What I Learned from the Night Circus

Erin Morgenstern’s best-selling book THE NIGHT CIRCUS released in 2012 to wildly rave reviews. Every magazine and newspaper in this country and beyond could not say enough good things about it. And now, nearly 12 years later, I realize that the book did two things extremely well and one thing very badly:

1. WHAT IT DID WELL: It took the notion of show don’t tell to new heights, giving the reader delightful and delectable prose that was concise and precise, with just enough detail to keep us reading.
2. WHAT IT ALSO DID WELL: In giving the reader these refreshing descriptions, the book also shocked us with characters who were cruel and often unfeeling.
3. WHAT IT DID BADLY: It was not a conventional novel.

What we can learn from this book is that readers hunger for a good turn of the phrase; they want to read about everyday situations told in a unique way, and to be kept on the edge of their seats with ‘what happens next?’. So how do we do that? Well, not all of us can, no matter how long we’ve attempted it, but you do have something no other writer has and that is your uniqueness. As writers we must find a way to put our uniqueness on the page for the reader to gain a new perspective on normal life; to be given a different way to view life.

But we also have to write a novel (if that is your intent). The Night Circus is a series of scenes tied together but it does not contain a typical plot as part of the hero’s journey, 3-act structure or any of the conventional trappings that are expected in a novel. Yet people loved reading it. Why? Because they did not care about the structure. Most readers have never even heard of the hero’s journey, despite that it is used in just about every book they’ve read. What they cared about in Night Circus were the words. They were engaged in the descriptions.

So keep that in mind when you are crafting your next novel because you can do the same things that Erin did and still create a novel. If you do this, and bring your uniqueness to the work, you’re sure to be on the road to writing success.