I've mentioned a few times in recent months what I'm working on: a novel set in a Mennonite village in Siberia in 1930. Probably for young people, though I haven't ruled out it being for adults. More likely a crossover. No matter which way I cut it, though, I'm dealing with an audience that has very little knowledge about this setting. Hell, this novel is based my grandfather's experience and I knew very little about the setting before I began doing research.
But now that I know quite a lot, I war with myself about what I need to include and what is 'too much.' How do I, in the first few chapters, show the reader this village that people are willing to die to escape. It's not a simple set of circumstances these people find themselves in. But the reader has to understand why fleeing in the night at -40 is preferable to staying, not just because of the immediate threats to the lives of the villagers, but because, even if they can survive the casual cruelty of the secret police on whom there are no constraints, they can never be free.
Sometimes when I tell people about this book they tell me they find the setting hard to believe.
I can describe it here. Showing it is much harder.
But necessary. I hate that we must feel so rushed in our descriptions, so concerned that we'll bore our readers-of-the-short-attention spans. I aim to put my reader in that world. Isn't that what we read for? At least in part? To live in another world for a time?
Give it all the time the story needs and the readers need... and no one will be writing about "I read this novel in which I was missing pieces I needed..."
I’m all for immersive reading. Writers who commit to their subject matter and transport the reader into the characters’ reality. Show me something new, or a different aspect of something I think I know. Surprise and delight me. It just seems so … smug … not to be interested, not to be bothered. Cynical readers, cynical writers who are too busy showing how cool they are to care, to have a sense of wonder. So sad and boring.
But please don’t start with a dramatis personae of thirty-odd characters, as one self-published novel I recently tried to read did. That’s really taking things a bit far.
I suppose at one level you’re faced with the age-old problem of transforming reality into fiction, where the real story is possibly restricting or inhibiting how you tell it.
Kurt Vonnegut faced this. Unable for years to write about his war experiences, he ended up writing Slaughterhouse Five and included many elements of science fiction. This probably helped alleviate the sheer grimness of the book’s POW experiences; I think it also makes them seem even more real compared to the sci-fi stuff.
What if you started with the telling of a fairy tale you invent that the villagers were familiar with? It takes place within the village, so the reader will begin to see the village despite themself since some of its description will be part of this entirely other narrative. Maybe the tale parallels some of the villagers’ later experiences.
Ursula Le Guin did this quite a bit in The Left Hand of Darkness, interspersing chapters that describe her planet in the form of legends and myths. This book, despite being completely invented, also has one of the best survival treks through snow and ice that I’ve ever read. Parts of this book reminded me of the hardships recounted in Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag book, even though it was published before his book. Anticipating history, in a sense.
That's a very inventive suggestion, Frank. And Left Hand is one of my favourite books. But I do want to keep this historical fiction. I want my reader to realize that these things happened. I think there is storytelling power in the phrase "based on a true story." When I read that I find myself more interested.
I think one of my problems is that I now know a lot about this period and most of my readers will know next to nothing. It's about showing them this world as effectively as I can and not worrying about it so much!
For me, a novel means invention. Sounds like you’re writing something like a biography of a place. But the novel is also capacious and can accommodate a lot.
Looking at Solzhenitsyn’s book just now, I see in the second chapter where he describes the three great waves of arrests in the Soviet Union. The first is 1929-1930, so your story has an incredible historical context, as well as being a personal story. Here’s what he says:
The first wave “drove a mere fifteen million peasants, maybe even more, out into the taiga and the tundra. But the peasants are a silent people, without a literary voice, nor do they write complaints or memoirs.”
The title of the chapter is “The History of Our Sewage Disposal System.” The book is subtitled “An Experiment in Literary Investigation,” which hints at what he’s trying to do: transform the countless accounts and stories he’s collected into something that looks something like a novel, perhaps.
I assume your story involves a journey in winter. This book also grabbed me years ago. Nowadays there are questions about how true it is, or whether the author borrowed the story from someone else, but whether it’s a memoir or a novel or somewhere in between, it’s absolutely gripping:
It's historical fiction, an escape story, so yes, I'm taking the facts, bending some of them for dramatic purposes. The issue is that my reader must understand why anyone would risk their entire family to flee a place, and for that I must set the stage well.
Thank you, Steve. The research has been fascinating for me as a writer, but also personally. I want to write a second novel set in Harbin where there is a Japanese takeover and a flood that kills 30,000 people. Lots of material to play with.
Your point about writing of a place with which you are certain your readers already know--I think that was at play in the work I was reading. And Steve's words about showing something new or different about the same-old... yes.
It doesn't sound like it, when they say they find it unbelievable. Have they read no history? For me, it is much easier to include everything, then edit out later.
Most teens have read little to no history. The knowledge of most adults I've mentioned dekulalization to, for instance, only skims the surface. And if I say this is set in Siberia, they think it's the Gulag. It's not. It's actually quite a unique place and period and these people were Mennonites. Most people have a stereotypical view of this group. But it matters that they're Mennonites. And it matters why they find themselves in this region at this time and make the choice they do.
My primary goal is to tell a compelling story, but it does also matter to me to tell the story of these people as honestly as I can.
I also include everything and edit out later. We'll see if I'm a good judge of what to keep! I'll rely on beta readers for my first few chapters at least, just to see how it's working for them.
Were these people possibly German speakers who had settled there for religious reasons perhaps? That’s a story I know nothing about, other than the general sense that there were German speaking populations throughout Europe for centuries. After the war, most of them were driven out of eastern and central Europe.
I've mentioned a few times in recent months what I'm working on: a novel set in a Mennonite village in Siberia in 1930. Probably for young people, though I haven't ruled out it being for adults. More likely a crossover. No matter which way I cut it, though, I'm dealing with an audience that has very little knowledge about this setting. Hell, this novel is based my grandfather's experience and I knew very little about the setting before I began doing research.
But now that I know quite a lot, I war with myself about what I need to include and what is 'too much.' How do I, in the first few chapters, show the reader this village that people are willing to die to escape. It's not a simple set of circumstances these people find themselves in. But the reader has to understand why fleeing in the night at -40 is preferable to staying, not just because of the immediate threats to the lives of the villagers, but because, even if they can survive the casual cruelty of the secret police on whom there are no constraints, they can never be free.
Sometimes when I tell people about this book they tell me they find the setting hard to believe.
I can describe it here. Showing it is much harder.
But necessary. I hate that we must feel so rushed in our descriptions, so concerned that we'll bore our readers-of-the-short-attention spans. I aim to put my reader in that world. Isn't that what we read for? At least in part? To live in another world for a time?
Give it all the time the story needs and the readers need... and no one will be writing about "I read this novel in which I was missing pieces I needed..."
I’m all for immersive reading. Writers who commit to their subject matter and transport the reader into the characters’ reality. Show me something new, or a different aspect of something I think I know. Surprise and delight me. It just seems so … smug … not to be interested, not to be bothered. Cynical readers, cynical writers who are too busy showing how cool they are to care, to have a sense of wonder. So sad and boring.
But please don’t start with a dramatis personae of thirty-odd characters, as one self-published novel I recently tried to read did. That’s really taking things a bit far.
I'm far too insecure about my writing to think I'm cool, so no worries there. ;-)
That is too far!
Your note about cynicism--yes, I think that's a piece. A piece possibly absorbed in a writing program, unexamined and left to fester.
I suppose at one level you’re faced with the age-old problem of transforming reality into fiction, where the real story is possibly restricting or inhibiting how you tell it.
Kurt Vonnegut faced this. Unable for years to write about his war experiences, he ended up writing Slaughterhouse Five and included many elements of science fiction. This probably helped alleviate the sheer grimness of the book’s POW experiences; I think it also makes them seem even more real compared to the sci-fi stuff.
What if you started with the telling of a fairy tale you invent that the villagers were familiar with? It takes place within the village, so the reader will begin to see the village despite themself since some of its description will be part of this entirely other narrative. Maybe the tale parallels some of the villagers’ later experiences.
Ursula Le Guin did this quite a bit in The Left Hand of Darkness, interspersing chapters that describe her planet in the form of legends and myths. This book, despite being completely invented, also has one of the best survival treks through snow and ice that I’ve ever read. Parts of this book reminded me of the hardships recounted in Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag book, even though it was published before his book. Anticipating history, in a sense.
That's a very inventive suggestion, Frank. And Left Hand is one of my favourite books. But I do want to keep this historical fiction. I want my reader to realize that these things happened. I think there is storytelling power in the phrase "based on a true story." When I read that I find myself more interested.
I think one of my problems is that I now know a lot about this period and most of my readers will know next to nothing. It's about showing them this world as effectively as I can and not worrying about it so much!
For me, a novel means invention. Sounds like you’re writing something like a biography of a place. But the novel is also capacious and can accommodate a lot.
Looking at Solzhenitsyn’s book just now, I see in the second chapter where he describes the three great waves of arrests in the Soviet Union. The first is 1929-1930, so your story has an incredible historical context, as well as being a personal story. Here’s what he says:
The first wave “drove a mere fifteen million peasants, maybe even more, out into the taiga and the tundra. But the peasants are a silent people, without a literary voice, nor do they write complaints or memoirs.”
The title of the chapter is “The History of Our Sewage Disposal System.” The book is subtitled “An Experiment in Literary Investigation,” which hints at what he’s trying to do: transform the countless accounts and stories he’s collected into something that looks something like a novel, perhaps.
I assume your story involves a journey in winter. This book also grabbed me years ago. Nowadays there are questions about how true it is, or whether the author borrowed the story from someone else, but whether it’s a memoir or a novel or somewhere in between, it’s absolutely gripping:
https://www.amazon.com/Long-Walk-True-Story-Freedom/dp/149302261X
It's historical fiction, an escape story, so yes, I'm taking the facts, bending some of them for dramatic purposes. The issue is that my reader must understand why anyone would risk their entire family to flee a place, and for that I must set the stage well.
I think your novel, your premise, sounds completely fascinating, and the background absolutely deserves the attention you want to give to it.
Thank you, Steve. The research has been fascinating for me as a writer, but also personally. I want to write a second novel set in Harbin where there is a Japanese takeover and a flood that kills 30,000 people. Lots of material to play with.
Your point about writing of a place with which you are certain your readers already know--I think that was at play in the work I was reading. And Steve's words about showing something new or different about the same-old... yes.
I'm certain my readers DON'T know.
It doesn't sound like it, when they say they find it unbelievable. Have they read no history? For me, it is much easier to include everything, then edit out later.
Most teens have read little to no history. The knowledge of most adults I've mentioned dekulalization to, for instance, only skims the surface. And if I say this is set in Siberia, they think it's the Gulag. It's not. It's actually quite a unique place and period and these people were Mennonites. Most people have a stereotypical view of this group. But it matters that they're Mennonites. And it matters why they find themselves in this region at this time and make the choice they do.
My primary goal is to tell a compelling story, but it does also matter to me to tell the story of these people as honestly as I can.
I also include everything and edit out later. We'll see if I'm a good judge of what to keep! I'll rely on beta readers for my first few chapters at least, just to see how it's working for them.
Were these people possibly German speakers who had settled there for religious reasons perhaps? That’s a story I know nothing about, other than the general sense that there were German speaking populations throughout Europe for centuries. After the war, most of them were driven out of eastern and central Europe.