Updated: Dec 18, 2021
Daughter of the King
Black Rose Writing, December 2021
https://www.blackrosewriting.com/historicaladventure/daughteroftheking?rq=kerry
There is something you should know about me. I am a major fan of historical fiction. This may be because I spent most of my college life studying history, as I worked toward an undergrad in the subject and then attempted a graduate degree. Or, it could be because I've always been a little obsessed with the past. Classic overthinker. Whatever the reason, I read more historical fiction than anything else and my bookshelves prove that. It should come as no surprise, then, that I read Kerry Chaput's thrilling debut, Daughter of the King. I didn't read it as much as I devoured it. Fiction lovers know what I mean, right?
The year is 1661 and La Rochelle France is a powder keg of unrest, as the Catholics of the region are trying to convert or eradicate the protestant population. Isabelle Colette and her mother live inside La Rochelle, doing their best to stay under the radar of those who wish them harm, even when former friends threaten to throw them to the proverbial wolves. As tensions mount, Isabelle meets a young, Catholic officer and falls in love. He can accept her despite her faith and his sworn duty to the king. It isn't long after that La Rochelle becomes the scene of a massacre and Isabelle must flee her home with her mother. It is only with the help of her young officer that Isabelle and her mother escape, both rushing into an unknown future that must be better than life in La Rochelle. Isabelle will come to learn, as many do, that persecution follows and endings are only as happy as you make them.
After settling into an uneasy existence in a new town, Isabelle is once again on the run, fleeing before she can be punished for something unavoidable. However, through her new connections, she is presented with an opportunity she never expected. She will be a Fille du Roi, a daughter of the king. Setting sail for the new world, she has a responsibility to select a husband and help populate this new land, but the future has other plans for Isabelle and she is ready to do what she must to see them through.
I read an advanced copy of this book. I promised the author that I would give my honest opinion, so here it is.
Daughter of the King is the most exciting piece of historical fiction I've ever read. So often this genre can be somber and slow, but Chaput grabs the reader from the first pages and pulls them along at a breakneck pace until its conclusion. There is hope, because what is a story without a bit of hope, and there are moments that make the reader cringe, draw up into themselves, and think, I'm glad that's never happened to me. There are passages that make the reader cry out in frustration because Isabelle is making the wrong decision and they know it, but Chaput shows us these mistakes are human and must be made.
It's a story with feeling and hope and history, what fan of historical fiction doesn't love that?
Daughter of the King gets 5 stars from me. Honestly, if I could give it more, I absolutely would.
Full disclosure, I am a recovering passive voice abuser. My older work is riddled with it and I once told a writer pal they could have my passive voice when they pried it from my cold, dead hands.
Yes, I still embrace clichés, but that's a topic for another day.
What do we know about passive voice?
- It slows down the narrative
- It's a sign that you're not unpacking your scene enough.
- It sticks out like a sore thumb.
Before we get started, it's important to note that passive voice isn't all bad. Sometimes you may have a character who is quite passive, so they may speak in passive voice. Other times you may prefer to slow down your narrative for effect. It's when your narrative is bogged down with it that you run the risk of losing your readers.
Now, don't start bashing "the rules". Truth is, there are no "rules" to writing outside of grammar and English, and we've made actual careers out of bending and pushing those rules. What we do have, however, is a standard. What does that mean? The standard of fiction is built from reader expectations. Readers are overwhelmed by a ton of exclamation marks (rightly so), avoid using them. Readers want a deeper connection than omniscient can give, write a deeper or close point of view. Readers are bored or confused by too much passive voice, use it sparingly.
We can lament "the rules" all we want, but the truth of the matter is, publishing is hard, and getting readers to notice you is tough. Why would you want to add another complication to that?
Active prose keeps our scenes moving, it helps build tension, and it assists in building strong characters that readers can identify with and root for.
The MC of what I hope will be my debut is a hard character to like. She's living with trauma that she has refused to deal with. She's bitter and angry, and she blames the entire world for her problems. In short, she has a B.A.D. attitude. If I were still the writer I was in 2014, I don't think the reader would identify with her as well, and they certainly wouldn't root for her. It's through her actions and reactions, those very physical moments, that readers feel connected to her. That intimacy isn't something that's easily achieved in passive voice.
But, Sayword, you say, I read books full of passive voice all the time! So do I. I've also tried to read two books in third person omniscient this year. That doesn't mean they were enjoyable, or that I even finished them. Spoilers: I didn't.
Passive voice is a lot like telling. You need it sometimes. In fact, sometimes it doesn't really matter. BUT, when you overuse these elements, your prose becomes tedious and, quite frankly, makes those of us who prefer well-written fiction want to hunt you down and force-feed those words to you. Is that too aggressive? Okay, so it really just makes us not read your books, and it makes us tell our friends not to read your books. You know as well as I do that word of mouth is everything in this business. If you don't know it yet, you will.
So, let's look at some examples of passive vs. active voice.
From The Purple Shelf Club:
Passive: The Barber Motorsports Museum has been visited by people from all over the world.
Active: People from all over the world have visited the Barber Motorsports Museum.
From Grammarly:
Passive: The squirrel was chased by the dog.
Active: The dog chased the squirrel.
You see from these examples, borrowed from The Purple Shelf Club and Grammarly, that passive and active voice is essentially the same thing. The difference is the wording. Passive takes the long way around. It meanders. Whereas, active voice gets it over with. This is what happened, let's keep going.
There are other examples, of course. Other ways that we use passive voice in our work. Little insidious crutches that inevitably show up in a first draft. I often tell writers I work with to do a document search for "had" and "had been" because the use of them usually signals passive voice has been used.
Another thing passive voice usually signals is that we haven't unpacked our scenes properly. If you've listened to About This Writing Thing a few times it's likely you've heard me talk about my favorite article on unpacking, Chuck Palahniuk's article featured in Lit Reactor, Nuts & Bolts: "Thought Verbs". I am a HUGE fan of this article because it's one of the best I've read that talks about unpacking a scene. Though the article is specifically about eliminating thought verbs from your prose, I find that it fits into so many more discussions. Especially those of show and tell, and (shocker) passive voice vs. active.
It is the writer's job to bring their scenes to life. How better to do this than to add life to your scene. Recently, I read a piece of work with nice chunks of dialogue, but no action in the dialogue. So as my mind reads, the characters in the scene are simply frozen in place, throwing words back and forth at one another. There was no movement to show me how the characters were reacting to one another, to submerge me in the scene. Just two people tossing out words.
Action makes a scene move, makes it play before our eyes like a picture show. We come to know characters most intimately when we see how they physically interact with one another and how they react to one another. Passive voice slows that movement down (if there is any), makes it past tense, an afterthought.
So, here's your assignment. Go through your WIP. Check for uses of "was", "had", "has been", "had been", etc., and take a look at those scenes. How can you rewrite them to make them more active? I promise you're going to thank me for this. And, if you don't, your readers will. We all know they're the ones who really matter.
Good luck. Until next time, take care and keep writing!
-Sayword
For more on passive vs. active voice, I encourage you to check out the following:
Layla by Colleen Hoover. Montlake, 2020
**This review contains soft spoilers**
This is my first Colleen Hoover read and it may be my last.
Don't get me wrong, the story isn't horrible. It isn't even bad. However, I think it's misrepresented (Willow is not a guest at the B & B), and I can't excuse the gaslighting, the glib nature in which mental illness is treated, or the fact that Leeds is a repulsive human being that I really couldn't stand for the entirety of the book. Add to that the fact that the narrative is mostly tell, there is an overuse of pronouns, and unnecessary repetition of words and phrases, and this becomes what will likely be my least favorite read of 2021.
In my opinion, there was a missed opportunity to really flesh out the story and the characters, to make them likable people I could root for in a situation that I could be invested in. It would likely have served the story better to cut the first three chapters and begin after the inciting incident. It might've helped build tension, especially after the twist is revealed. Instead, the narrative begins at the beginning, telling the reader everything about Leeds and Layla's relationship, from the moment they meet until the event that puts them in the present where everything has gone horribly wrong. Told in Leeds's POV, the first few chapters are him going on and on about how Layla isn't like any girl he's ever met, how all he wants to do is stare at her, touch her, kiss her, and have sex with her. I mean, he thinks an Aspirin is LSD because he is that enamored with her for crying out loud. Then "the event" happens and things aren't the same, so Leeds has the idea to take Layla back to the place where they met, a mansion in Kansas that used to be a B & B and is now up for sale. When they arrive, strange things begin to happen: Layla punches a mirror, unexplainable things happen in the kitchen, Leeds's computer closes on him without anyone else in the room, etc. It's through these strange occurrences that he meets Willow, a displaced spirit he becomes obsessed with to the detriment of his relationship with Layla. It's after he begins communicating with Willow that I developed a seething dislike for Leeds that lasted for the entire book, thus ruining how I should have felt about him in the end. It wasn't his interest in Willow that made me despise Leeds, however, but his continuous gaslighting of Layla in the name of "love". This is not okay. Layla is a woman with a brain injury and Leeds uses it against her, making her believe she's going crazy so that he doesn't have to leave Willow, rather than just being honest with her. I do not like Leeds.
Perhaps, as mentioned earlier, if the narrative hadn't been so heavy on the telling, and if the characters had been fleshed out more, I might've been able to understand Leeds motivations better and I might even have been pulling for him and Layla, but instead, I found myself frustrated by the tediousness of the narrative, the lack of dimensions with the characters, and - most of all - the gaslighting of a fragile woman.
Layla earns just 3 stars from me.
