Essential Question: How are stories changed based on the perspectives from which they are told?
Last week I began reading my first explorative text: The Year of Secret Assignments by Jaclyn Moriarty. It is a YA novel about three high school girls who are required to write letters to three boys at a rival school. The story is primarily told through letters, as well as diary/notebook entries, poster announcements, and more.
I am really enjoying the book so far, and I am finding that the format works really well and is generally just fun to read. The author does a great job of bringing the characters to life in only letters and journal entries, etc., which is something I find to be quite difficult. As of right now, I’m a bit unsure of the characters’ physical appearances, but this seems to be one of the biggest challenges with this format of writing. It would be strange to have a character say, for example, “I have silky brown hair that brings out the sparkling green of my eyes”. It’s just not a natural thing to say. This is still something I’m concerned about for my piece, but I hope that as I continue to read this book (and more) I will get some ideas for how to do it.
As I read, I’m mainly learning about three characters through their letters and journal entries. Although I already had this in mind, this reading has reinforced the importance of voice and tone in the writing. With a lack of personal and physical descriptions, and having to remain faithful to natural dialogue and thoughts, it is wise to use voice and tone as a tool for communicating more about each character. This is done very well in the novel, and it actually reveals a lot about the characters. I hope that as I continue to read and write, more will become clear as answers to my essential question.
Did I recommend this to you? I don’t think I did, but I am so glad you found it. I adore Moriarty (I’ve met her! She’s delightful!) and her epistolary novels are some of my favorites. And talk about setting — there are four books in this loose series, all set in the same town and schools, so that the sense of place exists within the text but also grows when you read more than one of the books in the series (which all stand alone and don’t require each other). I’m also always amazed at how much pathos and depth she hides in these whimsical, candy-coated reads — you coast along, laughing, and then wham she hits you with really brilliant and often heartbreaking understanding of the world. (In her most recent book, there’s a line that just knocked me over, it was so perfect.) This is also a great book for looking at how to put exposition into an epistolary text; there’s an inherent artificiality to all first person and epistolary novels, the trick is in owning the story so completely that the reader forgets that artifice. (I also recommend Bridget Jones’s Diary for this same trick, incidentally, and it’s a fast and fun read.)