When writers discuss plot and pacing in narrative craft, especially in creative writing classes, we often talk about the curve of stories, the rise and fall in tension that characterises the most common story structures. Now usually, at least in my experience, that curve is not something a writer actively thinks about while composing a work. It’s more instinctive. Manipulating pace is one of the writer’s primary tricks in taking a simple sequence of events and turning them into narrative. But what in retrospect looks deliberate and disciplined, is in the act of writing more like manipulating the feel of the story as you go.

When it came to my current publishing project, all that instinct counted for nothing. An experiment in recombinant narrative structure requires careful consideration and active manipulation of the curve.

Ex Libris is a novel containing twelve chapters that can be shuffled in any order, yet always presents as a cohesive narrative arc. It is being published in a print run that randomises the chapters between each copy. With close to half a billion possible combinations, each copy will contain a unique version of the text, yet all will tell the same story.

The title for ‘Ex Libris’ comes from the nineteenth century fad for bookplates.

The two books that, more than any others, inspired the structure of Ex Libris are The Unfortunates by B. S. Johnson and Tristano by Nanni Balestrini. Curiously, both were written in the 1960s, though Tristano wouldn’t find its true form until 2007.

The Unfortunates is a beautiful but restless story about grief and the intrusion of memories that overlay the banality of daily life. The novel was structured with a fixed opening and closing and with freely fluid chapters between. The first edition and its more recent reproduction was published as chapter-length booklets contained in a box, which the reader was free to arrange in whatever order they desired.

Balestrini envisaged Tristano as a standard bound work with content that was randomised between copies. Sound familiar? The author was unable to realise the work as intended until forty years after its initial publication and with the advent of digital-based print technology. As the title suggests, Tristano builds its text using Tristan and Isolde as scaffold, which frees Balestrini to desiccate the narrative into the smallest of fragments, hints of meaning that only ever briefly come into focus.

Both works experiment boldly, not just with structure, but also with the language itself. The result is intoxicating: as a reader you feel like you’re having fun, even as you stumble around the text, constantly trying to find your footing. Tristano is one of the best examples of what I call ‘narrative drift’, the sense that, as a reader, you must let go of any sense of structure or meaning and allow the pages to take you wherever they lead. The Unfortunates is more focused, a narrative that initially drifts, but tightens as more of its pieces fall into place.

When I began writing what would become Ex Libris, I didn’t have a particular structure or publishing method in mind. What I wanted to do was write a work with fluid text without sacrificing a reader’s sense of plot or narrative arc.

I started with much more complicated mechanics and elaborate concoctions of fixed and fluid chapters. I ground my way through three drafts of the story, never completely satisfied, trying to find some magic key that would unlock how the story should work.

Eventually, I abandoned these versions of the story altogether. After a break from the manuscript, I returned and found myself back at first principles. Finally, I contemplated the curve.

I created a storyboard of sorts in Scriviner—movable lists in dot points—obstinately refusing to write anything resembling finished prose until a supporting structure had been mapped in sufficient detail. Slowly, a new structure began to take shape. The story begins in media res, at the beginning of the climax. Then it backtracks. It fills in details and circumstances that led directly to the opening scene. Then it jumps to the rest of the climax and conclusion. This means Ex Libris, like Johnson’s The Unfortunates, opens and closes with fixed chapters that frame the narrative. I had hoped not to invite such direct comparisons with Johnson, since clearly I would come off a distant second best. But the structure he pioneered, with its parallels to classic storytelling technique, is compelling in its simplicity.

Beyond the framing device, the fluid or recombinant chapters in Ex Libris primarily concern themselves with exploring character and world. These chapters exist in a weird state of semi-independence. A fluid chapter is episodic, with its own miniature arc. It cannot rely on prior knowledge. That doesn’t make it a short story. Although it shares traits with the short story form, a fluid chapter’s raison d’etre is to contribute to a greater whole. Detached from their surroundings and the framing of the novel, these little stories might struggle to pass a ‘so what?’ test.

Story and the structure developed in tandem. Part dystopia, part satire, with doses of paranoia and farce, and a self-reflexive bent, the novel is set in a hyper-networked surveillance state that has abandoned and almost forgotten the book. It focuses on a small band of subversives who collect the fragments and scraps of stories left behind. Calling themselves the ‘free readers’, they are attempting to rebuild a grand library they know must have once existed. A fragmented book about fragmented books, Ex Libris both feeds off and contributes to its own structure, a virtuous cycle of knowing winks.

I was very conscious of the reader’s experience.

I was very conscious of the reader’s experience, signposting and orienting the text at every opportunity to counter and minimise the sense of narrative drift. I maintained strict upper and lower word limits for each chapter. Too long indicated waffle that needed to be broken up. Too short pointed to a lack of substance. Often throughout the long planning stage of the project, I would stare at a dot-point breakdown for a chapter and think ‘but where’s the story?’.

I also avoided working on chapters in any particular order. Instead, I jumped around. From its initial use as a storyboard, Scrivener became a kind of reference tool as I wrote, a way to maintain a wide-angle view of the story, while moving the chapters around. The texts themselves were composed in separate documents, organised by character name and working title. Early printouts were separated into chapters, each one held together with a bulldog clip, so that I could shuffle and reshuffle while reading.

When I finally created the first complete manuscript, I used a random number generator and manually combined the chapters into a single file. I’ve never considered putting together a preferred or canonical order. The thought of it seems a bit…wrong to me. The chronology of the story can be reconstructed in part—some events clearly happen before others—but a grand overarching chronology would be impossible to determine. That’s not how this story works.

At the end of an exhaustive process, I wasn’t sure if I’d succeeded. It wasn’t until the first feedback from beta readers (each of them with their own unique random shuffle) that I suspected maybe this was working as intended. A good indication was that some of these early readers did their own reshuffling to see if I had cheated.

The coding to compile finished print-ready files is done in Automator, the computer equivalent of a Rube Goldberg machine.

The long process of conceiving, planning, and writing Ex Libris has led me to a different way of thinking about raising tension in a narrative arc. The behaviour of the characters introduced in the opening sequences is gradually becomes clearer as their background is revealed. It doesn’t matter in what order those revelations happen.

The best analogy I’ve found is that it’s like a jigsaw puzzle. The order in which you place the pieces doesn’t change the final picture, but it does change how you experience the journey towards it. Adjacent chapters might flow or they might juxtapose. A character might disappear from the story for a while. A particular piece of key knowledge might be revealed earlier or later. The story has a different rhythm between copies. If the traditional narrative arc is the linear curve, this is more two-dimensional.

So does it work? That remains my burning question as I finalise editing and prepare to publish. It’s impossible to speak for every possible combination. There are 479,001,600 of them so I can’t check. It’s something every individual reader will have to determine on their own based on the version of the text they receive. I’ve always hoped that the story might be good enough to transcend its construction. I imagine a reader happening across a copy of Ex Libris, with no prior knowledge of its creation, who will read from cover to cover and enjoy it.

Is that even possible? I guess we’ll see.

The crowdfunding campaign to publish Ex Libris is live until 25 November 2019.

CompletelyNovel.com is an online publishing community and social-sharing site for book-lovers which helps self-published writers to publish quality print editions at competitive prices.

We spoke to Anna Lewis, co-founder of Completely Novel, about why print is still important in the digital age.

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Are print books still relevant for independent authors?

With eBook sales on the rise and Kindle eBooks surpassing the sale of print books on Amazon last year, more people are asking – is print still relevant in this increasingly digital age? The answer from our point of view, and the point of view of our hundreds of writers who choose to publish through our platform in print, is a definite ‘yes!’.

 So, why are printed books still relevant? We outline just a few of the reasons below.

To have and to hold

Yes, we thought we’d start with the most basic reason: that with all the technology in the world, there are still many of us who love the feel, texture and smell of a physical book. We like going into a bookshop and running our fingers along the spines of the books until we find the one for us; we like showing them off on our bookshelves; we like to feel the pages lessen in our right hand as we near the end of the story. There is something exciting about books that made us all fall in love with them in the first place – and that’s something the typical eBook can’t quite replicate.

To give and receive

 The technology for sharing or gifting ebooks has been slow to develop and is still not very advanced – some have even said that it’s little more than glorified file-sharing. Wrapping a book to give to your family or a friend feels better than sending an email with a voucher code on it – it’s more tangible and immediate.

A book launch or signing also requires a physical product, and while there are some programs to allow for digital autographs, there is still something important to us about having an author sign a physical book.

Print books in a digital word

There are those who argue that print books cannot survive in an increasingly digital world. There is no denying that the way we access storytelling has changed in recent years – we now download films and music, and can watch performances over the web or our television. However, the printing of books has also become increasingly digitalised, meaning that traditional and self-publishers can now print-on-demand and save thousands of books from being printed unnecessarily. New technology has also altered the production of books – making them easier to design, and allowing editors and designers to be more creative with typesetting and packaging. Rather than hindering print, technology has helped books evolve and inspire a new generation to read.

What writers think

We are a publisher dealing mainly in print, so we’re obviously going to have lots of good things to say about the paperback. So, why don’t we hand over to some of our writers, to find out why they opted for publishing physical books.

Tom Evans

For entrepreneurs, having a published book in your name can help hugely in establishing your credibility, differentiating you from your competitors and attracting clients. Using print can be particularly attractive as you have more freedom and control when it comes to using images, graphs and tables in your book, which might get mangled by the reflowable format of eBooks.

Tom Evans is a life coach and works with a large number of clients helping them to find direction and inspiration in their careers and personal lives. Handing one of his books such as In The Zone to clients is a useful way of letting them digest the practices and principles in their own time. Print on demand means he can do that as efficiently as possible.

“Even though everyone seems to be using eReaders these days, print books have a place in this new world. At my talks and workshops, people still love having personally signed copies my books. If I am doing a talk for 23 people, I know that I can order exactly 23 books at no cost penalty and they will be delivered within 5 days, sometimes in two!”

Christian Paris

Christian Paris penned ‘A Pretty Smart Way To Catch A Lobster (The Alice In Wonderland Years)’ to tell the story of how he was inspired to start a club and the many adventures he had in the ten years that the club ran for. There’s a large group of people who remember the club and may also have been part of the various weird and wonderful projects that Christian ran alongside it. Having a printed book was a way of saving and sharing those memories with that group of people.

“To me a book has to be held, to be touched, to turn over, to read the blurb on the back and to take a sneaky look at the pictures inside, before settling down and reading it. Once read it can be lent to others and then to be treasured.”

Andrew Sykes

‘Crossing Europe on a Bike Called Reggie’ was written by Andrew Sykes, a keen cyclist. It has been a highly successful book among other travellers and cyclists, both in terms of eBook sales and print sales. Here’s why he opted for print:

“Selling eBooks is great but to actually see your literary effort in a printed book is something quite special. Apart from that initial wish, it obviously opens up the books to more traditional markets and has allowed me to get the books into around 100 Waterstone’s stores nationwide as well as being sold through online channels such as Amazon. Many people prefer (for very good reasons) having a book in their hand to hold, to bend, to lay down on the floor, to put on their coffee table, to throw at the cat! You can’t really do that with an eBook.”

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So there you have it. If you want your readers to get more from your book than just the text (such as a means of animal control or memento to treasure), print offers plenty that keeps it relevant, and interesting – for publishers and independent authors alike.

I don’t remember learning to read, but I clearly remember the day I learned I could read. I was entrusted with a note for my lovely kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Hicks. The note asked that I be excused from school for a doctor’s appointment. As I – quite possibly for the first time in my life – read something I shouldn’t have, I discovered something that made me the person I am today: a reader.

The words on the note were not individual items. I mean they were, but the words, placed in a particular order and accented by punctuation, conveyed a message. They told a story. Granted, the story being told was one of torture and pain (one must read between the lines) because an evil doctor was going to insert a thin, sharp needle filled with who-knows-what into a little girl’s body. Happy ending: lollipop for being brave!

You couldn’t – you can’t – stop me from reading.

I’ve been reading digital books since 1998. The last print book I bought was This Charming Man by Marian Keyes. I bought it at Waterstones in Piccadilly. I was staying at a hotel right across the street, and I could not resist the lure of paying a higher price to obtain a book I couldn’t yet get in the United States. Also, I am addicted to buying books. Since I switched to ebooks, doing so has become even simpler. Link from Twitter, buy the book, read the book, be happy.

I am an author’s and publisher’s dream. If you are a certain type of author and a certain type of publisher. I read, mainly, fiction.

Okay, that is not true. It’s not true at all. For pleasure, I read mainly fiction. In reality, I read news, email, contracts, news, Twitter, Facebook (sigh), news. All day long. I read constantly. I read so much during the day that I, yes, take a break by watching “Breaking Bad.” Or sometimes “Walking Dead.” Or just really bad television. Even I need a break from reading sometimes. A short break.

I am also, I am sorry to say, an exception to the reading rule. I read a lot, I read constantly, I read multiple books simultaneously. Readers like me define torture as “being without a book.” We can be hanging from a cliff by our fingernails, but as long as we have a book, we’re cool.

Unfortunately, most people don’t break out in hives if they don’t have reading material tucked away in their pockets, purses, cars, desks, bathroom drawers…. Most people buy less than five books per year (U.S. readers, I should note). I buy at least that many in a month.

What Do You Mean By ‘Reading’?

If you are a member of the digital publishing circuit, you develop a jaded attitude toward the latest studies and breathless headlines (or, at least, I hope you do). Others, not so much. Just a few weeks ago, we endured much hand-wringing over the notion that girls — those stalwarts of the reading world! — were reading less. Civilization, as we know it, was surely coming to an end.

This same study, to the surprise of nobody, found that most U.S. children have never read an ebook. The horror!

Whenever I encounter studies like this, my first (and only) reaction is “define your terms”. What do we mean when we say “read”?

Right now, I am reading Twitter. I am writing this piece. I am reading email. I am multi-tasking, with reading — always reading – at the center of my day. When I’m out in the world, I observe kids reading and writing obsessively. Now, it may not be your idea of proper reading (or proper writing), but it is reading and writing. I believe today’s kids read and write more than any generation before.
I think we tend to define terms like reading to suit our own beliefs. I certainly am guilty of this. Way too guilty.

At a long-ago dinner party, a new acquaintance was razzing an old friend rather cruelly, “But you don’t even read books.” My friend, who prefers audiobooks for various reasons, had, earlier in the conversation, described how he and his oldest daughter had listened to the Harry Potter books. In my mind, this counts as reading a book. Some of my favorite memories of my mother come from the months she read King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table to the four of us while we ate dinner.

I’ve read those KING ARTHUR stories, but maybe not all of them with my own eyes, and not in the way that some pundits define ‘reading’. Think about it: when a blind reader chooses audio or Braille are they ‘not reading’? Why do we insist that one type of reading is superior to another?

Likewise, who are we to say important news conveyed to a reader in 140 characters is less important than news conveyed in 500 words? Or text messages between two friends are inferior to chatty letters of days gone by? Is a story written by a teenage girl and posted online necessarily worse than something published by Penguin?

It is very important that we do not define ‘reading’ by our own standards. It is very important that we broaden our definition of reading, as reading itself shifts and changes, because real readers are rapidly creating their own definitions of ‘reading’.

So Who Are You Targeting?

Readers are not all the same. This is surely as obvious to you as it is to me. Yet there is a sense of an idealized reader, someone I call the Platonic Reader. He (though in the real world, it is more likely “she”) reads the best of the best of current (literary) releases with perhaps a smattering of high-brow non-fiction. He attends book signings on a weekly basis. He participates in literary discussions and, if we are lucky, poetry slams. He personifies the New York Times bestseller list — a list that is notoriously, rigorously skewed. Think about it: some NYT “bestsellers” have only moved 5,000 units. Some have sold even fewer.

This Platonic Reader only exists in marketing meetings. Remember this.

Real readers are messy people with messy lives. I noted the friend who only reads audiobooks. What I’ve discovered is there are many readers like this in my world. So often they are mothers with full-time jobs. Mothers blessed with annoyingly long Los Angeles commutes. Our lack of widespread public transportation means we so often spent two, three hours a day alone. Locked in the loving cocoon that is our car.

We have some choices to help entertain us while we sit still on the freeway: godawful radio, public radio, our own music, silence, long phone conversations with friends and family, audiobooks. I am proud that so many I call friends choose the audiobook option.

Then there are vacation readers. They fall into three categories. The first surely warms any publisher or author’s heart: they choose from the current bestsellers, somewhat randomly. The second category? This reader grudgingly, somewhat angrily chooses a book from the shelves, something they feel they have to read. Vacation is as good a time as any to suffer through this book. Then there is the final group. This reader borrows something from a friend or sister, a ‘vacation read’.

The emerging reader, be it a child or someone learning to read for the first time, is a wide-open reading class. I mentioned above there is a perception that most children have never read an ebook. Is this really true? Do we have a real definition of ebook? I can assure you my two-year old niece is devouring ebooks, only they are more along the lines of animated picture books with sounds. Her mother doesn’t consider them ebooks, but her grandmother and I certainly recognize the species for what it is.

I believe the biggest opportunity for creativity in reading will come in the children’s book sector. There isn’t much the industry can do for a reader like me, a reader who lives and breathes linear narrative text (call it traditional fiction). Make a better e-Ink device. Make books cross-platform so I can transition between devices without missing so much as a semi-colon. Make prices better. Make proofreading a priority. For me, it’s all about improving on what already exists.

For my niece’s generation, a generation growing up with amazing technology (and the ability to use it seemingly encoded in their DNA), what we find ground-breaking, they will find normal. Just like color TV. Or iPods. They won’t see books in the same way we do; this is not to say they won’t devour narrative fiction or non-fiction with great zeal.

The readers closest to my heart, for so many reasons, are those who have some sort of a disability. So much of what is discussed when it comes to reading and accessibility focuses on blind or vision-impaired readers, and, as I grow older, I quite understand this focus. However, consider the mobility-impaired reader. This reader, who may suffer from arthritis or the loss of limbs, may be physically unable to manage the seemingly simple act of turning pages.

Years ago, when the controversy over the Amazon Kindle’s Text-to-Speech functionality emerged, I was flabbergasted. Truly. While the Author’s Guild – an organization I often find at odds with its rank-and-file membership – blustered about audiobooks and rights and whatnot, I kept saying, “This is an accessibility issue.” Granted, the TTS functionality was rudimentary — anyone who has ever worked with blind readers know they “read” at a speed that leaves the fastest sighted reader in awe — it was a great boon for those with vision problems. Not to mention those readers with learning disabilities. Sometimes, the idiocy of entrenched thinking makes me want to punch holes in walls. Usually common sense wins out.

(I should mention at this point another use of TTS that is widely overlooked: some parents use it as a tool for reading to their children or helping their children learn to read.)

The deaf reader must also be considered — especially for those authors and publishers who, smartly, see multi-media as the right way to tell a story.

What Readers Want

Each person who reads something does so with one purpose: to get something out of it. For me, it is a good story, important information, and/or the answer to one of life’s pressing questions (example: what time is it in Singapore right now?). I think this is true for just about every other reader I’ve ever encountered.

Once upon a time, we relied mainly on booky-books to achieve our goals. Now we rely on a variety of sources, some more sound than others. Yes, books, but also random articles on the Internet. Complete strangers on the Internet. Good friends on the Internet. Carefully targeted Google searches. Rumors.

What readers want – really, really want – is content that makes sense to them. We don’t want to buy an entire book on the history of electrical lighting to learn how to change a lightbulb. We want a chapter, a section, an illustrated how-to guide. We’re happy to pay for this information…as long as the price makes sense in the context of what we’re getting!

Readers want quality. Yes, we may abuse the English language (or any other language!) horribly in our private and semi-private communications (I am at war with spellings like “nite” and “realz”), but we know quality from junk. We notice bad conversions in ebooks. I have a habit of highlighting conversion errors in my Kindle books. And I am not alone. It’s a sad commentary on the state of digital publishing that I can open a book and discover 101 other readers have highlighted the same error I noted.

We also want good metadata. I joke that no reader is out there saying “give me some of that good metadata”, but this is what readers want. Metadata is data about data. It’s the least sexy part of the publishing culture, and it is the most critical part of publishing culture. Metadata includes a work’s title, the author, the publisher, the ISBN, the genre, when published, description, awards, format, and every other thing you can think up to describe the book. All of this metadata combines to connect readers with your work. It tells those readers why this particular story or article or book is important to them.

It’s the little things, like linked table of contents and indices. It’s the big things like accurate descriptions of what a book is about…not some weird, clever cover copy that doesn’t give me a true picture of the story. There is a big difference between a “romance novel” and a “Regency romance”. There is a further difference between a serious war story and a light-hearted comedy.

Publishing possesses the capability to offer so much more information about a book, from specific descriptions to comparisons to like-minded authors to awards bestowed. I recently read a Twitter exchange between a publisher and a (ebook) retailer where it was made clear that metadata updates can be made daily. Think about the power you have to get more information — better, more useful, smart information — to readers!

Readers also want a world without friction (seriously, we’d much rather keep wars between the pages of books!). For us, this means the ability to shift seamlessly between devices and books. This is largely happening, but we’d be even happier if the world settled on a single standard (stink eye toward Amazon right now – whose Kindle-only format restricts ebooks purchased from Amazon to Kindle devices only; this anti-reader approach makes me crazy because I want my books available to me in a universal, open format). Maybe we want print and digital bundles, but probably we don’t. For most books.

Finally, we would like a world where publishers, authors, app developers, reading system developers, and parties I haven’t mentioned consider the end user, the reader, rather than the perspective of the publisher/author. We want to know what’s in it for us. Think of my text-to-speech example above. Think about the disastrous introduction of so-called enhanced ebooks into the marketplace. Some were augmented with what can only be described as marketing materials (seriously, you want me to pay more for an interview with the author?). Others simply made no sense (I like Vook as a company, but some of the early experiments done by publishers were ill-conceived).

The truth was nobody knew what readers wanted, but it was clear they didn’t want what publishers were offering. Yet, as is obvious to all, the web and app worlds are filled with examples of people giving readers “enhanced” content they want and need. Now the book world needs to figure out how to do this with content that formerly only occupied booky-books.

So often I encounter a lauded new publishing start-up, something that will change how we read or discover books. So often I note an excess of publishing-speak, while at the same time, a lack of a clear purpose for readers. The selling point for new publishing ventures should not outline why it’s great for publishers (hey, we’ll save your YOU from piracy!), it should be all about how readers will benefit! Sure you want publishers involved, but if it turns off readers….

Unless you are only marketing to publishers. They read books, too. Readers outside of publishing will be fine, you know. They’ll find what they want, at the price they want, in the format they want, on the device they want. No worries there.

Readers are like water, they will find their own way.