Books that never made it to print: The Whispering of Black Anis

Melody is an eighteen-year-old who slips into a deep depression, although she does not realise what is happening to her at first. She loses herself in a fantasy where everything makes more sense. This enables her to feel more in control and work towards making sense of these new feelings.

She imagines herself in a world torn apart by a cthulu-eque monster and that she is now stalked by a figure dressed in white who wants to destroy her. It gradually becomes clear to the reader that these are how Melody has interpreted her panic attacks and feelings of depression, respectively. The story focuses on Melody’s journey to recovery, assisted by her friends and hindered by parts of her own mind.

Genre: Young Adult Horror

How good do I think this book is, looking back on it?      3/10

This is the only book I’ve ever written which is unambiguously bad. There are moments of flare and technically decent writing, but any competent editor would start their letter by saying the authorial voice is overwhelming.

How obviously depressed was I during the writing?        10/10

The entire book is about depression, I was essentially pouring my feelings onto the page.

Background

After Confessions, I wrote some of the sequel, then worked on the first draft of the book which would eventually become Drown the Witch. Neither of these projects particularly wowed me, so I decided to write something more personal. I also decided to switch over to Young Adult, because I thought there was more of a market opportunity there, and because my characters always felt lost and alone in a vast, unknowable world (because that’s how I feel pretty much of the time) so I may as well lean into it.

Whispering was my attempt to turn a depressive meltdown into a novel. It failed for two reasons:

First, the main thing about my experience of depression is… it isn’t dramatic. When I’m depressed, I generally don’t get up to much. I lie in bed, eat crisps, and feel miserable. There are two easy ways to make drama in a novel about depression – self harm and suicide. I didn’t want to touch either because I felt it cheapened the narrative to rely on those elements which can be emotionally manipulative and cliched.

Second, the protagonist spends almost the entire book alone. This is a realisation I’ve come to only this morning – my writing only really works when the protag has someone to bounce off. The protag of Whispering, Melody, spent the entire time in her own head and it was just a bit boring.

There were some patches of the book which stood out as less than bad. The interplay between Melody and her new friend Fletcher had its moments but generally the story was flat and didn’t really go anywhere. It was a normal, boring story I tried to spice up with cosmic horror elements which were pretty obviously all in the protag’s head.

Submission

This was the first book I submitted in earnest to agents. Having apparently learned nothing from Confessions, I didn’t hire an editor. I got feedback from my friends and family, then sent it out to around 25 agents. They all said no, other than some people who turned out to be a vanity publisher. I was desperate for it to be successful at that point, so I very nearly said yes. I am very, very glad now that my friends talked me out of going with the vanity publisher.

Lessons Learned:

1)       Hire a damned editor

If I’d got a developmental editor on board early enough, they might have been able to save this book. Personally, I think this project was doomed from the moment I decided to set it in the real world. The real world isn’t my jam. I do my best writing in weird and fantastical places. Still, an editor might have got this book to the stage where it was at least readable.

2)      Writing courses are your friend

I signed up to a writing course during the editing of this book and it was an absolute godsend. I had such a good time and learned a lot about the craft. My desire to improve really yielded fruit in my next book.

3)      The autobiographical period is painful

Many years later, I saw a talk by a famous author on YouTube. They said that every writer goes through an autobiographical stage. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, but it’s something we all have to get past. It was a relief to know that other people had gone through this phase as well. I came out the other side a better writer, although my confidence had been shaken by being rejected by so many agents.

4)      Protagonist action is crucial

Protagonist action drives the plot. With an inactive protagonist, your story will be uninteresting. In Whispering, my protagonist went to a night club and had a perfectly nice time, but nothing of consequence happened. She went urban exploring and had a perfectly nice time… but nothing of consequence happened. She spoke to mental health professionals and had dramatic revelations about her mental state… but other than that, nothing happened.

When writing, you need to include both external statkes and internal stakes. Your protagonist is fighting for her life against an alien warlord, yes, but what does this conflict mean for her inner journey? Your protagonist is torn between two life paths, yes, but what does this mean for her survival in the upcoming post-apocalyptic death race?

In Whispering, I was entirely focussed on internal stakes and completely neglected any external stakes. This makes sense for a book about depression, but just because the idea is justified thematically, that doesn’t make it a good idea.

5)      Don’t try to cheat the reader

The cosmic horror elements I included were consistent with my experience of depression, and they were used to a specific point throughout the novel - using horror to communicate to a reader how depression felt. Still, I maintained a pretence during the first half of the novel that the cosmic horror elements were actually happening, and I only revealed after the midpoint that they were manifestations of depression and anxiety.

I get why I made this choice. If it had been clear that the horror elements were manifestations of mental illness from the start then there wasn’t much tension, and there wasn’t a sense of threat. Including the mystery of ‘oooh, why are there spooky Cthulhu monsters?’ meant I got to maintain a sense of tension… except that sense of tension was a lie, and it was pretty obvious from the word go.

I’d correctly identified a problem with the text – it lacked tension and stakes, but my solution was to pretend that tension and stakes actually existed. No, seriously, they do. Look at all these Cthulhu monsters. Such tension! A more sensible idea might have been to have a threat happen because of the depression. If she can’t get a handle on her new feelings then she won’t be able to hold down her job, or she might be taken into care by the council or something. The problem with that idea is both examples I just gave are pretty bad. I think I’m really demonstrating here why I don’t write books set in the real world. Any slice of life writers out there are probably reading this, screaming about how obvious the solution is.

It’s tempting to say that, when I’d noticed the lack of stakes, I should have taken that feeling of wrongness with the novel and sat with it, really pulling apart why I felt I needed to maintain the mystery for as long as I did… but I think that’s a little unfair. When writing Whispering, I was still very early in my career and it’s phenomenally challenging to write a novel with depression as both theme and primary plot subject. I’d struggle to do it now, and I’ve had four years in which to improve my skills since I put Whispering to bed.

6) Rising action is very important

At the start of Whispiering, Melody has been depressed for a while but the inciding incident, which causes her to start imagining Cthulhu monsters, is a panic attack. She continues to feel depression and experience panic attacks throughout the novel. See the problem? Nothing escalates. Melody’s emotional state does deteriorate, but not to a particularly dramatic degree. Again, I didn’t want to have Melody attempt suicide or cut herself, but those were the obvious ways to raise the stakes.

It’s tempting to say that rising action is a convention, and one that can be broken for the right project. That’s technically true, but if you look at slice of life TV shows, what becomes obvious very quickly is, even though they lack stakes, they still have rising action, it’s just the action is tied to different sorts of plot beats than a traditional fantasy novel.

Any text needs to have a sense of progression. In Whispering, I attempted this by having Melody make progress through the mental health system, forge new relationships and abandon old ones. That’s not bad, exactly, but in terms of drama there wasn’t much for Mel to overcome. Her new relationship was only in danger if she let her feelings of depression sabotage it, which… is true to life but meant that the people she forged relationships with were pretty clearly loving and supportive… so everything, to the reader, was obviously going to be fine.

Whispering was a mess, is what I’m saying.