Writing the Novel-in-Verse

In undergraduate (and graduate) poetry workshops, I was often told a poem I wrote was too narrative and should instead be a story. In fiction workshops, I was told my story was too lyrical—emotionally resonant, but nothing really “happened.” As a writer, I’ve often felt like someone straddling two worlds—ineffectively—until I gave myself permission to try the novel-in-verse. 

Novels-in-verse are a fascinating hybrid between fiction and verse, bearing the narrative bones of a novel with the values and flesh of poetry. In recent years they have been growing in popularity, particularly for readers ages 8–18, serving as a wonderful entry point into poetry for young readers. Accomplished poets such as Elizabeth Acevedo, Safia Elhillo, Mahogany L. Browne, Renée Watson, and Colby Cedar Smith have become known for both their traditional poems and kidlit novels-in-verse, bringing powerful extended narratives to a new generation of poetry fans. Novels-in-verse are particularly great for poets who want to tell a story in an extended narrative (as opposed to thematically connected individual poems), especially ones that privilege emotional intensity, first-person narration, and introspection with intimacy and focus. While there is more room to “tell” in a novel-in-verse, the strongest books embody the poetic power of Ezra Pound’s “the natural object,” of sensory details that place us alongside the speaker to have greater empathy for their experience.

In this workshop, we focused on three elements that the novel-in-verse predominantly excels in: emotion, intimacy, and focus. Regarding emotion, we discussed how the premises for novels-in-verse, including Thushanthi Ponweera’s I am Kavi,Hannah S. Sawyerr’s All the Fighting Parts,and my book Good Different, have emotion driving and escalating the narrative stakes. Using poems from Rebecca Caprara’s Worst-Case Collin, we discussed how poets can employ visual form and white space to recreate not just the physical but the emotional landscape of an experience, in this case, living with a hoarding father. We looked at an example poem from Joanne Rossmassler Fritz’s Everywhere Blue,exploring how the villanelle form draws attention to the emotional intensity of the speaker’s experience of being left alone. We used these examples to launch into a poetry exercise of exploring what is inside our current and childhood selves—reaching beyond abstraction to ground our emotions through specific, concrete objects. 

For intimacy, we reflected on our own lived experiences, and what could make the most powerful material for our own novels in verse. In the words of award-winning author Linda Sue Park, we asked the following: who sits at your kitchen table? What communities are we a part of, and feel comfortable enough to welcome inside our homes? What we intimately know creates our strongest work, and with novels-in-verse, this authentic vulnerability is critical not just for creating responsible representation but also establishing a voice and character engagingly sustainable and believable for a book-length work. 

Finally for focus, we discussed the various ways a novels-in-verse can “zoom in” to focus on the most critical aspects for the narrative. Jason Reynolds’s Long Way Down focuses in time and space by the entire novel taking place over the duration of an elevator ride. Reem Faruqi’s Golden Girl and Nikki Grimes’s Garvey’s Choice focus through short poems and tight forms (Garvey’s Choice consists entirely of tankas!). Looking at three poems from Reem Faruqi’s Golden Girl, we discussed how she masterfully conveys so much narrative and emotional arcing in such brief, powerful poems, creating clear cause and effect to launch us as readers from one poem to the next. As each individual poem has its own volta and “aha” moment, so does the overarching narrative. 

As we closed, we reflected on the ways novels-in-verse employ hope and beauty, even when exploring difficult topics. Especially for young readers, providing a concrete hope and model for how to actively respond in difficult times allows the novel-in-verse to live beyond the page and meaningfully impact our readers. In reflection, I asked participants to consider for their own work: 

• What are you feeling in this moment? What are your concerns right now? (This is a question an MFA professor would frequently ask me about my poems that I continually return to.) When were you feeling something similar as a child?
• What do you carry? What material might you have from your lived experience? What is the story only you can tell?
• What interests you? Where do you want our focus to be? 
• As you reflect on your recent poetic body of work, are there any themes you keep coming back to? Any that might benefit from an extended narrative? 

Activity:

Many novels-in-verse use a “name” poem to establish the protagonist, who they are, what they want, and what will become a driving force for the future narrative action. Examples include “Chaya: What’s in a Name?” from Rajani LaRocca’s Mirror to Mirror and “Valeria” from my novel The Girl in the Walls. If you are using this activity in a classroom, I particularly encourage watching and discussing the poem “Unforgettable” by Pages Matam, Elizabeth Acevedo, and G. Yamazawa before launching into this prompt. 

After reflecting on at least two or three example name poems, write your own. If you are currently working on a novel-in-verse, you can write this from your protagonist’s perspective. If not, consider your own name from your current or childhood perspective. Consider:

• What is your (character’s) name and what does it tell us about you (or them)? 
• What does the speaker think of their name? Do they love it? Hate it? Why?
• Does the name connect the speaker to—or disconnect them from—their heritage? 
• Does its meaning resonate with the speaker? Or its inverse?
• If the speaker could rename themselves, would they? If so, what name would they choose?
• What does the name mean to the speaker’s family? 

For additional resources on novels-in-verse, visit: 

• AWP Writer’s Notebook post: From Disaster to Hope: Leza Lowitz’s Up from the Sea and the Art of Novels-In-Verse
• “Verse Novelists Forge a Unique Connection with Young Readers,” School Library Journal
• #HFGather: Writing about Trauma and Grief for Kids,” Highlights Foundation
• AWP The Writer’s Chronicle article: “The Best of Both Genres: The Rise of the Novel-in-Verse”