Could Enid have been a better writer?

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Belly
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Could Enid have been a better writer?

Post by Belly »

As I endlessly re-draft a piece of writing I am working on I wonder whether Enid's work would have benefitted from more revision/character development and similar.

I see that Anita thought something similar in another post, would Enid's writing have been better if 'if she had rejected what came uppermost and dug deeper' or would it have meant her work lost 'spontaneity, fluidity and pace'? (Hope you don't mind me borrowing this Anita :) I think you made a very interesting point).

I think Enid did re-draft, on reflection, but mainly to make sure she hadn't made obvious errors. I think she relied on her 'cinema' screen alone for plot and character?

I can't help but wonder if she had taken longer over 'Five on a Secret Trail' for example, it would have been a better book (although I have more affection for it than most I think). She might have tweaked the 'twins' theme or substituted it for something else.

Someone whose writing I admire told me that David Mitchell is an excellent writer. His 'Black Swan Green' is apparently a brilliant read and brilliantly crafted. This is how he writes:

“Writing is editing for me. I do a rubbishy,
sketchy version first to get to work on, which
is scaffolding. And then the writing is honing
and refining, strengthening, trimming and
leafing out —
so like a tree it grows out and
out. I was going to say it’s 90% editing, but
if it’s possible, it’s 100% editing…I would be
un-publishable if I didn’t go back. I would
be un-publishable if I didn’t go back fifteen
times. It’s fun as well. It’s so satisfying to fix a
broken sentence, to spot that it’s broken and
then work out how fix it; and then do the
same with a number of things, for instance,
a broken scene.” During this editing process,
Mitchell remains focussed on one key
question, as he explains; “I would say that
what I try to do is constantly ask myself with
every page, ‘Why would someone other
than my mother actually want to read this?’
You should be able to answer that question
with a good answer.

Enid valued her time with Kenneth and was out of the door come what may to play golf on Fridays it seemed, am not sure David Mitchell would have done that whilst there was still a way, as he saw it, he could improve his work.

I can't help but think Enid's work could have been consistently outstanding if she had done something similar. Perhaps not revising to the same degree but recognising that her writing, whilst good, could be made better.

If she did this with a light touch I don't think she would have lost any of the pacy fun of the original draft.

All the endless re-drafting does take some of the fun out of it though! I can't quite share all of David Mitchell's enthusiasm for fixing broken words etc!
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Re: Could Enid have been a better writer?

Post by Anita Bensoussane »

Belly wrote:I see that Anita thought something similar in another post, would Enid's writing have been better 'if she had rejected what came uppermost and dug deeper' or would it have meant her work lost 'spontaneity, fluidity and pace'? (Hope you don't mind me borrowing this Anita :) I think you made a very interesting point).
Of course I don't mind. It was the Fine Defence of Enid Blyton programme that got me thinking about that - not for the first time either.
Belly wrote:I think Enid did re-draft, on reflection, but mainly to make sure she hadn't made obvious errors. I think she relied on her 'cinema' screen alone for plot and character?
Looking at the manuscripts which have been on display at Enid Blyton Days it appears that Enid Blyton did make a handful of alterations on each page but, as you say, they were generally only small things like correcting typos or substituting one word for another, not involving any radical re-writing.
Belly wrote:Someone whose writing I admire told me that David Mitchell is an excellent writer. His 'Black Swan Green' is apparently a brilliant read and brilliantly crafted. This is how he writes:

“Writing is editing for me. I do a rubbishy,
sketchy version first to get to work on, which
is scaffolding. And then the writing is honing
and refining, strengthening, trimming and
leafing out —
so like a tree it grows out and
out. I was going to say it’s 90% editing, but
if it’s possible, it’s 100% editing…I would be
un-publishable if I didn’t go back."

...I can't help but think Enid's work could have been consistently outstanding if she had done something similar.
Enid could certainly have varied her phrasing and vocabulary more, I think, and tightened up some plots, though on the whole her plotting is impressive, especially when it comes to creating mystery and intrigue. She holds the interest of readers and keeps them guessing. Her characters' dialogue sounds very natural to me too.

Editing is time-consuming so, if Enid Blyton had spend longer revising her work before publication, she'd have produced fewer books as a consequence. Perhaps we'd have had Wishing-Chair books that were more polished and less episodic, but no Faraway Tree. Or a more tightly-constructed, better-organised St. Clare's series but no Malory Towers.

Anita
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Re: Could Enid have been a better writer?

Post by Belly »

Enid's output is one of the things she is most famous for. Where did the desire & compulsion to produce so much come from I wonder? Was it Enid's 'arrogant' spirit that stopped her tweaking the books and just spending a week on each? (Playing devil's advocate now a bit) but trying to get to what drove her & whether that changed as she matured.

It would be a shame to lose St Clares but there would be a few that could go by the wayside as far as I am concerned, maybe Noddy, Anita? :)

I could happily let the Secret Seven, Noddy and lots of the short stories go in favour of solidly brilliant Fives, Adventures, 'Secrets' ie of Killimoonin etc, Malory Towers and St Clares.

Did children's writers at the time re-draft in the way they might now or is it a modern phenomenom? I am not sure how JK Rowling 'created' the Harry Potter books but I can imagine a lot of structure/diagrams/pre-plotting etc going on.

I wonder if JK Rowling will go on to create another 'Harry Potter' type series in the future?
How long did one of her Harry books take? Think around 2 years for each or maybe more?

If Enid had written only 6-12 brilliant books would she still be remembered and celebrated in the same way?

All these questions today :D Anything to get out of re-drafting! :D
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Re: Could Enid have been a better writer?

Post by Belly »

Just to add I agree about the impressive plotting. When I've tried I always found it very difficult, not as easy as I first thought. Descriptive passages can flow but finding an exciting plot and keeping up the pace etc are tough.
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Re: Could Enid have been a better writer?

Post by Julie2owlsdene »

Personally I think Enid was an excellent writer. I think she had a genuine flow for it and the stories came to her, as she used to say, through her minds eye. She had a gift, where as soon as you read the first page of her book, you wanted to read on. For me, if the title said Enid Blyton, I would just buy the book, regardless of what the story was about, for I knew I would just love it.

I think that if Enid had spent time, reading and re-reading what she'd written, altering it and changing it, the story would not have been as she first intended it to be. She was doing what she loved best, telling stories to children, and being well loved for it. :D

8)
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Re: Could Enid have been a better writer?

Post by Philip Mannering »

I think Enid was as good as she was, although obviously she could have varied her vocabulary, like Richmal Crompton, whose vocabulary I find such fun to pronounce. If Enid had edited, the feeling would have been lost. These books are special for being so timeless, so good, so intriguing, so great, that I hardly find the need the need to edit. :)

As for cancellation of some series, I would have been happy if there had not been so many Famous Five books, some more Find-Outers, Adventures and Barneys, but well, it all depended on popularity. :?
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Re: Could Enid have been a better writer?

Post by Enikyoga »

Writing is a very difficult process as everyone knows. For instance, when I write an article, I may go over it 20 or even more times to ensure that most mistakes, grammatical and typos are eliminated. It is hard to produce a perfect article or book. This may have been even more difficult in Enid Blyton’s heyday when PC’s were still unavailable (though computers-large industrial ones, had just been invented during her writing career in the late 1940s). Anyway, under the circumstances, she did a good job. She was far better than some of us that use PCs nowadays.Probably if she had used PCs, she would have produced even more and better works. Regardless, under the circumstances she worked under in comparison to today’s children, few children’s
writers equal her in the quantity, let alone the quality of books she produced. I agree with Julie. She did all she could and produced good children literature that few other writers can produce even today. In fact, she cast herself most of the time as a storywriter rather than a writer. That stance may have assisted her a lot in her writing career.
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Re: Could Enid have been a better writer?

Post by Philip Mannering »

For me, the greatest thing in Blyton's books are that they are timeless. They are not historical or classical boring novels we have to read just because it is necessary, but we read them for entertainment. Librarians may not recommend them to us, and may recommend Dickens etc, but a child chooses what he likes. He is bored by the classics, he is bored by Shakespeare and all, but he isn't bored from books written by a prolific author in the 40s, at the same time when the classics were published. That just about says it. 8)

This is not to say that Enid's books contain just entertainment and nothing else. A reader of the very less-known family novels like House-at-the-Corner will know how real it is. How real the characters are, and how real the issues are.

But! What is the main difference? Why can a child be hooked by family issues in a Blyton novel whereas be bored reading the same issues in some other one? The answer is simple. Enid packs so much drama and tension that we are hooked by the story, and we are not bored. We do not feel the feeling reading other family novels, the feeling of being preached. No, Enid does teach her readers, but she throws in a great and superb story in all the same. That is the difference. The timeless quality of her book can't be ever matched by any other writer, however good he/she is. Special and timeless, only these two words I can think of. :D 8)
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Re: Could Enid have been a better writer?

Post by Rob Houghton »

Enid always described herself as a 'story teller' rather than a novelist, and I think this is what she wanted to be. Her stories evolved naturally, and the reason they are so easy to read is probably because the prose comes across as if someone is telling a story out loud rather than writing it down and struggling over phrases or choosing the 'right' words. Enid's books have a freshness that would be missing if she'd laboured longer over her words.

I also think that Enid may well have written less, or indeed, may have written nothing, if she had revised as much as many modern-day novelists do, because I think she would have become bored with her creations. Imagine revising a Famous Five book over and over until it was perfect? she would have seen the similarities, seen the holes in the plot, worried that her characters werent well-developed enough: may even have given up halfway through if that's the kind of writer she had been!

Let's face it, the plots of an average famous Five are all very similar, and I think she knew this, but was writing to order and to a format so as to please her readers: nothing more, nothing less. she achieved her goal again and again: that's what makes her so great and so well loved, not the quality of her prose. She was a bit like a writer of a modern day soap opera, churning out scripts for three or four episodes a week. There is very little room for literary meanderings, although occasionally soaps will come up with some episodes that are more literary and more 'deep' than others. For the most part they concentrate on STORY rather than the words used, and I think Enid was very much the same, and that's what made her so popular, just as the soaps are popular today. :D

I think sometimes too much emphasis is placed on so-called 'quality' today: all stories must have a message, must deal with things a child can 'identify' with (I HATE that word!!! :evil: ) and must be revised and revised, as if that will always make something better. The actual art of story-telling seems to take a back seat. Enid was a story-teller rather than a novelist. She told good old fashioned stories that made us turn the pages. I think she would probably have been worse rather than better if she had constantly rewritten and laboured over her writing. 8)
'Oh voice of Spring of Youth
hearts mad delight,
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I'll warm me with your echoes
through the night.'

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Re: Could Enid have been a better writer?

Post by Philip Mannering »

I fully agree with you, Robert. You have just summed up what I was trying to say. Nowadays there are a lot of teachers and librarians recommending us the classics, and what they think we will understand, not what we will enjoy. Enid was a magic storyteller, one which led children into magic faraway worlds, adventuring and mystery-solving with Fatty & Co., and forget, for a while, the tension of real-life, and the difficulties. Ah, sheer bliss to read a Blyton.
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Re: Could Enid have been a better writer?

Post by Belly »

I think Julie makes a great point that she had a gift, perhaps her gift made her something of a genius, not sure? (perhaps her 'cinema screen' puts her up there with Beethoven writing although deaf?)

This must have meant writing was a sheer joy to her, perhaps she was just as entertained as her readership as stories unfolded. For me any joy would be lost in endless textual changes/trying to make improvements, some writers today appear to have a very scientific approach, perhaps more than their counterparts years back. I wouldn't be in heaven doing what David Mitchelll describes, mending broken words, sounds like hell. I like to get carried away with the magic of the text and would hate to endlessly re-visit the manuscript. I think that's what you are saying Robert?

Would Enid's publisher/editor have expected more from her today? Would they accept that a writer had a gift for story telling and that was their style? Perhaps they would if they knew that it would appeal to children and they could make money out of it!

I met an up and coming writer recently who is super efficient, organised and far more self disciplined than I could ever dream of. Very bright too, but interestingly I wouldn't describe them as a particularly creative or imaginative person. I have a feeling they will be very successful.

They also made a point the children's writers today often preach and patronise in the same way as Enid Blyton :evil: They did add that they liked Enid's work but thought that her style was dated now and very much of the time, it just couldn't work now.

I think I am still undecided. I think some books would have benefitted from some more revision but not if Enid became pre-occupied by this and her story-telling style and flow suffered as a result.

She didn't revist 'The Caravan Goes On' or 'A Summer Storm' as far as I know and maybe this tells us something? If she had researched what the current fashion was in terms of plays etc, as other playwrigths at the time would have done, and tried again perhaps she would have witten something great. Her 'cinema screen' meant she didn't need to do any painstaking research, keep a journal of 'great words to use later' or conciously research anything (can you tell I am jealous :D ?) It's always great fun to do something you have an aptitude for rather than struggle with something that comes harder (although I am told that is character building :D ). My writer friend, mentioned earlier, says that writing is a craft that has to be learned not so for Enid! (Although she did have her apprenticeship in all that she read and submitted from the early years).

Great point about the PC too, I wonder what sort of impact this would have on Enid's work? It's superior capabalities might mean she'd have been able to manage her time better freeing up more for her children and family? Or it might, as was said, have driven her churn out even more? The internet would perhaps have meant she'd have had a site like this one with others to help her? Letters to fans would not have to be painstakingly written by hand etc.
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Re: Could Enid have been a better writer?

Post by Anita Bensoussane »

Belly wrote:Great point about the PC too, I wonder what sort of impact this would have on Enid's work? It's superior capabalities might mean she'd have been able to manage her time better freeing up more for her children and family? Or it might, as was said, have driven her churn out even more? The internet would perhaps have meant she'd have had a site like this one with others to help her? Letters to fans would not have to be painstakingly written by hand etc.
I tend to think Enid Blyton might have ended up writing less, rather than more, if she'd had access to a computer. With all that information just a click away, she may have been tempted to do more research. And with editing being so much easier she'd no doubt have devoted more time to tweaking her work. Would she also have joined forums related to her interests, I wonder, and spent time posting on topics like gardening, bird-watching and Agatha Christie? Perhaps she'd have gone on YouTube and downloaded classical music?

Responding to fan letters would have been a lot less time-consuming, however, as you say, Belly.

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Re: Could Enid have been a better writer?

Post by Enikyoga »

I have often agonized over whether Enid Blyton would have produced more or less work during the contemporary Internet era. Since the Internet is too tempting a distraction as we all know, that may have cut into Enid’s productivity. However, from the empirical observation of her typing capabilities, I am of the view that if she had, had a PC, her work would have doubled or even tripled.
As for language, it is great that she wrote in simplistic prose that could be understood, by even children whose lingua franca was not originally English, which in part explains her eternal popularity worldwide
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Re: Could Enid have been a better writer?

Post by Belly »

What was her typing speed out of interest? Does anyone know. I think she was a touch typist? I think I read she went on a typing course at some point.

I can see her pursuing her gardening, bird watching etc interests through the web as Anita says. Her sort of botantical knowledge has almost died out, I think botany was taught in schools as a forerunner to biology?

A friend of mine thought they had spotted an incredibly rare bird in their garden. They photographed it excitedly, only to be told it was a very common bird like a garden sparrow :lol:
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Re: Could Enid have been a better writer?

Post by Julie2owlsdene »

Belly wrote:What was her typing speed out of interest? Does anyone know. I think she was a touch typist? I think I read she went on a typing course at some point.

I thought I'd read somewhere that Enid only typed with two fingers on her portable typewriter, but could type just as fast this way as any touch typist. Anita or Tony will know for sure :D

8)
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