Our local Literary Society recently hosted Samantha Harvey, Booker Prize-winning author of Orbital, in Sherborne Abbey, timed poetically to coincide with Luke Jerram’s installation Gaia. As she spoke, the huge orb rotated slowly above her at the crossing, and we contemplated perspective, in the cosmos, life and the novelist’s art. I’d enjoyed the book – set on the International Space Station – for the beauty of its descriptions and also for the fact that it is another iteration of what a novel can be. It barely has a story at all. And the fact that it breaks several major ‘rules’ of creative writing had me, as a reader, quietly cheering. We all know that rules are there to be stretched, twanged and broken. I loved what Samantha Harvey had to say, even more than I loved the book. Here was an author who admitted that, really, she’d wanted to create something beautiful. Yes to that! Also, she told us, she was interested to see whether it was possible to write a novel without conflict at its centre. I nearly stood up and shouted hallelujah.
The astronauts and cosmonauts in Harvey’s book don’t hate each other, or fall in love, or fight, or really argue. In emotional terms, they float, and occasionally touch. They have painful thoughts but don’t share them much in dialogue. This makes sense to me because the novel is par excellence the art form which explores and gives full weight to what is left unsaid. A novel that doesn’t do that might as well be a TV show.
Sidestep: where I’m coming from
When I was a serious student of literature – in the days before I dared tell people I wanted to write myself – I was fascinated by the many shapes fiction and poetry could take and the many things they could be and do. Also the cultural contexts which pulled critical discussion in different directions. Russian writers set out to change the world with their fiction; the French seemed obsessed with the mind and quite happy to go inwards. Structure was infinitely flexible, and the poetics of the novel have always gripped my attention. Because even the most ‘realist’ writers – Zola the ‘naturalist’ comes to mind – appeal to the imagination though metaphor, images, and words – that’s the pull of that extraordinary single-word title ‘Germinal’. (Which looks like an eponym but isn’t.) The books I studied were absolutely full of things to think about, things to look at, and things to feel, expressed in language which was itself textured, not flat. The way themes weave, wax and wane, the subtle leitmotifs around particular characters, or the emotional veracity of their actions, were part of the writer’s art. In fact, that’s what the writers art was.
I used to be quite sniffy about plot. Plot is the thing that gives you the excuse to write about something rather more interesting. It’s the scaffold on which you build, and I admire those writers who build complex scaffolding several storeys (stories) high. The point of scaffolding, though, is that you can take it away and the thing still stands. Otherwise, all you’ve got is a story.
Some 20th Century Rules of Story
I’m less sniffy about plot now that I write myself. We all enjoy a good story – there’s huge pleasure in a book which unfolds just unexpectedly enough to take our breath away. Plotting is about knowing where to take the reader next, and it is a skill. Jane Austen’s plotting shows a strong instinct for this. She didn’t have to be taught that she needs a reversal now, and certainly didn’t realise that what she was dealing with was ‘the Second Pinch Point – halfway through the second half of the second act (roundabout the 5/8th mark).” I’m quoting here one of the many recent handbooks on how to a write a novel. If you look into online creative writing courses, you’ll soon see there’s a recognised way of structuring and organising your work, and there are programs, AI and otherwise, to help you plot. This orthodoxy is distilled from centuries of stories which have gone before us, and we ignore that at our peril.
Before she was a writer, Jane Austen was an expert reader. It was the movie age which promoted in-depth analysis of story per se. Robert McKee’s Story (1998) provides the encyclopaedia, largely from examples based on screenplays, and a sturdy tome it is too. His seminars on story have influenced creative writing the world over. When we sense that a novel is formulaic, though, there’s a good reason: readers, writers and publishers have embraced the movie formula. Today’s consumers of fiction have viewed as much as they have read, probably more.
Another Orthodoxy: Show don’t tell
The oft-repeated show don’t tell is central to the visual art which cinema is, and yes, it’s good advice, it does enliven your writing to render emotion in a character’s movement or actions. But every time I hear ‘show don’t tell’ there’s a bit of me that shouts, ‘What? WHAT?? What NEVER???’ Because I still remember the lovely tingle which those words ‘one upon a time’ produced in me as a child. And there are some stories which work just fine through a story-telling voice. First person narration has had its time in the sun and is often recommended as ‘more immediate’; but third person, omniscient narrator, whatever, I have no prejudices here, all can work, if they fit the needs of the particular story and the way the writer wants us to receive it. Its tone.
“A fight or a f*** in the first four pages“
The quality of writing on the first page is given huge weight, and poetically, as well as commercially, so it should. (Publishers, editors, and maybe readers don’t seem to mind so much if the energy flags once the story gets complicated, or if the book rushes to an unseemly close, like a Boy Scout striking camp in a thunderstorm. But if we want to create something of beauty, we should care very much about consistency. Even if all that’s technically required, apparently, is a clear story arc.) The orthodoxy states that conflict needs to be set up clearly on that first page. Which brings me back to Harvey’s novel-without-a-fight.
I have no argument that conflict is a driver when we read, that it reveals character, and so on. It’s a key feature of human experience. There’s room in this world for many, many kinds of books and many levels and types of conflict.
BUT the primacy of conflict in fiction is problematic – when I come to write, I snag against it.
Here’s why. Things I believe:
The prime function of fiction is to exercise the imagination.
The fiction we consume is a kind of intellectual /emotional / moral food.
The things we imagine inform our beliefs about what is possible.
You can’t create a good thing unless you can imagine it first.
In the light of that, there are a few things which it would be useful to imagine, in 2025.
We’ve banged on about the need for strong female characters but we haven’t rushed to create caring male ones.
We are still as a society attached to the woman as victim trope.
Books right now need to explore not only conflict, but conflict resolution. Not all books, but surely, somebody should be doing it?
Well, who knew, there’s me with my hand up. Please, please, can I tell a story about… gratitude, apology, people messing up and making up? Which might be satirical and a bit of a laugh?
The Great Big Thank You… coming soon in audio