Wild Sojourn: A wordless novel by Wesley W. Bates

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What is a Wordless Novel?

Wordless novels are a subset of Graphic Stories.  These days, graphic novels and comic books get the most attention and shelf space, but the wordless novel is a genre unto itself. While graphic novels and comics use both images and text, a wordless novel employs only a sequence of images to convey the story — no thought bubbles or annotations are allowed.  Wordless stories often rely on a strong sequential narrative and the plot is expressed through body gestures , facial expression, and physical attributes, and costume. Composition, line direction, colour, setting and symbols also make up the complex and subtle structure of visual language.

Humans and other living creatures begin an understanding of the world around them through their eyes and then in time written language becomes entwined with our knowing. Visual language — from the pictographs on cave walls at Lascaux, the Egyptian hieroglyphs, to the washroom signs at the airport, remain a central element of human communication. 

I would argue that a visual story is more immersive that a written one. Visual stories don’t tell, they show. The reader can take a big bite of an image in one glance, and then after sitting with the image a deeper appreciation is absorbed. The reader becomes deeply involved in carrying the story from one image to the next, creating the narrative link with their own imagination and life experiences. That is why I believe wordless stories have a pureness in them. For me wood engraving is highly suited to visual story telling. Its scale fits well into a book format. It has great capacity for detail in a small format, and when printed directly form the engraved block it sits in the page, in three dimensions. The crispness of lines and the absoluteness of their execution take the same kind of thought and effort as a writer takes to deliver words to the page.

How this project began;

I started the Wild Sojourn project more than 30 years ago. It began as a kind of daydream while I was fishing late one lovely spring day. Originally, my wistful ideas developed into a short narrative sequence of ideas intended to be a visual break in a book that would be loaded with interesting facts and anecdotes about the pastime of fishing. Alas that book never made it to press, but I held on to those sketches.

Over the years , I returned to the original sketches, adding a new one now and then. Ideas kept coming and so the concept began to change and the story expanded. By 2013, I was looking a pile of sketches that felt like a compete story, so I rounded up all the bits and pieces and put them into a box that I carried around for a few years. Over time when I was between commissioned work I continued working on rewriting (or drawing) the manuscript.

In 2025, I felt I had a good draft. I sent it out to a group of readers and waited anxiously for their assessment. To a one, they all offered good feedback and encouraged me to carry on. And so, now I have a final draft and fresh dummy book and I am ready to launch the production of my magnum opus, WILDE SOJOURN: A wordless novel. I am inviting you to help me to make this dream a reality. Look for more information below about how you can help me produce WILD SOJOURN.

Wesley at the press in 1980

Dummy books with sketch.