I have pondered over this first transmission with interest, which you can 'catch up' on BBC iplayer. At one point I had practically decided to don my wellies and start digging over my raised beds; packets of seeds at the ready. Is this the worst metaphor for novel writing? Maybe, I am a poet after all....
I agree characters are of utmost importance but where does that leave the novels of rich descriptive attention concerning sense of place, think Thomas Hardy The Return of the Native as one glorious example. The soil of the landscape may be full of the elements to germinate and mature each of your fictional persons in a grand fashion yet what if they spoil the readers view? It could be classed as a conceited concept to let the characters take over such sublime space - are people that important that they can't do without themselves for a few pages a chapter? On the flip side it is worth considering how well we want to know the characters introduced to us by the narrator. Personally I prefer sound strong individuals that do not over analysis every breeze that blows and every emotion they feel...apologies to the Modernists, but then the french writers are so good at balancing both...Merci Colette.
My considerations don't usually follow the idea that a perfect book and a great book aren't the same thing - which statement holds the most truth? Focusing on the frustrating slow parts in the middle can be somewhat like a soufflé. Does the reader approach with caution or rush in and knock the air out desperate to discover the ending? The narrator can aim to turn a runny, sloppy concoction into a light airy delight that melts in the mouth (when read out loud), yet we are warned by one of this panel of published elite that nobody thinks in metaphors. Should the reader therefore be suspicious of metaphors: something is what it is, don't confuse the reader with what it could be like, a book is not like staring at clouds! I believe that fiction is a contradiction - the writer should tell a lie truthfully; a sense of place can be achieved in a sentence and whilst levels of experience are of value, the writer can subsequently deal with an fictional experience without actually having that experience. The key here is to observe as much as possible, use the senses, then respond.
So has there been a writer who I can claim has produced a book of greatness, perceptive to the point that even after bathing the smell of a scene is still on the skin? For me that book is The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940) by Carson McCullers. I confess this book has only recently been in my possession but I devoured it as one would a meal when griping with hunger. I have tried to not fall into the trap of gasping with amazement at McCullers age or gender at the time of writing this non-superfluous piece of eloquent fiction. What I do consider genius is how she balances the characters and the sense of surroundings - neither fight for the limelight but work together harmoniously, the narrator moving words strategically in order to deeper enhance the stories scenes. A masterpiece, and I for one did not skip a single sentence, even the punctuation detected exactly where it should be, decidedly and sound.
The next few weeks I will be probably leaving the world of fiction and applying myself to theory and my approach for my third year dissertation. My personal achievements in writing are still forging ahead and I'm trying very hard to gain feedback on some of my poems before I send any more off to competitions. I have four diverse competitions which I will be entering this year. A lasting memory was attained last week when I found amongst a donated collection of Cornish books a signed copy of Jack Clemo's Confessions of a Rebel. It is just his name and no dedication and that is all I needed to make the daydream a tad real - remember a signature lends itself to the myth, a 'language-object' as Barthe termed could also be the author themselves....
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