Seán Farrell, author of Frogs for Watchdogs, on how writing is reading, re-writing, re-reading . . .
Frogs for Watchdogs grew out of doodling. I was frustrated with the restrictions that are immediately introduced when you start writing using the first-, second- or third-person perspective so I was experimenting with creating a text that had no narrator. This led me into a lot of exterior description, a lot of statements.
It became increasingly difficult to sustain any sense of narrative, or any idea of control. The tone seemed very subjective, though the setting had a dominance that verged on imposition – everything was sense and influence. Reading it back brought me towards what it’s like to be a child: an intense individualism coupled with acute impressionability. There was no explicit sense of an ‘I’ but it was inescapably a ‘first person’ feeling, in some ways all the more so because there was no stated possession of the viewpoint, it was just assumed. There was something unselfconscious about the tone that made it all the more centred. It was a space I felt uncomfortable in; it felt vivid and foreboding but it also made me want to explore. On the page it was a load of drivel. To begin to re-write it and expand, to make it readable, I began to use a narrative voice; at this point the first person felt like the natural choice.
I wanted to use a character that was old enough to be literate yet young enough to retain plenty of supernatural beliefs and imaginings, to still live in the world of Santa Claus and hobgoblins. People talk about the magic of childhood as if magic is all about wonder, but magic is also terrifying, it’s as much about a loss of control as it is about a sense of extraordinary power.
As a result of all the external description, the outside environment was the first thing to be established; the feelings of fear and wonder led to a narrator who hid and observed, and the plot grew from this perspective. The porous borders of childhood and the reliance on imagination are creative spaces that allow all kind of freedoms on the page. But writing a child’s voice is difficult in terms of coherence, so it comes with challenges too.
To develop the voice I stole from one of my children. He was seven at the time and when we walked to and from school I’d listen to him babbling away and note down some of his sentences. The narrator’s syntax is closely modelled on his at the time. I didn’t feel good about doing this; writing can often make you behave in creepy ways. I think this is part of where the idea that writing is a solitary activity comes from. It’s not just the isolation of working alone in a room, it’s that even when you’re out in the world with the people you love the most you can become detached. In order to try and do something ‘true’ you distance yourself from reality. It feels a bit sinister.
After maybe the third draft a reader pointed out that some of the vocabulary felt too grown up, so I tested borderline words on my son. Did he know what ‘glitter’ meant? What is ‘manic’? If he wasn’t able to explain it to me I took it out of the text. Every time I had to remove a useful word it was disappointing, but it forced me to go back to work; it made me come up with indirect solutions that hopefully read in a more authentic way.
My main objective was to retain the sense of fear and wonder while developing the narrative. So I looked at ways in which the environment around the child could a be fertile place for love and terror. This led me to examine the people around my central character; what kind of family structure would encourage these emotions? I found normal things that would deeply affect a child; a miraculous mother, an absent father, a stranger at the door.
I’m a step-father to our eldest and I was a step-son growing up, so I know a bit about some of the dynamics of that situation from both perspectives – the potential conflicts and resolutions in that relationship became the real-world throughline for the story.
The world, the other characters and the plot that grew up sequentially around the narrator all had their own demands on the text and its structure. Each draft became more and more centred on the developing relationships, the pacing and the story, and less about the strange imaginings and off-kilter experiences of the protagonist. A text quickly becomes its own separate entity and requires all kinds of imaginings that were previously inconceivable. For me this is one of the most enjoyable things about writing; it makes you think things you never thought before. Beginning with the experimental writing that inspired this book, I ended up cutting out almost all of the scenes I initially wrote. I hope they are still there, lurking between the lines, but they had no place in the final draft.
For me writing is about slowly letting go, each stage is more about what the story itself needs and less about what has inspired it in the first place. You begin by writing and then the process is all about reading, first by yourself and then in reaction to other readers (an editor or two or three). It’s a cliché but it’s true: writing is reading, re-writing, re-reading. Once the proofs have been signed off the text is abandoned, it belongs entirely to whoever picks it up and they do whatever they want with it.
(c) Seán Farrell
Author photograph (c) Darek Novak
About Frogs for Watchdogs by Seán Farrell:
A wild child with a ferocious imagination will stop at nothing to protect his family.
After years of moving from place to place, a young family finds shelter in an isolated house in the Irish countryside. Their father is missing, Mum is a healer and B a formidable big sister. In his strange new territory, a wild little boy gives voice to his experience.
Jerry Drain, a local famer, is stealing hay from the barn, someone is making nasty phone calls to the house at night and darkness is gathering at the edges of their lives. With his ferocious imagination the boy will do everything in his power to protect his family. But Jerry will not go away and Mum seems to be falling under his spell. It will be a year of major wins and baffling defeats for the boy, as Jerry’s true nature insists on revealing itself.
Dark, funny, tender and raw, Frogs for Watchdogs thrums with the intensity of childhood. Above all, it is an ode to the blended family: the bewildering joy, wary safety and profound new bonds of love.
Order your copy of Frogs for Watchdogs by Seán Farrell online here.
