Creative Choices: Why I Wrote a Novel-in-Verse

Months ago, I unearthed a cardboard box containing letters from a friend who served in Vietnam during the late 1960s. I spent days arranging dozens of envelopes according to dates. What should I do with this wealth of resources? I’d stored them for more than a half-century.

An excerpt from an early letter:

I’m lying on an army cot at my outpost. Last night I about got plugged writing a letter using this same flashlight. (sic) A sniper saw it. That would be a helluva way to sign off—with a big glob of guts.

The same box held notes from high school friends—our means of communication before answering machines and cell phones. I decided to write a verse novel about those tumultuous times. Until then, I hadn’t written poetry.

(How I Spent Years Writing a Memoir and Ended Up With a Novel-in-Verse.)

Experimenting with this nontraditional form was challenging. I needed a story arc for each of my eight viewpoint characters while they struggled with highly charged emotional issues: war, riots, sexual identity, family alcoholism, etc.

I spent weeks rearranging index cards on the floor, figuring out the progression of each character and their part in the story. Two characters were axed. The story arc for the remaining six was woven into the whole. This approach seemed the best way to give readers access to the individual, innermost feelings—to immediately draw them into the story’s pulse.

Since the novel is character-driven, the landscape of the mind is more important than the physical setting. What my characters think and feel is more powerful than their surroundings—as are their attitudes, beliefs, and sensitivities. Emotions surpass action.

The story felt truest when told in short, energetic bursts—scenes that captured a single moment, whether an emotion, thought, or idea. This poem is four short lines:

Love is like sticking
your car keys in a pocket with
your sunglasses and thinking
your glasses won’t get scratched.

Another example:

My motel sign:
VACANCY

The condensed, metaphoric language gives readers an intimate understanding of the characters without extra words. There’s something punchy and immediate about a page with more white space than text. Similar to negative space in a painting, or absence of sound in music, the more negative space, the more an object stands out.

Writers often ask when they should consider this structure.

1. Stories that are better told from more than one point of view. Mel Glenn’s verse novel Who Killed Mr. Chippendale? has more than 50 viewpoint characters. Even if Glenn chose an omniscient POV, bouncing in and out of so many heads could be confusing. That said, not all novels-in-verse have more than one POV character.
2. Predominantly character-driven stories. Verse novels often deal with highly charged emotional issues, such as incest (Furniture, by Thalia Chaltas), mental illness (Stop Pretending What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy, by Sonya Sones), and teen pregnancy (First Part Last, by Angela Johnson).
3. Stories with poetry as a subplot or theme. In Ron Koertge’s Shakespeare Bats Clean Up, the main character is a bedridden, bored kid who reads his dad’s poetry books. He begins writing poems to express his feelings and frustrations.
4. Stories that are best told in short, vibrant bursts instead of traditional margin-to-margin prose. Scenes that capture a single moment, whether an emotion, thought, or idea.

When beginning a new writing project I play with language and how words appear on the page. Can I come up with more telling details? A more intimate voice? Well-placed, interesting word choices—their sounds, how they look on the page. I experiment with metaphor, alliteration, and assonance.

Of course, all good writing should contain these elements. However, I tend to focus more on “voice sounds” and “patterns of expression” when my writing looks like poetry.