National Storytelling Week; The Novelry Author Tutor Q&A
©Andy Lo Po @TheNoverly
Emylia is a tutor at The Novelry. Offering support for beginner and established authors at any stage of their writing career, The Novelry will take writers from the very kernel of an idea through to a polished manuscript ready for literary agent submission. With mentoring from bestselling authors and editorial advice from leading industry professionals, The Novelry is the writing school recommended by leading literary agents.
The Novelry Author Tutor Q&A for National Storytelling Week
When did you first realise that you were a storyteller?
I think a child’s relationship with their creativity is so pure and unrestrained; I loved reading stories, and so making up my own seemed like a natural response to that. There was never a question of ‘am I any good at this?’ It was all about enjoyment. I grew up in rural Devon and used to spend a lot of time playing outside on my own, perfectly happy in my lands of make-believe. Much like the novels I’ve gone on to write, these stories were always well-rooted in reality: it was never witches and wizards for me, but pretending I lived by the seaside or ran a riding stables or was a vet. So, it started with oral storytelling, al fresco, with an audience of one (just me!), and also filling notebooks and stapling together my own pamphlets too. It was only when I hit my later teens and became more self-conscious about my own naivety that I stopped considering myself as a writer. I made the mistake of thinking I had to have something major to say – in order to write with an audience in mind, at least – and needing a whole lot of life experience to back it up.
Do you remember when you came up with the first story idea that would ultimately go on to be published as a novel? How did you know this was the idea that was worth telling?
The Book of Summers was my first novel, and I worked on it for four years before it was published. The idea came from me asking myself what book would I write, if I could only write one in my life – what would go in it? I had a powerful urge to capture the summers I’d spent travelling with my family as a child, knowing that those days were probably gone. I was in my late-twenties and as much as I loved my independent life as an adult, some part of me longed for the past too; to still be that child in the back of the car, notebook on my knee, chewing sweets, staring out at the landscape slipping by, feeling perfectly cocooned and safe and happy. Those trips abroad had been such a feature of my childhood – every year we’d go away for pretty much the whole of the summer holidays, driving across Europe to Hungary – and had instilled in me an appetite for travel (and a belief that everything that happens abroad is somehow more exciting!). So that was the heart of the story I wanted to write – it was born of sun-kissed nostalgia – but then I asked, ‘What if?’ What if the hero’s relationship with her memories was more complicated? What if her relationship with her parents was too? By fictionalising major elements, I found a story that went beyond the sort of travel journal that it might otherwise have been.
Do you have a story of yours that you are most proud of?
I actually think I’m most proud of my newest story, The Shell House Detectives, the first in a cosy(ish) crime series set on the Cornish coast. Mostly because I wrote it at a point when I might very well have otherwise given up. I’d been out of contract with a publisher for more than four years, and had written two novels during that time that hadn’t gone anywhere (one I chose to abandon after two years of writing, and one we couldn’t find a home for). I was no longer starry-eyed about what it meant to be published, and it was sheer enjoyment in the writing process that propelled me through The Shell House Detectives. Much like The Book of Summers it was a story born of love and connection. In the midst of lockdown, homeschooling, worrying about ageing parents, nursing cracked ribs, and fresh from the experience of having come very close to a new book deal but not quite close enough … I simply asked, where do I want to write myself right now? What’s my happy place? And it was the far west of Cornwall in a beach house. So that’s how that story starts …
Why did you decide to write novels, as opposed to telling stories in another format?
I’ve always found novels to be the most immersive of forms; being privy to people’s interior minds is, to me, the ultimate motivation as a reader – that fascination in how other people live their lives – and it’s what drives me as writer too. I also just love the sheer scale of novels: that we’re essentially creating a whole world, and peopling it as we see fit. There’s always a point in the middle where the whole thing just feels huge and nebulous and bewildering, but I love the process of picking my way through that; holding my nerve and putting one foot – one word – in front of the other.
Why do you think stories are important?
Because they show us how other people live their lives; they let us slip our own skins and walk in other shoes. We can travel to places and times we might never have had the opportunity and feel part of a different existence. And with a beginning, a middle and an end, a story takes the chaotic mess of life and shapes it – some part of it, anyway – into something reassuringly whole and sense-making.
National Storytelling Week is all about the oral tradition of storytelling. Do you think it’s important to keep this tradition alive, when we have so many other ways of consuming and telling stories these days?
To hear a story out loud feels especially intimate and hypnotic. I think we’re better listeners than readers, a lot of the time, but we’re perhaps out of the habit of it, and our noisy minds need quieting to really sink into the experience. I think it’s about recreating those early childhood days (if we’ve been lucky) of being all cosy under the covers, where the story that we’re hearing – in a beloved voice – is the only thing that exists in our imagination; and the teller is taking us somewhere that we otherwise simply couldn’t access.
What do you think is different about writing a story down on paper as opposed to telling it out loud?
I find it takes me time to get a story working as I want it to, with much potentially changing in the structure of the thing. So a lot of the first draft is about exploring, and crucially, for me, that being in a low-stakes way: no one’s watching! I also really enjoy the crafting process, going back over the lines I’ve written and reshaping them. But I’m in awe of people who trust in their voice, lean into the spontaneity of oral telling, and commune openly with their audience in that way.
How do you like to consume your stories? (Reading, listening, watching, etc.)
I like to read, above all, followed by watching. I’m yet to really get into audiobooks, but I can see that changing. My closest experience of oral storytelling has been hearing readings at book events or poetry nights, and I’ve had some memorable times hearing beautiful work delivered in a way that had me spellbound.
What is your favourite story of all time?
I’m sorry but … impossible to decide. There are too many! But, okay, here’s an answer: I hope it’s still out there, waiting for me to discover.
What do you hope readers will take away from your novels?
I hope escapism, and pleasure, having enjoyed spending time with the characters and being immersed in a different place. To feel compelled, and ultimately moved and uplifted.
If you had one piece of advice for someone wanting to tell a story of their own, what would it be?
Tell it from the heart, and write what matters to you.
Emylia is a tutor at The Novelry. Offering support for beginner and established authors at any stage of their writing career, The Novelry will take writers from the very kernel of an idea through to a polished manuscript ready for literary agent submission. With mentoring from bestselling authors and editorial advice from leading industry professionals, The Novelry is the writing school recommended by leading literary agents.
AUTHOR BIO
Emylia Hall is the author of four novels with her fifth cosy crime novel publishing in 2022, and a Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund.
The Book of Summers, a coming-of-age story inspired by childhood holidays, was published by Headline in 2012 and was one of the bestselling debuts of the year. It was a Richard and Judy Book Club selection, and went on to be voted the favourite read of the summer by readers. It was translated into eight languages.
A Heart Bent Out of Shape was published in 2013 and won the Novelicious Book of the Year Award. The Sea Between Us followed in 2015 and The Thousand Lights Hotel in 2017. With books set in rural Hungary, the Swiss Riviera, Cornwall’s far west and the Tuscan isle of Elba, her work is strongly influenced by place and matters of the heart.
