Writing Blytonian stories of one's own.
Posted: 14 Jun 2010, 21:59
Hallo.
To those who know me, sorry I've been so absent. I do seem to be having difficulty actually thinking of anything to say. I think I'm going through a kind of depression (not a black despairing one, just a kind of grey nothingness). I come onto this forum and look up some threads, and try to think if I can add anything, and there's just a kind of nothingness: anything I can think of to say has either already been said by someone else, or else is trite and not worth saying.
But I would like to ask this:
I was just wondering how many people here have written (or still write) Blyton-style adventures or mysteries. I'm not talking about writing stories using her characters and adding to her series, nor talking about satirical or humorous pastiches of her style. I'm just talking about straightforward stories or novels, roughly in her style, but using characters of one's own invention.
When I was a child, and going into my teens and even early 20s, I wrote quite a few stories of this sort, and created several sets of characters, each of whom had a series around them. Most of these were in fact short stories, or novellas at most, and in fact this forced me to try to compress too much content into too few pages, and led to a very clipped, colourless style of writing. I did contemplate rewriting them, expanding them considerably, but never got round to it. But one of my series was based on a novel-sized format, and I actually wrote one complete novel, about nine-tenths of a second, and varying portions of succeeding novels, all featuring the same family (complete with dog). This would have been around 1968 to 1969.
Around the mid 1970s, I somehow turned to trying to write fiction of a more serious, deep character, and these works took a more mystical turn, although I think some of Blyton's methods of storytelling were so deeply ingrained in me that signs of this approach probably continued. But the stories were more philosophical, and lacked the normal adventure or mystery trappings Blyton usually used. One or two of these stories were going to be science-fiction.
In time, this faded too, and around the late 1980s I stopped writing fiction altogether. I think this was partly tied up with an increasingly dark outlook on life where I adopted a rather nihilistic outlook, and when I found life itself pointless I increasingly saw no future in trying to write stories which were trying in various ways to work out what life was about.
I have not written fiction at all for two decades now (except for a couple of chapters in an Adventure series Round Robin in the Yahoo Blyton group); but I do still think nostalgically about Enid Blyton's work, which was so formative in influencing my way of writing. And I occasionally have the desire to write Blytonian fiction. For this, I would create new characters, and not try to resurrect the rather pale characters I created in my youth. I might also be interested in writing something set in the future, with a science-fictiony flavour, but based on the idea of children solving mysteries and having adventures. Another idea would involve another set of characters in the present (or maybe past? - questionable if you are not deliberately pastiching Blyton), and would be just straight adventure stories.
And yet I often wonder if it is feasible to writing fiction of this sort now. Some may think that Blyton so dominated this area that it is hers alone, and no-one else can write like that without encroaching on her territory. I'm not talking about closely imitating Blyton's style, but just writing the general type of story she often wrote.
Also, things are so different now in the world generally. Political correctness may make it very difficult to write certain things. I may not want to create black villains called Jo-Jo; but I might want to depict the children wandering around unsupervised without their parents getting concerned about it (like I did myself in the 1960s aged 8 or 10); and if the kids went out bike-riding, I would not want to have to carefully point out how they put their bike helmets on every time, lest I be accused of setting a bad example for readers; and I would not want to require that the dog be on a lead at all times, as the law might require today in some localities. (If Timmy had had to be on a lead at all times in public, that would very definitely have hobbled his often important role in the story.)
Also, I'm not sure I'd want computers or mobile phones to intrude too much, as they seem rather incompatible with a Blytonian adventure - yet if the story is set today, such things surely cannot be ignored. Also, would you let modern political, social, and environmental concerns enter into the general background these stories are set in? Drugs, street violence, family breakdown, domestic abuse - not stuff at all that I would want to fill the general background of the stories. (Occasionally the kids might be on the trail of drug smugglers, as they were once or twice in Blyton's own work - but that's quite a different matter.)
There are so many questions that you'd have to know how to deal with - I've just mentioned a few that randomly come to mind. And at times I conclude that is is hardly feasible to write stories of this sort now - which may be why I can't think of anyone who *is* writing stories of this sort now.
So I see many potential pitfalls in trying to write stories of this sort now. I guess, realistically, I would be doing it for my own entertainment, not for publication; but if they turned out to be good enough, I certainly wouldn't want to dismiss the possibility of publication.
I suppose my interest in doing it is partly related to a kind of childhood nostalgia, a desire to retreat from present-day life back into a kind of cosy sense of nostalgia.
Anyway, I was just wondering if anyone else was considering, or had done, a similar thing, and what they thought about it.
I would appreciate any comments on this.
Sorry if it's only tangentially related to Blyton - I hope that's okay. I would be interested to see what anyone else thinks about this.
Thanks.
Regards, Michael.
To those who know me, sorry I've been so absent. I do seem to be having difficulty actually thinking of anything to say. I think I'm going through a kind of depression (not a black despairing one, just a kind of grey nothingness). I come onto this forum and look up some threads, and try to think if I can add anything, and there's just a kind of nothingness: anything I can think of to say has either already been said by someone else, or else is trite and not worth saying.
But I would like to ask this:
I was just wondering how many people here have written (or still write) Blyton-style adventures or mysteries. I'm not talking about writing stories using her characters and adding to her series, nor talking about satirical or humorous pastiches of her style. I'm just talking about straightforward stories or novels, roughly in her style, but using characters of one's own invention.
When I was a child, and going into my teens and even early 20s, I wrote quite a few stories of this sort, and created several sets of characters, each of whom had a series around them. Most of these were in fact short stories, or novellas at most, and in fact this forced me to try to compress too much content into too few pages, and led to a very clipped, colourless style of writing. I did contemplate rewriting them, expanding them considerably, but never got round to it. But one of my series was based on a novel-sized format, and I actually wrote one complete novel, about nine-tenths of a second, and varying portions of succeeding novels, all featuring the same family (complete with dog). This would have been around 1968 to 1969.
Around the mid 1970s, I somehow turned to trying to write fiction of a more serious, deep character, and these works took a more mystical turn, although I think some of Blyton's methods of storytelling were so deeply ingrained in me that signs of this approach probably continued. But the stories were more philosophical, and lacked the normal adventure or mystery trappings Blyton usually used. One or two of these stories were going to be science-fiction.
In time, this faded too, and around the late 1980s I stopped writing fiction altogether. I think this was partly tied up with an increasingly dark outlook on life where I adopted a rather nihilistic outlook, and when I found life itself pointless I increasingly saw no future in trying to write stories which were trying in various ways to work out what life was about.
I have not written fiction at all for two decades now (except for a couple of chapters in an Adventure series Round Robin in the Yahoo Blyton group); but I do still think nostalgically about Enid Blyton's work, which was so formative in influencing my way of writing. And I occasionally have the desire to write Blytonian fiction. For this, I would create new characters, and not try to resurrect the rather pale characters I created in my youth. I might also be interested in writing something set in the future, with a science-fictiony flavour, but based on the idea of children solving mysteries and having adventures. Another idea would involve another set of characters in the present (or maybe past? - questionable if you are not deliberately pastiching Blyton), and would be just straight adventure stories.
And yet I often wonder if it is feasible to writing fiction of this sort now. Some may think that Blyton so dominated this area that it is hers alone, and no-one else can write like that without encroaching on her territory. I'm not talking about closely imitating Blyton's style, but just writing the general type of story she often wrote.
Also, things are so different now in the world generally. Political correctness may make it very difficult to write certain things. I may not want to create black villains called Jo-Jo; but I might want to depict the children wandering around unsupervised without their parents getting concerned about it (like I did myself in the 1960s aged 8 or 10); and if the kids went out bike-riding, I would not want to have to carefully point out how they put their bike helmets on every time, lest I be accused of setting a bad example for readers; and I would not want to require that the dog be on a lead at all times, as the law might require today in some localities. (If Timmy had had to be on a lead at all times in public, that would very definitely have hobbled his often important role in the story.)
Also, I'm not sure I'd want computers or mobile phones to intrude too much, as they seem rather incompatible with a Blytonian adventure - yet if the story is set today, such things surely cannot be ignored. Also, would you let modern political, social, and environmental concerns enter into the general background these stories are set in? Drugs, street violence, family breakdown, domestic abuse - not stuff at all that I would want to fill the general background of the stories. (Occasionally the kids might be on the trail of drug smugglers, as they were once or twice in Blyton's own work - but that's quite a different matter.)
There are so many questions that you'd have to know how to deal with - I've just mentioned a few that randomly come to mind. And at times I conclude that is is hardly feasible to write stories of this sort now - which may be why I can't think of anyone who *is* writing stories of this sort now.
So I see many potential pitfalls in trying to write stories of this sort now. I guess, realistically, I would be doing it for my own entertainment, not for publication; but if they turned out to be good enough, I certainly wouldn't want to dismiss the possibility of publication.
I suppose my interest in doing it is partly related to a kind of childhood nostalgia, a desire to retreat from present-day life back into a kind of cosy sense of nostalgia.
Anyway, I was just wondering if anyone else was considering, or had done, a similar thing, and what they thought about it.
I would appreciate any comments on this.
Sorry if it's only tangentially related to Blyton - I hope that's okay. I would be interested to see what anyone else thinks about this.
Thanks.
Regards, Michael.