If you have personal or specialist knowledge of a community you might consider using it in your novel. A subsidiary character could be as effective in this position as the protagonist. It has been done successfully in Asian novels from Britain and the USA and I have recently been totally swept off my feet by a book that fell into my lap by wonderful chance.
Disobedience is the inaugural novel of an author called Naomi Alderton. The simplicity of its structure is superb. Alternative chapters set within the rabbinical echelons of Hendon’s orthodox Jewish community, provide profound, first-hand insights into religious attitudes and the ways in which this community processes, negotiates, accepts or opposes its rules. We see how individual lives are affected and informed by tradition. We encounter the viewpoints of both, the devout, who stayed and the rebel who returns briefly. The reader becomes thoroughly involved, grateful for being allowed a privileged look into a fascinating and hugely enriching lifestyle. Also, there is the reminder that beneath the traditions, customs, lifestyles, we are all unique individuals.
I was riveted from start to finish, and after a long, long time, had that feeling of not wanting the book to end. Also, I was left once more with the realisation that London is amazing; how, beneath its apparently uniform exterior, exist entire, separate worlds that rarely impinge on or collide with each other. I imagine all the other metropolitan cities have the same multiplicity of social and cultural dimension.
See if you can come up with enough information to give ballast to one of your characters by responding to the prompts below.
ALTERNATIVE COMMUNITIES
Do you know such a world?
How is it different?
What is its language?
What is its ethnicity?
Does its English have peculiarities? Specific expressions or pronounciation?
Do its people dress differently?
How do they differ from the community at large?
What is their food like?
What is their music like?
Are they religious?
What do they see as vital aspects of their community?
What are their dominant aspects in their own view/the view of outsiders?
What is their attitude to their young and their old?
What is their attitude to their family?
Do they have a collective history of war, exile, disaster?
Do they live in particular parts of the country/city?
How do they fit into the political infra-structure?
What are the stereotypes about them and how is the reality different?
Do they have negative or positive associations?
Could one of your characters belong to this community?
If you need more information, you can always go off and research it. More on that tomorrow.
Meanwhile, write well, write fluently… |
