Oliver Twist: How to write like Charles Dickens
So, you want to write like ol Dickens does, do you? Fancy the idea of copying the Victorian style and crafting a most verbose story in the fashion that only Dickens could?
Well, look no further, for after my entertaining and thorough reading of Chuck’s illustrious (or notorious) second novel of work that places a scrutinous lens upon the dregs of Victorian London and does so with voracious and insightful accuracy for which an individual such as the aforementioned author of legendary status was no doubt all too familiar with, via observations through childhood and in later life, I of my own accord and for the due entertainment of myself and yourself the dear reader, shall place before you the best succulent bites of advice as the fruit may bear so as to hopefully refine and sharpen one’s understanding as to how to write in the same extensive fashion of this long ago gentlemen (whom I shall hereafter refer to as “Chuck”) in the time of the here and now.
The dear novel in question, that being Chuck’s second, goes by the title of “Oliver Twist”, or secondly, as most novels from such a period and onwards were accustomed to having a secondary title, “The Parish Boy’s Progress”. What uprising and great awakening did cross the minds of readers past and present who read in exquisite detail the realistic and most unpleasant realities befalling the middle to the lowest classes of English society, shining a peculiar light like the burning refraction of a magnifying glass upon such harsh and ravenous cruelties laid to all involved, least of all the meekest and most unwanting, innocent protagonist of which the novel is so dutifully named after.
It is always a common turn of phrase where, if one is to understand and thus rightly empathize with another individual to not only observe their views of this mortal world, but also their strife and pleasures that have shaped that fellow man like a ball of clay, you must put yourself in another’s shoes.
We must then remember, dear reader, that our dear Chuck grew up alongside the common man who, without the modern instinct to paint a visual picture within our own minds while gazing upon thin sheets of dried tree pulp and hallucinating extensively, needed to be guided along for quite sometime to contend with the imagination necessary to facilitate the mind work needed to fully appreciate a work of fiction.
It is not enough to say to a Victorian London gentleman or commoner of such dreary times that a bike sat by the lamppost on a rainy night. That just creates too much work on the reader’s behalf to develop a creative realm of imagination or independent thought, how crass! On the entire contrary, it is absolutely necessary that you inform your reader with the utmost of haste, that the bicycle is painted a dull green and leaned to upon the rusting lamppost like a drunkard draped upon it for comfort, and that the light did cast upon it like the sun exposing the rat for it was approaching a quarter and two minutes past midnight and the street lay saturated from stagnant rainwater or dregs carried from the Thames or some other specific location for which you need to either be a local, or have a map on you to understand where this bike is, at this time, currently located.
At this point the character which we follow in the current chapter, then promptly walks past the bicycle to some other critical point in our lavishly constructed plot. Now where on heaven and earth could we have possibly found ourselves other than the bowels of madness and chaos, had we not gone over in meticulous fashion, the seemingly unnecessary and trivial nature of an object that serves no immediate importance to our bulging narrative!
However, to give the Victorion novelist some relief and reconsideration to the mastery of his craft, this long-winded and tedious method in which to slow and drag the reading experience to an intricate and lethargic trudge, while it may in no favour render the passage of scene detailing and the dialogue of characters altogether akin to waiting in a long line to perform some business at the town bank, only to then have one’s teeth pulled at the end, the duly mentioned slow method notorious of all Victorian authors like Chuck (who had all most likely intended to have an immense yet silent competition to see who among them could be the most verbose and specific in their fiction like measuring one another’s literary members) actually lent an exceptional hand to the description of characters, resulting in our dear Chuck painting some of the most vivid and memorable characters to have ever been remembered since the first scribe took chisel to stone or eventually the ink to parchment.
Who now after reading the tale of the Parish Boy’s Progress could forget such distinct and peculiar individuals of such a unique countenance as the kind-hearted Oliver Twist, or the distressing and pitiable prostitute Nancy, or the grim and menacing Bill Sikes, or the crafty and zealous Artful Dodger, whose shabby clothes and light fingers are that of legend?
And if you intend to fully immerse your feet into the boots of men who were poorly and unjustly subject to the often invisible yet ever insidious prejudices that were instilled into their bones like the marrow, you need look no further than in Chuck’s devilish and altogether hideous depiction of the slithery and cantankerous Fagin, or as he is so ludicrously and unashamedly named by Chuck on numerous accounts, appropriately, or if you so choose to say inappropriately, “The Jew”, whose slimy appearances across this work of satirical fiction are so villainous and sneaky in nature and dripping with a viscous coating of antisemitism that has since been laid bare by many critics for decades, with no attempt from the author to even try to cover up such blatant brushstrokes of racial slander, that it is to the dear reader most utterly hilarious in nature to read it straight from the horses prejudicial mouth.
By this point you should also note how I, much like our friend and pillow fluffer Chuck, have developed a tendency across this written essay to hold the sentence hostage for as long as I feasibly can while making the very best of friends with the virtuous and ever continuous source of salvation for our extended paragraphs of literate bile, the comma, which henceforth must be abused until it is battered and blue and has left the mental lungs of a readers brain gasping for air as if they were to have been submerged into the depths of our own continuous stream of misshapen and festering consciousness. And if you so dearly wish, for whatever absurd reason in this the year of our lord the twenty-second year of the new millennium, to honour and truly encapsulate the style and impetuous scribble of Mr Chuck himself, I strongly suggest from one who was subject to his style from page one to page four-hundred and fifty-five, that you also include this piece of advice into your own work and put it to good use, if such a thing is possible.
Furthermore, you should also make no attempt to readjust your plot into one that is fluid and easy to read without major jumps and bounds across the infinite strings of the incoherent spiderweb of characters and plot points, drawn together by nothing more than sheer coincidence and luck.
Should the separate scenes and chapters be tied by some integral pattern, and clues to location and point of view weaved in seamlessly so as to help the dear reader understand that the change in curtain to a different scene is relevant?
Not at all.
Should we remain silent as an author in order to retain immersion for our dear reader and trust in their intelligence to follow along with a well structured and totally not slapped together sequence of events that would otherwise make no sense if not outright talked about out loud under fear that we have confused the reader beyond a reasonable doubt?
Not at all.
Should we, not only, make no attempt to review or reanalyse the structure of our written plot and prose, but also state that you are extremely aware of these faults and flaws and not only further put aside any endeavour to fix it, but then boldly and proudly admit to being wholly and terrifyingly guilty of such matters while breaking, shattering, ripping, tearing and grinding and washing away the last remains of the fourth wall via the frequent and irritating communications to the reader directly to explain to them the reasoning for your haphazard storytelling and thus duly break, shatter, rip, tear and grind and wash away their immersion into the story you’ve tried so hard to pull them into?
Why of course, because then you have truly mastered how to write like Chuck.
But one must the wonder, of course, why he is considered the greatest of his time, nay of all time?
Thank you for reading and have a beautiful day!
Daniel
