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The Verse Novel: What Is It? And How To Write One
Only for poets? or the genesis of one? or the novel-writer who wants more language awareness?
Not long ago verse novels were in the hands of YA/teens, with a few middle-grade offerings. But my guess is that those teens have grown up and now want to continue to read these surprising works of story and poetry. That’s what happens when an audience grows and ages.
From the Seattle WA public library, a healthy list of verse novels for adult readers:
https://seattle.bibliocommons.com/v2/list/display/104354882/2281826319
What is a verse novel?
The verse novel is written in free verse or rhyming or a combination of poetic forms. For instance, the story might be told by multiple voices, and each will share their thread with a particular poetic form.
The page count is often not much more than a prose novel, even novella, but the word count will be substantially lower. There might be one poem per page.
What most connects with your eyes as you first open one is the white space. Poems might be left or right-margin aligned, or a combination. They might be shape/concrete poems.
