots Book Lovers’ Library in Hammersmith. She also contributes to the war effort by being a member of the WVS and working on mobile canteens serving civil defence workers. She is only a minor character in the novel – but the creation of Connie has given me a wonderful excuse to delve into the history of Boots Book Lovers’ Libraries and if anyone is interested, I recommend highly the book Lipsticks and Library Books, by Jackie Winter which is a wonderful exploration of this national institution that dominated the library scene for over 60 years.

Nowadays, libraries have become a political issue in so many areas with closures threatened or realised and what an appalling loss to any community this causes. Some have been rescued to become community hub libraries through valiant fund-raising and volunteering local efforts and therefore survive against the odds.

Others, like my local library, have become Discovery Centres or Arks or whatever new terminology is applied to places that are now so much more than lending libraries with extensive IT provision, cafes (but no hand embroidered table cloths now on show …) exhibition spaces, gift shops and so much more.

Which is wonderful.

And I still find myself spending much time browsing, reading, delighting if I find a particularly treasured author or desired title on the shelf, coveting it as if coming across a small nub of gold.

Boots libraries thrived in the 1930s and 40s but gradually their popularity waned and they found it hard to survive the very different post war world of the second half of the 20th century. Falling memberships and rising costs contributed to their decline and finally, in 1965, all libraries were closed.

Fortunately for my fictional character, Connie, her services at Hammersmith Book Lovers’ library were still very much in demand in the war years when reading during the endless blackouts, in damp shelters, underground stations, in basements and church crypts during an air raid was entertainment and diversion.

Meanwhile, I will continue to love libraries and seek them out wherever I am.

It will come as no surprise, therefore, to hear that my friend of longest standing – trailing all the way back to the first days of infant school – is a librarian herself.

We obviously both had some curious foresight of future fate and destinations as we chose each other to befriend even before celebrating our respective fifth birthdays!

The post A Life in Libraries … appeared first on Jude Hayland.

It also offers the author a chance to reflect and portray the changes and shifts in society – from a midpoint place of what Leo calls this hideous century back to the waning Victorian era at the dawn of the 20th century.

The micro details of Leo’s life are thus set against the macro picture of the times.

One of the joys of reading novels set in the past is, to me, to gain a feel for what it was actually like to live then. Not a historical record but a real lived experience of the times.

And I’m not talking about truly historical novels set in Tudor times or the civil war or the French Revolution et al.

For these days, change is so rapid, so bewilderingly and frantically hectic, that simply slipping back 30 or so years to the mid 1990s will reveal to us a very different place to where we live now. How we live now.

Think of it:

No instant and perpetual connection with mobile phones for a start.

An absence of the internet to look up, check, verify (assuming the search and its findings are accurate!) dates and facts.

No internet shopping or checking bank balances, paying bills, transferring money at any time of the day or night from our own homes.

Our lives were, in fact, inevitably far less cluttered by such activities.

Tip back another 10 years to the mid 1980s – and another to the mid 1970s ….and yes, indeed, the past certainly feels like a foreign country. We did things very differently.

Dickens set some of his novels in what I call his ‘recent past.’

The Pickwick Papers, published in 1836, is set around 1827 to 1828. Barnaby Rudge, published in 1841, is set in 1780. Martin Chuzzlewit, written in monthly instalments between 1843 to 1844, appears to start somewhere around 1830 as there is a reference to the ‘new London Bridge’ which opened in 1831.

And of course novels such as Great Expectations and David Copperfield, encompass the tale of a protagonist who grows from childhood to adulthood, the latter aligning with Dickens’ present so there is an inevitable sweep across eras, allowing him to write with hindsight.

George Eliot’s Middlemarch, published in volumes between 1871 and 72, is set between 1829 to 32 and the personal lives and relationships of her characters – the micro details – are very clearly defined against the macro picture. The setting reflects a time of dramatic developments in politics, science and industrialisation and the characters’ reactions to such turmoil is often used by Eliot to portray aspects of them – for example, protagonists who welcome such change and reform with excitement are contrasted with those who hold negative and reactionary views . Writing some 40 years after the events means she is writing with the gift of hindsight and awareness of the longer term impact on society.

In my own very humble way, I have always set my novels in the recent past – whether that is in the now seemingly remote era of 1983 in The Odyssey of Lily Page or the dual time line of late 1960s and early 2000s of The Legacy of Mr Jarvis or the more recent ‘recent past’ of 2005-06 of Miller Street SW22.

And now with my fifth novel, I am digging far further back with my first truly historic novel in that I am writing of a time before I was alive – notably WW2 – and once that is finished, my sixth novel is likely to be set in WW1.

So what is the attraction of writing about the past where they do things differently ?

Well, yes – just that.

Just as I want to read fiction about lives in the past, to gain a sense of the recipe of the times, the warp and weft of the texture of daily life 50, 60, 70 or more years ago, I write about the past partly to examine its impact upon my life and the lives of others.

To understand.

The choices we made and the avenues we ventured down.

Even, perhaps, to forgive ourselves for certain directions taken and what subsequently might seem like wrong-turnings or regrettable decisions.

For we are, like it or not, very much defined by the era into which we are born, however much free will we think we possess.

And we ask too few questions when older family members are alive, lacking the curiosity or interest when young, so that writing novels set when our familial predecessors were living is a way of finding a link, getting to know them, connecting with the course and flavour of their experiences.

Or so it feels to me.

And apologies for finishing with a quote from T.S. Eliot of whom I know very little and probably understand less, but I do love the words which certainly speak to me:

Footfalls echo in the memory

Down the passage which we did not take

Towards the door we never opened

The door never opened is a wonderful way of thinking of novelists embarking on the adventure and the creative process of telling a story …taking a step over the threshold of that door and inviting readers in!

The post The Pull of the Past … appeared first on Jude Hayland.

I have a large number and like nothing better than to waste time looking at the splendid glossy photos and scanning the ingredients.

Of course, most of the time, I never go on to cook the dish.

Or if I do, I end up adapting that ingredients list, exchanging the prescribed herb or spice or sauce for whatever I happen already to have lurking at the back of my cupboard or fridge.

Which is, with a bit of a stretch of the imagination (and after all, that’s what every writer has in abundance) a bit like writing a novel.

There are numerous ‘helpful’ articles, books, podcasts, manuals, courses, online sites et al giving out various recipes for writing a novel.

Not just that, but these days so many claim confidently to have the secrets to writing a best seller or an irresistible page-turner or a sure fire successful novel.

Whereas in truth the guidance on offer is simply one approach or method, a kind of stepping stone approach to what might or might not work for the aspiring author. For what might or might not appeal to the reading public.

For, like the experimental cook, it’s so often a case of trial and error, working out the route, the path, the recipe that works best for each individual writer. For each and every genre. Some authors like to plan meticulously, create spreadsheets, power points, possibly, for chapter contents and plot and character development. Others – and I belong in this second category – have a far more impulsive, intuitive and somewhat random approach.

But there are, surely, a few generalisations that can be made about writing novels.

Let’s call them, harking back to my cookery book analogy, the ingredients.

For a start, you can’t write a novel about Happiness.

About Contentment.

It’s too passive. Nothing is ever going to occur.

Sometimes a writer might appear to be suggesting a state of happiness in the main character, but there will, in fact, be a subtle suggestion that things are not quite as they seem.

Take Jane Austen’s eponymous heroine, Emma.

Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.

That word seems is the clue that Emma actually has an awful lot to learn before she acquires true happiness.

So if happiness is not going to work as a starting point for a novel, conflict or some sort of irresolution is needed – personal, internal or external – if the novel is to go anywhere.

And that’s rather the point, isn’t it? A story has to take the reader somewhere.

So Conflict heads our list of novel ingredients.

Then there’s the matter of Plot.

Even in the most lyrical and quietly understated novel, there has to be a plot of sorts.

And Plot is really action that has consequences. And Complications.

And really, that’s when the hard work starts for the novelist.

It’s easy to come up with some conflict, a few characters and a plot of some kind, but how to handle these elusive, slippery elements? How to blend, fold, beat and whip these parts into a satisfying dish?

Then there’s the matter of how much has taken place before the novel even starts.

The back story to a protagonist’s life, the illuminating flash backs and essential exposition to ground the reader in some sort of context.

Handling these ingredients so that the narrative does not unduly slow down, so that the reader is not bored or overstuffed but appropriately hooked and intrigued are demanding tasks.

Of course skilful writers do it so seamlessly that the reader is barely aware of being informed and guided to an understanding of what happened prior to page 1.

Charlotte Bronte manages immediately to let us know Jane’s situation in the Reed household at Gateshead. In fact, reported speech instantly spells out Jane’s inferior standing: She regretted to be under the necessity of keeping me at a distance Jane tells us of Mrs Reed, followed by dialogue What does Bessie say I have done? And pathetic fallacy has already established the mood and used to reflect Jane’s unhappiness as a result of her dependent, orphan state: the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre and a rain so penetrating …

Of course first person novels do provide the author with a direct address to the reader which can be extremely useful in sharing key information. It seems natural for the first person protagonist to tell – like a conversation – thus getting over the awkwardness of shoving in essential back story.

But in a third person narrative other methods have to be found that are not too clunky or cloying, rendering those essential opening pages as unpalatable.

There might be some sort of preface (I use this technique in three of my novels) or the exchange of letters (Forster’s Howard’s End comes to mind) or even direct authorial intrusion a la George Eliot style (who would dare to do this in a contemporary novel …it’s rare these days!)

Or perhaps the writer simply enters the protagonist’s thoughts and reflections, their inner life and consciousness, as he or she casts back over events that have brought them to this point.

But not for too long. The energy of the novel must propel forward.

A soggy bottom, a solid texture or a fallen soufflé are not what the novelist is aiming for in those key opening pages – their function is to appetize, after all!

The post A Novel Recipe … appeared first on Jude Hayland.

That’s the idea, anyway.

Fiction sets out to create situations, scenarios and settings with which we, as readers, can identify, relate or at least imagine.

Yet in many ways, fiction is utterly unlike Real Life.

Take the turning points the author has to create and inject into the story to propel the plot on its way.

Those sudden realisations or revelations where the protagonist spontaneously becomes aware of something crucial or makes a life-changing decision.

It’s part of the plotting and pacing of a novel – a moment at which the author has to take control and head the narrative and characters into the downward straight towards some sort of conclusion and the final page.

It might take the form of a character realising a supressed love or equally an antipathy for another. Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy, for example. Jane and Mr Rochester.

Or there might be a poignant epiphany where the protagonist suddenly has a sense of revelation about the direction of their life.

In E.M.Forster’s Howard’s End Margaret Schlegel has a sudden and startling – both to her and the somewhat sceptical reader, it has to be said – discovery of her unexpected love for Mr Wilcox:

An immense joy came over her. It was indescribable…on leaving him, she realised that the central radiance had been love…waves of emotion broke, as if a tide of passion was flowing through the night air.

One of my favourite self discoveries or epiphanies is at the very end of D.H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers as Paul (thinly veiled fictionalised version of Lawrence himself, of course)

But no, he would not give in. Turning sharply, he walked towards the city’s gold phosphorescence. His fists were shut, his mouth set fast. He would not take that direction, to the darkness, to follow her. He walked towards the faintly humming, glowing town, quickly.

(and how perfect is that use of the adverb quickly to define his steadfast intention!)

But in Real Life, such discoveries are rarely so neatly confined to a moment, a carefully staged scene on a page in the manner of a novelist.

In fact, it’s only with the gift of hindsight, looking back down a tunnel of years that we unfictional mortals think in such a way.

It’s all in retrospect that we ponder such matters as:

There must have been a last time, a final occasion, when I sat with my small child at bedtime and read a story.

There must have been a last time, a final occasion, when same said small offspring wanted to hold my hand out in the street, have his tears wiped away with my kisses, held up his arms to be lifted high and embraced into the safety of mine.

Perhaps it’s just as well. The poignancy of these moments would be too much to bear if we realised them at the time of their occurrence.

Then there’s Love. Love in life and Love in fiction.

Of course there’s the whole matter of coup de foudre. Falling in love at first sight does inhabit the Real World rather than purely the fictional.

Or does it? Is it more a case of coup de lust or coup de convenience?

Not so much a turning point as a gradual and slow burn towards something more substantial?

In novels, characters have to be depicted as coming to conclusions.

They have to be described in a certain situation or place and some sort of inner dialogue has to be written to indicate this – and all within a matter of a page or two.

Whereas in life our busy and muddled lives rarely offer such carved out moments for us to see or think quite so clearly. We gradually swim our way a little blindly towards discoveries and decisions until we find it’s too late to turn back or change our minds.

So no wonder writing stories is such fun!

Controlling characters’ lives and destinations, having a clarity of thought and direction for them that the real world fails to offer us!

If only we could live in a fictional universe with such control over the timing and outcomes of our lives, it would all be so much more comfortable and rewarding!

In the meantime, clear tipping and turning points remain solely in the hands of the author – who really does require them to serve the needs of the novel!

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The historian and commentator on British social history, Juliet Gardener uses it when talking about fiction written immediately in the wake of historic events, the recounting of an age unclouded by nostalgia or hindsight.

And in recent months, my reading diet has been composed of fiction written around, in or immediately in the wake of WW2.

Initially, this was to serve as research for novel 5, my work in progress, (with a working title of By the Green of the Spring but that will no doubt change) but I have now found so much enjoyment from reading these authors that I’m beginning to spurn anything written later than half way through the 20th century.

There are so many wonderful writers and brilliant stories to discover and I fear that many may be neglected these days. There seems to be a kind of thirst to read books on prize lists, the latest bestsellers, books by authors being interviewed on Radio 4 or featured in papers or on podcasts.

And there seems no better way for sensing the mood of a particular time, the flavour of ordinary, domestic life in a certain phase or decade than by reading the fiction that was produced either in or just after – within touching distance, in fact, so fingertip history.

Sylvia Townsend Warner’s collection of short stories, English Climate: Wartime Stories, provides a delightfully entertaining read and all the stories were written and published between 1940 and 1946. This is domestic life during the war years. There is no mention of battles or theatres of war or second fronts or campaigns – but a great deal about jam that won’t set through inadequacy of sugar rations, the impossibility of making a successful omelette with dried eggs, the bossiness and petty squabbles between women on committees and parish councils.

There are also more complex issues addressed – the service man or woman home on leave who returns to different circumstances, who can no longer find their place in the household.

Molly Panter-Downes’ short story collection, Good Evening, Mrs Craven: the wartime stories is equally compelling through engaging with the Home Front side of the war. Here, again, are the stories that history books don’t concern themselves with – yet they are the human story – and a wonderful minefield for the contemporary writer wanting to find out the climate of those times.

Monica Dickens’ novels seem to be very overlooked these days. Yet again, I have found them so enjoyable with characters that leap off the page with conviction. Of course, as Charles Dickens’ Great Granddaughter, that’s probably no surprise. Many of her books were inspired by her personal experiences – as a nurse, in a munitions factory producing spitfires, in a newspaper office, as a home help – although she made clear that I did not take these jobs in order to write books – the books just came out of the experiences. Her novels capture so keenly for the contemporary reader what it was like being a woman in the 1930s, 40s and 50s – informal social history, if you like, in the guise of a novel.

Ivy Compton-Burnett is another writer that is well worth our attention. Born in 1884 and living until 1969, she is described in the edition I have of her novel A House and Its Head (picked up at a charity shop sale) as one of 20th century England’s most original and admired writers. She published 18 novels and was made a Dame shortly before her death – yet how many book groups and contemporary readers bother with her now? On the back of my edition, there’s a quote from a review describing her as One of the most original, hilarious and disturbing novelists of her generation. A House and Its Head is set in 1885 and was first published in 1935 – so again, we have fingertip history for Compton-Burnett was still within touching distance of the decade.

So next time you are trying to figure out a choice for a book group read or are scanning the shelves for something neither classic nor contemporary, why not give these wonderful authors a consideration?

You will, I promise you, be richly rewarded!

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