Mary Stewart's Thunder on the Right

Tart Words: Writers read. Readers bake. Bakers write.

In this episode of Tart Words, Suzanne Fox and Linda Hengerer are discussing Mary Stewart’s book Thunder on the Right and how she uses omniscient point of view, how her protagonist differs from her usual protagonist, and why we think this might have been the first book Mary Stewart wrote.

It was first published in 1957 by Hodder & Stoughton and is now available in ebook editions.

Description from Amazon:

High in the rugged Pyrenees lies the Valley of the Storms, where a tiny convent clings to the beautiful but lonely mountainside. Jenny Silver arrives seeking her missing cousin, and is devastated when she learns of Gillian's death following a terrible car accident. But Jenny's suspicions are aroused when she’s told the blue flowers ornamenting her cousin’s grave were Gillian’s favourite. Jenny knows Gillian was colour-blind - and so starts her mission to uncover what really happened to her.
The growl and roar of thunder rolled an re-echoed from the mountains and the sword of the lightning stabbed down, and stabbed again, as if searching through the depths of the cringing woods for whatever sheltered there.

Takeaways for writers:

In Thunder on the Right, Mary Stewart uses an omniscient point of view, a departure from her more common use of first-person point of view. Jenny Silver is younger than the protagonists in most of her novels, and also more sheltered. Think about how the relative age of a character skews their perspective when they’re leading the reader through a story. Written after World War II ended, think about how events, whether local or global, impact the characters and their actions.

Exercises for writers:

Point of View – In general, do you prefer reading first- or third-person point of view? Do you like an omniscient narrator? Do you have a preference when you’re writing? Write a scene from different points of view and see which you like better. Also note which way feels most natural to you and if it fits the genre you’re writing. How does using either point of view affect the reader – does first-person bring them into the story more than using third-person? How can you use either point of view to make the reader feel like they’re living the story? If you write in third-person, do you go into one character’s head or more than one? How does using more than one character’s point of view to tell the story enhance or muddle the story?

Characters – Think about your work in progress, and how the various ages of the characters play into the story. Can an older character be more naïve than a younger one? Why or why not? How do you show that?

Unusual Settings – A convent isn’t an intuitive setting for a mystery involving a missing woman. How does the convent play into the story? Are you writing a story that might benefit from an unusual setting? Whether your settings are unusual or not, how do you use Setting to enhance the story’s narrative?

Historical Time – Thunder on the Right is set shortly after the events of World War II, and the aftermath of that conflict plays into the narrative. Whether you write historical fiction or not, how do you factor in the current events of the time you’re writing about? Do you ignore them, keeping your fictional world apart from actual events?