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Podcast Transcript:
Welcome to the Story Surgeon Podcast, I am your host Ektaa Bali, midwife, fantasy author, podcaster and story enthusiast and this is the show where I dissect and break open novels, movies and tv shows and figure out what makes them work.
A little news from me: This week I published two books:
The first is the second book in the my middle grade adventure fantasy series, its called The Fae Princess. Book 2 of the Pacific Princesses Series and the second is a non Fiction book for my midwifery students out there: A Guide to the Postnatal Ward for Midwifery Students and new Grads. You can find them on my website, along with notes from this episode at my website ektaabali.com
On this very first episode of The Story Surgeon, we are taking a deep dive into V.E Schawb’s bestseller The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue.
Blurb:
A Life No One Will Remember. A Story You Will Never Forget.
France, 1714: in a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets.
Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world.
But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name.
The much anticipated book was published in October 2020 by Titan Books
Schwab reports sitting on this book for 10 years before feeling like she was ready to write it after she turned 30 and you can tell it’s quite a personal one for her. But we’ll discuss that with some of the themes later on.
It comes in at a whopping 150k words making it 555 pages
And it’s shelved under fantasy and sci fi and it had a huge marketing campaign AND an endorsement by Neil Gaiman himself.
When I first heard about this book I couldn’t stop thinking about it’s similarity to a movie I’ve saw a few years ago.
I highly recommend the movie “Age of Adaline” starring Blake Lively. It’s about a young lady in the early part of the 20th century who is struck by lightning and stops aging. We meet her in the present day US. It’s a brilliant movie and one of my favourites, Harrison Ford is in it as well. So when I heard about this story by the wonderful V.E Schwab about a similar situation, I knew I had to read it.
So What can we learn about Story telling from The Invisible Life of Addie La Rue
Let’s start with the Premise:
According to John Truby:
The premise is your story stated in one sentence. It is the simplest combination of character and plot and typically consists of some event that starts the action, some sense of the main character, and some sense of the outcome of the story.
Truby, John. The Anatomy of Story (p. 16). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.
So as we know, the premise is the story in one line:
“A girl makes a deal with the devil to live forever but is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets but what happens when a boy in 2014 New York remembers her?”
This Premise is very high concept.
It immediately catches your eye, the conflict is immediately evident and anyone hearing that is going to be intrigued and has an expectation for a really interesting story. A high concept premise is one that has audiences rushing to want to read it straight away.
All that in one line.
The lesson to note here is that a high concept premise sells the book. This is what an author quotes again and again in interviews and in general conversation. This is something that’s important to get right.
SUMMARY
If you havent read the book allow me to give a quick summary of the story.
Addie is a nineteen year old living in country France. On her wedding day she freaks out and runs away into the forest where she tries to call the gods. She dosen’t realise its getting dark when she’s calling for divine guidance. Our shadow God appears and she asks for more time to live a free life. Initially he refuses because it seems like she’s asking for a long life with no limits. But then she changes it to “As long as I want to live.” Her desire to live being key here. So the bargain begins, when she dosen’t want to live anymore, he can take her soul. Be she’s been tricked because everyone she meets forgets her including her parents. As soon as she’s out of view, people forget her straight away. You can see the type of problems she gets into.
And so begins their long journey as every year Luc comes to ask her if she still wants to keep going. His goal is to to break her and convince her that she dosen’t want to live anymore and give up her soul to him.
We work through her 300 years of history that give us context for the current plot which is when in 2014 new york, she meet Henry in his bookstore and realises he does not forget her.
So they begin a relationship together. Henry’s friend’ continually forget her so eventually she has to explain her curse/deal. He laughs and says I made a deal too.
We get all of Henry’s story. BasIcally his girlfriend rejects his marriage proposal and in his drunken hopelessness Luc finds him and gives him a deal. To be loved by everyone, and in return he forfeits his life after 12 months. Henry’s curse is that everyone who meets him does see the real him, they see a projection, an illusion they need to see to love him.
So on Henry’s last night, Addy makes a deal with Luc.
Her deal is a mirror of the one she first made but this time she’s tricked Luc.
As long as he wants her by his side, she would stay with him, in exchange for Henry’s life back.
Luc agrees not knowing the Addie is going to spend the rest of her days proving he cannot love her.
Henry writes Addie’s story and publishes it in a book.
The end.
Alright let’s get into the meat of this.
Let’s talk STRUCTURE and format
There are 6 parts
At the beginning of each part there is a featured piece of artwork, which you come to learn later on is relevant to the plot.
Usually its one chapter is one scene, if it’s not. its a sequence of scenes very close together in time
Each chapter is quite short no more than 2,000 words, usually much shorter. Many are less than 1000.
She ends each Part with a cliffhanger- a crucial piece of information that changes the direction of the plot
Schawb hits her markers/milestones almost exactly:
Prologue (200 words)
Effective hook (action- oriented)
Part 1: (The Gods that answer after dark) 17 chapters
Setup chapters 1-8
Inciting Incident ch 9 (10%) (deal is made)
First plot point ch 17 (20%) (Henry remembers her)
Part 2: (The Darkest part of the night) 14 chapters
1/3 33% (ch10) Addie decides to wage war with Luc (pinch point?)
Part 3: (Three hundred years and three words) 13 chapters Relationship between A and H
Midpoint turn 3 scene sequence 50% (ch 10) (Addie tells Henry her story, FB Addie goes back to Villon for the first time in 50 years. Dad is dead. Henry tells her he made a deal too.)
Part 4: (The man who stayed dry in the rain) 19 chapters H’s backstory
67% (Ch 19) 2/3 67%- Addie discovers she can write with Henry’s hand (pinch points?)
Part 5: (The shadow who smiled and the girl who smiled back) 15 chapters Addie’s love affair with Luc + subsequent realisation
87% Ends with ch 15- a tonal shift towards Addie and Luc’s relationship into the love affair.
Part 6: (Do not pretend that this love) 20 chapters Build up towards the climax
87% beginning of climax (Henry reveals he made the deal for only 1year which is almost up)
96% climax
Part 7: (I remember You) 3 chapters post conflict resolution + final image
Powerful Final Image that ties everything together and makes sense.
We also have a “the book youre holding is actually the book written in the story”
So Henry writes a book after Addie leaves and we get the hint that this is the book we’re reading.
Cliche? Maybe, but I think for this book it works because stories and books were a big part of the characters and the plot so I think we can get away with that. And there was adequate forshadowing of this when Henry started writing Addie’s story in his journals at the 70% mark of the story.
And we know if you want the reader to feel that ‘click in place’, ‘that was unexpected but it feels right’ feeling you have to forshadow your twists and big moments carefully, and ideally twice.
PLOT & PACING
One of the complaints this book gets from people who review it poorly is that it has little to no plot and it feels like nothing is happening.
I was interested to know why people felt this way and that’s why I went through chapter by chapter to see if there was any clues there.
What I can tell you is this:
It is very character driven story- we’re talking about feelings and emotions a lot
And the reason it feels like nothing is happening, is because of the way the story is written in this backwards and forwards, two storyline style
What I mean by two story lines, is that we have the
A plot: which is the current timeline or what readers are calling the ‘story’
And the B plot which is the backstory and everywhere that we get a flashback.
Almost every second chapter is a flashback of Addie’s past, we don’t really get too many chapters where we’re shown the same timeline consecutively. Where we are given this, they are very short chapters. Now character IS backstory and its important for us to remember that flashbacks are incredibly valuable.
But here. the flashbacks and the current timeline are given almost equal page real estate. So if the plot dosen’t feel like it’s moving it basically isn’t, for 50% of the book, which is where the author is giving us set up or context for the plot itself. The backstory is what gives the plot meaning. It’s what makes it matter to the reader.
I would say that this is the style, the manner in which this story was written and probably the only way this particular story could be told.
Which is to say that either a reader is going to love it or hate it. It’s simply going to be for them or not.
As for the main plot, the current timeline I would say not much actually DOES happen. If we look at our plot points
We find the backbone to a pretty simple story:
1) Addie meets Henry
2) they develop a relationship
3) She tells him her story & He reveals he made a deal too
5) Addie bargains for Henry’s life with Luc
5) Addie leaves Henry to go with Luc as part of her deal
This might seem a little reductive however, that is literally the plot. But this is what I find amazing about Schwab’s writing which we’ll get into soon. Yes, that’s all the plot is, but in 150k words Schwab has woven an experiential story where we really feel the emotions of the characters, we delve deeply into their experiences of being a human and being an immortal. Through rich prose we explore the minds and hearts of these characters so deeply that a lot of readers feel torn apart and made again by this story and if you read the reviews about 50% of the time that’s what you see. That readers felt heavy emotions and were so swayed by this book they feel in love with it.
However.
This is ALSO why this novel attracts the phrases like “meandering” and “boring”. Because we’re kind of making this slow dance backwards and forwards through Addie’s life where we ruminating on similar themes. It could be argued that some scenes could have been cut. I dont think this book quite needed to be 150k, but you tell that to any author and they’ll be able to make and argument for each and every scene and I’m sure her and her editor went over the scenes with a time toothed comb multiple times.
But really 150k words is the size of a high fantasy epic
Yes Addie’s story spans 300 years, but we don’t need to see every part of those 300 years. I’m exaggerating, but I think they could have done a little pruning to add come conciseness.
- On a side note, there is a marvel in story telling in a movie form. Called The man from Earth (2007). This movie is about a guy who’s immortal, even older than Addie, caveman old. But the whole movie is set in a single room. You literally don’t leave this guys house for the whole 2 hours but somehow you are riveted by the narrative. It’s him revealing the truth to school teachers he works with and they’re basically having conversation and questioning him about his immortality. I highly recommend this movie, it’s fascinating entertainment, but the story telling is also worth examining.
I’m just making the point here that conciseness can be achieved whilst not taking away from the story. And in The Man from earth you have conciseness in not only duration of the story but also conciseness of space. We don’t move anywhere physically.
Ok so back to Addie.
The constant backwards and forwards between the Flashbacks and the main plot got a little irritating for me by the 40% mark if I’m honest, but it’s a testament to Schawab’s writing that she got me through because I wanted to read more of her writing. She really does weave a beautiful scene. More on her writing in a bit.
So structurally, we can see that
300 years of Addie’s past and 1 year of her present are given the same amount of pages (I counted: 36 C chapters and 37 FB chapters)
There’s something very poetic or meta about that, because one of the story’s themes is ‘time and it’s value or meaning’ and also the way two people are experiencing and reacting it so differently.
Both Addie and Henry feel like they have very little time.
But Addie feels like she can’t feel and experience enough, to her there’s always something new to keep her excited about living and wanting to find herself within other people and their ideas.
But to Henry he feels too much in such a little time and subsequently feels lost and is on a quest to find himself, not mirrored in the eyes of others, as his curse dictates, but what it means to truly be himself.
And the way in which its written is demonstrating that very concept, our experiences of time, and I love that.
John Truby talks about expressing theme through story stucture, and think this story is a good example of that.
That is the madness of it. Every day is amber, and she is the fly trapped inside. No way to think in days or weeks when she lives in moments. Time begins to lose its meaning—and yet, she has not lost track of time. She cannot seem to misplace it (no matter how she tries) and so Addie knows what month it is, what day, what night, and so she knows it has been a year.
Schwab, V.E.. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (p. 135). Titan Books. Kindle Edition.
THEME
I see three themes brilliantly woven together in the tapesty of this story:
TIME, MEMORY v IDEAS and BEING SEEN
Being forgotten, she thinks, is a bit like going mad. You begin to wonder what is real, if you are real. After all, how can a thing be real if it cannot be remembered? It’s like that Zen koan, the one about the tree falling in the woods. If no one heard it, did it happen? If a person cannot leave a mark, do they exist?
Schwab, V.E.. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (p. 120). Titan Books. Kindle Edition.
Addie wonders at the meaning of her life if she cannot be remembered. If she cannot mark a mark upon the world, does she matter?
I think that’s the fundamental question this story asks of us.
And this is where I think it gets personal for the author.
It’s a fear artists have, most people have.
How do we leave our mark on the world. And if we don’t, do we still matter? If the memory of us fades with time, how can we still matter?
And so we are offered this:
The first mark she left upon the world, long before she knew the truth, that ideas are so much wilder than memories, that they long and look for ways of taking root.
Schwab, V.E.. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (p. 90). Titan Books. Kindle Edition.
Addie might not be able to be remembered, she might not be ‘seen’, but she can still plant ideas. And those take a life of their own. SO that is how she makes her mark.
Memory fades, but ideas take root and grow. There is greater value in planting ideas. And therein we find the truth about art.
CHARACTER
So there are really 3 main characters in this story.
Addie- our protaganist
Henry our secondary protaganist
Luc our antagonist
ADDIE
Schwab has given her a very specific physical description. Her freckles which are like a constellation are constantly mentioned.
Her main characterisics are that she is a dreamer, born in the wrong time, stubborn and yearns to be free.
Everything else about her character we insuinate through her actions and thoughts. And when Henry pops up I found myself using him as a mirror for Addie. They really are opposites and Schwarb uses Henry to contrast Addie and vise versa.
However,
Addie as a character has something missing for me.
She’s supposed to be this immortal muse, this person who is constantly beating the devil, Luc. For some reason her spirit is so strong that he can’t break her. Time and Time again Schwab shows us how strong Addie is, how despite a lifetime of being constantly forgotten, of being worn down, she just keeps going. Nothing in her backstory shows us the origin of this spirit of hers. Something a God cannot even break in 300 years, and we don’t really know the real Addie.
I would’ve liked to see WHY she’s this way, but nothing in her backstory shows us this. We’re only given a description of her as a ‘dreamer’ born in the wrong time. She simply wanted to be free of marriage. But WHY is she so different? We’re not given an answer, it’s just the way she is. We’re shown her strength, but it’s not backed by anything solid. I think it would have been really interesting to show some origin to this spirit, other than her just being born this way. The Flashbacks could have spent a chapter or two showing us this.
To survive 300 years as she does, she has to be a pretty special person, but I really couldn’t SEE that difference in the way she thought or behaved. We only have her outlook, her mindset as a explanation.
But this is how you walk to the end of the world.
This is how you live forever.
Here is one day, and here is the next, and the next, and you take what you can, savor every stolen second, cling to every moment, until it’s gone.
Schwab, V.E.. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (p. 237). Titan Books. Kindle Edition.
But HOW did she develop this grit as an illiterate country girl in the 1700s? How did she get through the early years? We don’t really know. Thats just the way she sprang out of the womb.
HENRY
Now, Henry is accused of being a boring character. I didn’t actually realise it at the time because of how Schwab’s writing is.
Honesty Victoria Schwab could make paint drying on a wall interesting. I’m not even exaggerating. I’ll share some examples up ahead.
Henry is a thirty year old heartbroken nerd. According to his backstory he has an acute sense of feeling everything, feeling too much all the time. So when his girlfriend declined to marry him it sent him in a downward spiral of feeling sorry for himself. He just wanted to be loved, and wanted. Luc’s reductionist way of describing Henry is:
“Henry Strauss, so desperate to be wanted. Sell your soul just be loved.”
It sounds pretty pathetic doesn’t it? See at first I thought that. But on further reflection, we could argue that this is the fundamental thing everyone wants? To be Loved. Didn’t Marilyn Monroe say this vey thing? And all around us do we see people desperately selling themselves to have that perception of being loved? Instagrammers, Youtubers, chasing those likes, those followers? Why do we do it? To make our mark and to be loved? Addie is chasing one and Henry is chasing the other.
Other than that, Henry doesn’t really do anything more, he’s a lost soul, looking for his place in the world, but that’s it. He couldn’t decide what to do after college, so we just works at a bookstore and thats it.
What’s more telling for me is that he was given 12 months to live and what did he do with those months before he met Addie? Nothing. Literally he does nothing. He dosen’t even like his family, he didn’t utilise his curse, he literally goes to work and comes home. That’s it.
This further contrasts Addie and Henry.
Henry who has no time and does nothing
And Addie who has all the time in the world and wants to do everything.
What I do think is odd, is that at one stage Henry has a panic attack because he Addie is watching a movie she’s seen before. We’re told that he has a need to see and do new things because of his short time, and yet these two just bum around New York the whole time. It doesn’t quite add up for me. Henry is given a whole 19 chapters, all of part 5 for his story and yet he such a dull character. Despite this Schwab somehow makes it all seem very interesting. I think this makes her a master storyteller, not many people have the ability to make the boring into something profound, and yet she does it, over and over again in 150k words.
As for our antagonist, Luc, there’s not really much to say about him other than he is supposed to be something older than the Darkness. He’s a dark god-entity who makes deals with artists and then consumes their souls.
He does show some ‘humanity’ in the form of sharing with Addie that he thinks war is useless and that artists do go to waste dying early.
But we are constantly reminded that he is not a human with emotions and that his primary goal is playing this game with Addie where he wants to win her soul by breaking her spirit. And then at the end we made to believe that he thinks he is in love with her and Addie’s goal becomes to win by breaking him and showing him that he’s not capable of love.
I like that Schwab’s version of an all powerful entity has his weaknesses too. He has almost these almost human traits wrapped in a capsule of demonic all- power.
WRITING
So I’ve sung Schwab’s praises over and over again in this analysis. Her writing is magic, she’s a wonderful storyteller, she can make paint drying interesting…
But what makes her writing so good?
She skirts the villages, the farms alone in their fields. There are whole stretches when the world seems to empty around her. As if an artist drew the barest lines of the landscape, then turned, distracted, from the task.
Schwab, V.E.. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (p. 82). Titan Books. Kindle Edition.
I mean that’s beautiful prose right there. Masterful description at it’s finest.
So clearly poetry is her strength. She uses metaphor really well, but it could be argued that she dosen’t always use it concisely.
Her writing has been critisced for being two flowery and I think that’s because this book is pretty heavy handed on the metaphor and simile. Her writing style is obviously poetic but I think at times, it was slightly verwritten.
Sometimes simplicity can be just as fresh, beautiful and meaningful.
So here is another example of brilliant description, this time of character.
She teased him about his loafers, his sweater, his wire-frame glasses. He told her he was born in the wrong decade. She told him she was born in the wrong century. He laughed, and she didn’t, but there was something old-fashioned in his manner. Only twenty-six, but when he talked, he had the easy cadence, the slow precision, of a man who knew the weight of his own voice, belonged to the class of young men who dressed like their fathers, the charade of those too eager to grow old.
Schwab, V.E.. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (p. 68). Titan Books. Kindle Edition
And just as easily she gives us one liners:
Remy Laurent is laughter bottled into skin. It spills out of him at every turn.
Schwab, V.E.. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (p. 209). Titan Books. Kindle Edition.
She just makes it look effortless dosen’t she?
So great writing isn’t just about an authors ability to describe the character and setting. Great writing makes us feel and Schwarb shines brightest when she writes character experience.
“Do you still have feelings for him?”
And she wants to be honest, to say that of course she does. She never gets closure, never gets to say good-bye—no periods, or exclamations, just a lifetime of ellipses. Everyone else starts over, they get a blank page, but hers are full of text. People talk about carrying torches for old flames, and it’s not a full fire, but Addie’s hands are full of candles. How is she supposed to set them down, or put them out? She has long run out of air.
Schwab, V.E.. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (p. 404). Titan Books. Kindle Edition.
THIS is why I came book to the book everytime I put it down. To experience this depth, this beauty of experience in the written medium.
Her ability to seamlessly integrate this poetic imagry into her writing is what makes her writing so highly praised. She really packs a punch when she writes this way.
It how she gets away with a story and characters that in the hands of another author could have come across as dull.
BUT in the same vein, you can see how it could be easily over done. If every other line had some poetic simile you’re going to tire your readers, and when you really want to pack an emotional punch, it’s not going to be as effective because you’ve set the descriptive and emotional bar so high already. Like in this passage we’re given a poetic description of setting.
March is such a fickle month. It is the seam between winter and spring—though seam suggests an even hem, and March is more like a rough line of stitches sewn by an unsteady hand, swinging wildly between January gusts and June greens. You don’t know what you’ll find, until you step outside.
Schwab, V.E.. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (p. 21). Titan Books. Kindle Edition.
Is this an example of over writing? Maybe. I think it comes down to reader preference and what the rest of the scene looks like. If the scene ahead was an emotional one, I would consider laying off the ornate description of setting to provide a contrast, a bigger hit when you do write about heavy emotion. If, however your scene is not a major plot point or not emotionally heavy, this type of writing expands and adds needed depth to the scene.
I would just be wary that you don’t end up writing what they call “purple prose” which is writing that is so ornate, and flowery it draws too much attention to itself and away from the actual story. It’s the overse of metaphors, adjectives and adverbs.
I think Schwarb’s writing in this particular novel toes the line a few times. I’m not sure if this a writing style particular to this novel, or if it’s her style in general because I haven’t read her other highly popular work, but it’s definitley something I’m going to do now.
And so we’ve come to the end of my “What can we learn” from The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by VE Schwab
Overall I think this novel is full of lessons for writers. From it you can learn what excellent writing looks like, and how structure and theme can work together to weave story with a high concept premise and how characters can mirror each other to show contrast, adding depth to the narrative. And if definitely teaches us about how backstory is fundamental to plot and character but also to be wary of the interaction between flashbacks, timelines and pacing.
I enjoyed reading Addie LaRue, and I can say that its definitely worth checking out if you haven’t already
Thank you for listening. You can find the notes and transcription of this episode as well a complete list of my published works on my website ektaabali.com that (spell it out).
Next episode, we’re going to be doing a deep dive in the world of J.K rowling, and dissecting my first and greatest love. Harry Potter. So I’ll see you next time with Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. See you then!
A little news from me: This week I published two books:
The first is the second book in the my middle grade adventure fantasy series, its called The Fae Princess. Book 2 of the Pacific Princesses Series and the second is a non Fiction book for my midwifery students out there: A Guide to the Postnatal Ward for Midwifery Students and new Grads. You can find them on my website, along with notes from this episode at my website ektaabali.com
On this very first episode of The Story Surgeon, we are taking a deep dive into V.E Schawb’s bestseller The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue.
Blurb:
A Life No One Will Remember. A Story You Will Never Forget.
France, 1714: in a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets.
Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world.
But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name.
The much anticipated book was published in October 2020 by Titan Books
Schwab reports sitting on this book for 10 years before feeling like she was ready to write it after she turned 30 and you can tell it’s quite a personal one for her. But we’ll discuss that with some of the themes later on.
It comes in at a whopping 150k words making it 555 pages
And it’s shelved under fantasy and sci fi and it had a huge marketing campaign AND an endorsement by Neil Gaiman himself.
When I first heard about this book I couldn’t stop thinking about it’s similarity to a movie I’ve saw a few years ago.
I highly recommend the movie “Age of Adaline” starring Blake Lively. It’s about a young lady in the early part of the 20th century who is struck by lightning and stops aging. We meet her in the present day US. It’s a brilliant movie and one of my favourites, Harrison Ford is in it as well. So when I heard about this story by the wonderful V.E Schwab about a similar situation, I knew I had to read it.
So What can we learn about Story telling from The Invisible Life of Addie La Rue
Let’s start with the Premise:
According to John Truby:
The premise is your story stated in one sentence. It is the simplest combination of character and plot and typically consists of some event that starts the action, some sense of the main character, and some sense of the outcome of the story.
Truby, John. The Anatomy of Story (p. 16). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.
So as we know, the premise is the story in one line:
“A girl makes a deal with the devil to live forever but is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets but what happens when a boy in 2014 New York remembers her?”
This Premise is very high concept.
It immediately catches your eye, the conflict is immediately evident and anyone hearing that is going to be intrigued and has an expectation for a really interesting story. A high concept premise is one that has audiences rushing to want to read it straight away.
All that in one line.
The lesson to note here is that a high concept premise sells the book. This is what an author quotes again and again in interviews and in general conversation. This is something that’s important to get right.
SUMMARY
If you havent read the book allow me to give a quick summary of the story.
Addie is a nineteen year old living in country France. On her wedding day she freaks out and runs away into the forest where she tries to call the gods. She dosen’t realise its getting dark when she’s calling for divine guidance. Our shadow God appears and she asks for more time to live a free life. Initially he refuses because it seems like she’s asking for a long life with no limits. But then she changes it to “As long as I want to live.” Her desire to live being key here. So the bargain begins, when she dosen’t want to live anymore, he can take her soul. Be she’s been tricked because everyone she meets forgets her including her parents. As soon as she’s out of view, people forget her straight away. You can see the type of problems she gets into.
And so begins their long journey as every year Luc comes to ask her if she still wants to keep going. His goal is to to break her and convince her that she dosen’t want to live anymore and give up her soul to him.
We work through her 300 years of history that give us context for the current plot which is when in 2014 new york, she meet Henry in his bookstore and realises he does not forget her.
So they begin a relationship together. Henry’s friend’ continually forget her so eventually she has to explain her curse/deal. He laughs and says I made a deal too.
We get all of Henry’s story. BasIcally his girlfriend rejects his marriage proposal and in his drunken hopelessness Luc finds him and gives him a deal. To be loved by everyone, and in return he forfeits his life after 12 months. Henry’s curse is that everyone who meets him does see the real him, they see a projection, an illusion they need to see to love him.
So on Henry’s last night, Addy makes a deal with Luc.
Her deal is a mirror of the one she first made but this time she’s tricked Luc.
As long as he wants her by his side, she would stay with him, in exchange for Henry’s life back.
Luc agrees not knowing the Addie is going to spend the rest of her days proving he cannot love her.
Henry writes Addie’s story and publishes it in a book.
The end.
Alright let’s get into the meat of this.
Let’s talk STRUCTURE and format
There are 6 parts
At the beginning of each part there is a featured piece of artwork, which you come to learn later on is relevant to the plot.
Usually its one chapter is one scene, if it’s not. its a sequence of scenes very close together in time
Each chapter is quite short no more than 2,000 words, usually much shorter. Many are less than 1000.
She ends each Part with a cliffhanger- a crucial piece of information that changes the direction of the plot
Schawb hits her markers/milestones almost exactly:
Prologue (200 words)
Effective hook (action- oriented)
Part 1: (The Gods that answer after dark) 17 chapters
Setup chapters 1-8
Inciting Incident ch 9 (10%) (deal is made)
First plot point ch 17 (20%) (Henry remembers her)
Part 2: (The Darkest part of the night) 14 chapters
1/3 33% (ch10) Addie decides to wage war with Luc (pinch point?)
Part 3: (Three hundred years and three words) 13 chapters Relationship between A and H
Midpoint turn 3 scene sequence 50% (ch 10) (Addie tells Henry her story, FB Addie goes back to Villon for the first time in 50 years. Dad is dead. Henry tells her he made a deal too.)
Part 4: (The man who stayed dry in the rain) 19 chapters H’s backstory
67% (Ch 19) 2/3 67%- Addie discovers she can write with Henry’s hand (pinch points?)
Part 5: (The shadow who smiled and the girl who smiled back) 15 chapters Addie’s love affair with Luc + subsequent realisation
87% Ends with ch 15- a tonal shift towards Addie and Luc’s relationship into the love affair.
Part 6: (Do not pretend that this love) 20 chapters Build up towards the climax
87% beginning of climax (Henry reveals he made the deal for only 1year which is almost up)
96% climax
Part 7: (I remember You) 3 chapters post conflict resolution + final image
Powerful Final Image that ties everything together and makes sense.
We also have a “the book youre holding is actually the book written in the story”
So Henry writes a book after Addie leaves and we get the hint that this is the book we’re reading.
Cliche? Maybe, but I think for this book it works because stories and books were a big part of the characters and the plot so I think we can get away with that. And there was adequate forshadowing of this when Henry started writing Addie’s story in his journals at the 70% mark of the story.
And we know if you want the reader to feel that ‘click in place’, ‘that was unexpected but it feels right’ feeling you have to forshadow your twists and big moments carefully, and ideally twice.
PLOT & PACING
One of the complaints this book gets from people who review it poorly is that it has little to no plot and it feels like nothing is happening.
I was interested to know why people felt this way and that’s why I went through chapter by chapter to see if there was any clues there.
What I can tell you is this:
It is very character driven story- we’re talking about feelings and emotions a lot
And the reason it feels like nothing is happening, is because of the way the story is written in this backwards and forwards, two storyline style
What I mean by two story lines, is that we have the
A plot: which is the current timeline or what readers are calling the ‘story’
And the B plot which is the backstory and everywhere that we get a flashback.
Almost every second chapter is a flashback of Addie’s past, we don’t really get too many chapters where we’re shown the same timeline consecutively. Where we are given this, they are very short chapters. Now character IS backstory and its important for us to remember that flashbacks are incredibly valuable.
But here. the flashbacks and the current timeline are given almost equal page real estate. So if the plot dosen’t feel like it’s moving it basically isn’t, for 50% of the book, which is where the author is giving us set up or context for the plot itself. The backstory is what gives the plot meaning. It’s what makes it matter to the reader.
I would say that this is the style, the manner in which this story was written and probably the only way this particular story could be told.
Which is to say that either a reader is going to love it or hate it. It’s simply going to be for them or not.
As for the main plot, the current timeline I would say not much actually DOES happen. If we look at our plot points
We find the backbone to a pretty simple story:
1) Addie meets Henry
2) they develop a relationship
3) She tells him her story & He reveals he made a deal too
5) Addie bargains for Henry’s life with Luc
5) Addie leaves Henry to go with Luc as part of her deal
This might seem a little reductive however, that is literally the plot. But this is what I find amazing about Schwab’s writing which we’ll get into soon. Yes, that’s all the plot is, but in 150k words Schwab has woven an experiential story where we really feel the emotions of the characters, we delve deeply into their experiences of being a human and being an immortal. Through rich prose we explore the minds and hearts of these characters so deeply that a lot of readers feel torn apart and made again by this story and if you read the reviews about 50% of the time that’s what you see. That readers felt heavy emotions and were so swayed by this book they feel in love with it.
However.
This is ALSO why this novel attracts the phrases like “meandering” and “boring”. Because we’re kind of making this slow dance backwards and forwards through Addie’s life where we ruminating on similar themes. It could be argued that some scenes could have been cut. I dont think this book quite needed to be 150k, but you tell that to any author and they’ll be able to make and argument for each and every scene and I’m sure her and her editor went over the scenes with a time toothed comb multiple times.
But really 150k words is the size of a high fantasy epic
Yes Addie’s story spans 300 years, but we don’t need to see every part of those 300 years. I’m exaggerating, but I think they could have done a little pruning to add come conciseness.
- On a side note, there is a marvel in story telling in a movie form. Called The man from Earth (2007). This movie is about a guy who’s immortal, even older than Addie, caveman old. But the whole movie is set in a single room. You literally don’t leave this guys house for the whole 2 hours but somehow you are riveted by the narrative. It’s him revealing the truth to school teachers he works with and they’re basically having conversation and questioning him about his immortality. I highly recommend this movie, it’s fascinating entertainment, but the story telling is also worth examining.
I’m just making the point here that conciseness can be achieved whilst not taking away from the story. And in The Man from earth you have conciseness in not only duration of the story but also conciseness of space. We don’t move anywhere physically.
Ok so back to Addie.
The constant backwards and forwards between the Flashbacks and the main plot got a little irritating for me by the 40% mark if I’m honest, but it’s a testament to Schawab’s writing that she got me through because I wanted to read more of her writing. She really does weave a beautiful scene. More on her writing in a bit.
So structurally, we can see that
300 years of Addie’s past and 1 year of her present are given the same amount of pages (I counted: 36 C chapters and 37 FB chapters)
There’s something very poetic or meta about that, because one of the story’s themes is ‘time and it’s value or meaning’ and also the way two people are experiencing and reacting it so differently.
Both Addie and Henry feel like they have very little time.
But Addie feels like she can’t feel and experience enough, to her there’s always something new to keep her excited about living and wanting to find herself within other people and their ideas.
But to Henry he feels too much in such a little time and subsequently feels lost and is on a quest to find himself, not mirrored in the eyes of others, as his curse dictates, but what it means to truly be himself.
And the way in which its written is demonstrating that very concept, our experiences of time, and I love that.
John Truby talks about expressing theme through story stucture, and think this story is a good example of that.
That is the madness of it. Every day is amber, and she is the fly trapped inside. No way to think in days or weeks when she lives in moments. Time begins to lose its meaning—and yet, she has not lost track of time. She cannot seem to misplace it (no matter how she tries) and so Addie knows what month it is, what day, what night, and so she knows it has been a year.
Schwab, V.E.. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (p. 135). Titan Books. Kindle Edition.
THEME
I see three themes brilliantly woven together in the tapesty of this story:
TIME, MEMORY v IDEAS and BEING SEEN
Being forgotten, she thinks, is a bit like going mad. You begin to wonder what is real, if you are real. After all, how can a thing be real if it cannot be remembered? It’s like that Zen koan, the one about the tree falling in the woods. If no one heard it, did it happen? If a person cannot leave a mark, do they exist?
Schwab, V.E.. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (p. 120). Titan Books. Kindle Edition.
Addie wonders at the meaning of her life if she cannot be remembered. If she cannot mark a mark upon the world, does she matter?
I think that’s the fundamental question this story asks of us.
And this is where I think it gets personal for the author.
It’s a fear artists have, most people have.
How do we leave our mark on the world. And if we don’t, do we still matter? If the memory of us fades with time, how can we still matter?
And so we are offered this:
The first mark she left upon the world, long before she knew the truth, that ideas are so much wilder than memories, that they long and look for ways of taking root.
Schwab, V.E.. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (p. 90). Titan Books. Kindle Edition.
Addie might not be able to be remembered, she might not be ‘seen’, but she can still plant ideas. And those take a life of their own. SO that is how she makes her mark.
Memory fades, but ideas take root and grow. There is greater value in planting ideas. And therein we find the truth about art.
CHARACTER
So there are really 3 main characters in this story.
Addie- our protaganist
Henry our secondary protaganist
Luc our antagonist
ADDIE
Schwab has given her a very specific physical description. Her freckles which are like a constellation are constantly mentioned.
Her main characterisics are that she is a dreamer, born in the wrong time, stubborn and yearns to be free.
Everything else about her character we insuinate through her actions and thoughts. And when Henry pops up I found myself using him as a mirror for Addie. They really are opposites and Schwarb uses Henry to contrast Addie and vise versa.
However,
Addie as a character has something missing for me.
She’s supposed to be this immortal muse, this person who is constantly beating the devil, Luc. For some reason her spirit is so strong that he can’t break her. Time and Time again Schwab shows us how strong Addie is, how despite a lifetime of being constantly forgotten, of being worn down, she just keeps going. Nothing in her backstory shows us the origin of this spirit of hers. Something a God cannot even break in 300 years, and we don’t really know the real Addie.
I would’ve liked to see WHY she’s this way, but nothing in her backstory shows us this. We’re only given a description of her as a ‘dreamer’ born in the wrong time. She simply wanted to be free of marriage. But WHY is she so different? We’re not given an answer, it’s just the way she is. We’re shown her strength, but it’s not backed by anything solid. I think it would have been really interesting to show some origin to this spirit, other than her just being born this way. The Flashbacks could have spent a chapter or two showing us this.
To survive 300 years as she does, she has to be a pretty special person, but I really couldn’t SEE that difference in the way she thought or behaved. We only have her outlook, her mindset as a explanation.
But this is how you walk to the end of the world.
This is how you live forever.
Here is one day, and here is the next, and the next, and you take what you can, savor every stolen second, cling to every moment, until it’s gone.
Schwab, V.E.. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (p. 237). Titan Books. Kindle Edition.
But HOW did she develop this grit as an illiterate country girl in the 1700s? How did she get through the early years? We don’t really know. Thats just the way she sprang out of the womb.
HENRY
Now, Henry is accused of being a boring character. I didn’t actually realise it at the time because of how Schwab’s writing is.
Honesty Victoria Schwab could make paint drying on a wall interesting. I’m not even exaggerating. I’ll share some examples up ahead.
Henry is a thirty year old heartbroken nerd. According to his backstory he has an acute sense of feeling everything, feeling too much all the time. So when his girlfriend declined to marry him it sent him in a downward spiral of feeling sorry for himself. He just wanted to be loved, and wanted. Luc’s reductionist way of describing Henry is:
“Henry Strauss, so desperate to be wanted. Sell your soul just be loved.”
It sounds pretty pathetic doesn’t it? See at first I thought that. But on further reflection, we could argue that this is the fundamental thing everyone wants? To be Loved. Didn’t Marilyn Monroe say this vey thing? And all around us do we see people desperately selling themselves to have that perception of being loved? Instagrammers, Youtubers, chasing those likes, those followers? Why do we do it? To make our mark and to be loved? Addie is chasing one and Henry is chasing the other.
Other than that, Henry doesn’t really do anything more, he’s a lost soul, looking for his place in the world, but that’s it. He couldn’t decide what to do after college, so we just works at a bookstore and thats it.
What’s more telling for me is that he was given 12 months to live and what did he do with those months before he met Addie? Nothing. Literally he does nothing. He dosen’t even like his family, he didn’t utilise his curse, he literally goes to work and comes home. That’s it.
This further contrasts Addie and Henry.
Henry who has no time and does nothing
And Addie who has all the time in the world and wants to do everything.
What I do think is odd, is that at one stage Henry has a panic attack because he Addie is watching a movie she’s seen before. We’re told that he has a need to see and do new things because of his short time, and yet these two just bum around New York the whole time. It doesn’t quite add up for me. Henry is given a whole 19 chapters, all of part 5 for his story and yet he such a dull character. Despite this Schwab somehow makes it all seem very interesting. I think this makes her a master storyteller, not many people have the ability to make the boring into something profound, and yet she does it, over and over again in 150k words.
As for our antagonist, Luc, there’s not really much to say about him other than he is supposed to be something older than the Darkness. He’s a dark god-entity who makes deals with artists and then consumes their souls.
He does show some ‘humanity’ in the form of sharing with Addie that he thinks war is useless and that artists do go to waste dying early.
But we are constantly reminded that he is not a human with emotions and that his primary goal is playing this game with Addie where he wants to win her soul by breaking her spirit. And then at the end we made to believe that he thinks he is in love with her and Addie’s goal becomes to win by breaking him and showing him that he’s not capable of love.
I like that Schwab’s version of an all powerful entity has his weaknesses too. He has almost these almost human traits wrapped in a capsule of demonic all- power.
WRITING
So I’ve sung Schwab’s praises over and over again in this analysis. Her writing is magic, she’s a wonderful storyteller, she can make paint drying interesting…
But what makes her writing so good?
She skirts the villages, the farms alone in their fields. There are whole stretches when the world seems to empty around her. As if an artist drew the barest lines of the landscape, then turned, distracted, from the task.
Schwab, V.E.. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (p. 82). Titan Books. Kindle Edition.
I mean that’s beautiful prose right there. Masterful description at it’s finest.
So clearly poetry is her strength. She uses metaphor really well, but it could be argued that she dosen’t always use it concisely.
Her writing has been critisced for being two flowery and I think that’s because this book is pretty heavy handed on the metaphor and simile. Her writing style is obviously poetic but I think at times, it was slightly verwritten.
Sometimes simplicity can be just as fresh, beautiful and meaningful.
So here is another example of brilliant description, this time of character.
She teased him about his loafers, his sweater, his wire-frame glasses. He told her he was born in the wrong decade. She told him she was born in the wrong century. He laughed, and she didn’t, but there was something old-fashioned in his manner. Only twenty-six, but when he talked, he had the easy cadence, the slow precision, of a man who knew the weight of his own voice, belonged to the class of young men who dressed like their fathers, the charade of those too eager to grow old.
Schwab, V.E.. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (p. 68). Titan Books. Kindle Edition
And just as easily she gives us one liners:
Remy Laurent is laughter bottled into skin. It spills out of him at every turn.
Schwab, V.E.. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (p. 209). Titan Books. Kindle Edition.
She just makes it look effortless dosen’t she?
So great writing isn’t just about an authors ability to describe the character and setting. Great writing makes us feel and Schwarb shines brightest when she writes character experience.
“Do you still have feelings for him?”
And she wants to be honest, to say that of course she does. She never gets closure, never gets to say good-bye—no periods, or exclamations, just a lifetime of ellipses. Everyone else starts over, they get a blank page, but hers are full of text. People talk about carrying torches for old flames, and it’s not a full fire, but Addie’s hands are full of candles. How is she supposed to set them down, or put them out? She has long run out of air.
Schwab, V.E.. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (p. 404). Titan Books. Kindle Edition.
THIS is why I came book to the book everytime I put it down. To experience this depth, this beauty of experience in the written medium.
Her ability to seamlessly integrate this poetic imagry into her writing is what makes her writing so highly praised. She really packs a punch when she writes this way.
It how she gets away with a story and characters that in the hands of another author could have come across as dull.
BUT in the same vein, you can see how it could be easily over done. If every other line had some poetic simile you’re going to tire your readers, and when you really want to pack an emotional punch, it’s not going to be as effective because you’ve set the descriptive and emotional bar so high already. Like in this passage we’re given a poetic description of setting.
March is such a fickle month. It is the seam between winter and spring—though seam suggests an even hem, and March is more like a rough line of stitches sewn by an unsteady hand, swinging wildly between January gusts and June greens. You don’t know what you’ll find, until you step outside.
Schwab, V.E.. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (p. 21). Titan Books. Kindle Edition.
Is this an example of over writing? Maybe. I think it comes down to reader preference and what the rest of the scene looks like. If the scene ahead was an emotional one, I would consider laying off the ornate description of setting to provide a contrast, a bigger hit when you do write about heavy emotion. If, however your scene is not a major plot point or not emotionally heavy, this type of writing expands and adds needed depth to the scene.
I would just be wary that you don’t end up writing what they call “purple prose” which is writing that is so ornate, and flowery it draws too much attention to itself and away from the actual story. It’s the overse of metaphors, adjectives and adverbs.
I think Schwarb’s writing in this particular novel toes the line a few times. I’m not sure if this a writing style particular to this novel, or if it’s her style in general because I haven’t read her other highly popular work, but it’s definitley something I’m going to do now.
And so we’ve come to the end of my “What can we learn” from The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by VE Schwab
Overall I think this novel is full of lessons for writers. From it you can learn what excellent writing looks like, and how structure and theme can work together to weave story with a high concept premise and how characters can mirror each other to show contrast, adding depth to the narrative. And if definitely teaches us about how backstory is fundamental to plot and character but also to be wary of the interaction between flashbacks, timelines and pacing.
I enjoyed reading Addie LaRue, and I can say that its definitely worth checking out if you haven’t already
Thank you for listening. You can find the notes and transcription of this episode as well a complete list of my published works on my website ektaabali.com that (spell it out).
Next episode, we’re going to be doing a deep dive in the world of J.K rowling, and dissecting my first and greatest love. Harry Potter. So I’ll see you next time with Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. See you then!