Books Within Books.

Guest post by author Alan McClure.

If you’re a writer, you rather depend on the idea that stories are important and can have a big influence on the people who read them. Otherwise, what’s the point? A good tale can change the way you think, inspire you, spook you out or help you through a hard time. And if that’s true for readers in real life, shouldn’t it also be true for the characters in those stories? I’ve always been a fan of the ‘book within a book’. That’s the term for any story which includes other stories in it. Some famous examples would include ‘The Tales of Beedle the Bard’ being included in the Harry Potter stories, or Julia Donaldson’s ‘Charlie Cook’s Favourite Books’, which has layer-upon-layer of stories in stories before finally returning to Charlie Cook on the last page – brilliant! It’s a trick that all sorts of writers use – a personal favourite of mine is a book called If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller, by an Italian author called Italo Calvino. That book starts with you – yes, you – reading a book called If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller, by Italo Calvino, before diving into book after book, each one ending after only one chapter. And yes, it’s as weird as it sounds. In my new novel, Jack’s Well, the main character is a 14 year old called Jack Wilde. Jack is famous, because his dad used him as a character in a series of bestselling fantasy adventures which have been turned into hit movies and sold in their millions worldwide. The ‘Jack’ in the stories is six years old, and the real Jack has to deal with all the struggles of adolescence while also being in the constant shadow of his six-year-old alter ego. I thought the best way to show this was to have the real Jack reading us extracts from his dad’s books. So as well as Jack’s own journal, we have chapters from three separate Jack Wilde novels (including one chapter which is an extract from a book in that book…). Not only that, but a journalist has written an unauthorised biography of Jack himself, painting a ludicrous picture of his fabulous celebrity lifestyle – we hear chapters from this book, too. Was I just making life complicated for myself, writing the book like this? Well, yes and no. It was definitely a challenge making all the different threads make sense together. But there was enormous fun to be had as well. For one thing, I got to pretend, with the extracts from Jack’s dad’s books, that I was writing the bestselling children’s novels of the age (I wish!). I also got to create a multi-book epic series while only actually writing a few chapters – someday someone might fill in the gaps, but that’s away down the line. It’s also great fun to adopt different voices while you write. Like a lot of writers I have a whole bunch of different personas in my head, and letting a few of them off the leash was a treat. Finally, it creates a powerful illusion which I’ve already referred to – did you notice? I used the term, “The real Jack.” Obviously, ‘the real Jack’ isn’t actually any more real than any of the other Jacks in the book. (Or is he?) But by making him a reader, just like you are when you meet him, I hope to create a connection with a fictional character that you might not get if he was just a hero in a crazy adventure. Jack’s life has been hugely affected by books – and, if you’re the sort of person who’s reading a quirky, odd wee book like this, there’s a good chance yours has too.