Under the Hood of the Verse Novel: A Consideration of Variation in Form and Technique in the Contemporary Verse Novel for Young Adults

Verse novelist Tia Fisher looks broadly at the development of the form, analysing what constitutes a verse novel and why it isn’t just ‘chopped up prose’.

Abstract

The verse novel form is on the rise and holds particular appeal for young people, but there has not been much analysis to date of the technical choices available to verse novelists; technical choices not necessarily available to writers of prose or conventional poetry.

As a verse novelist myself, I wanted to understand more about how contemporary US and UK writers experiment with their craft to evoke responses in their readers. In this article, I look broadly at the development of the form and the critical reaction to it, analysing what constitutes a verse novel and why it isn’t just ‘chopped up prose’.

I go on to examine  five recently-published verse novels from 2018 to 2021 and consider the effects of technical choices made by the authors, and the degree to which they work for the reader.