Let’s welcome to Birdie Song to This Writer’s Life…
Somewhere, near you, a writer is talking to their imaginary friend
Of all the tricks in the writer’s tool bag, this is my favourite: taking your characters out for tea.
My tea of choice was a fruity herbal blend, specially crafted for Djeran, the autumn season of adulthood according to the Noongar Aboriginal Indigenous calendar where I live. Arguably the best season in Perth, it’s a season of dewy mornings, cool afternoons bathed in sunshine, and red flowers dripping from gum trees.
It’s perfect for a suburban writer to quietly entertain their delusions over fresh banana bread and a cuppa.
I had a problem. In the midst of writing a sweet little romance, I found myself wrestling with two grumpy, boring, verging-on-unlikeable people steeped in angst and melodrama.
This was after five restarts and twenty-one re-written chapters. I’d started writing this book in 2021 and felt that I would literally (or literarily?) die if I didn’t finish it within the next few months.
Then I stumbled upon Bird by Bird: Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott, a famous book that I had only just heard of, because I’m not the quickest silver in the thermometer (they don’t even make mercury thermometers anymore, if that tells you anything). But there, at the end of a chapter all about the quirks of writing authentic characters, she says (emphasis mine):
Just don’t pretend you know more about your characters than they do, because you don’t. Stay open to them. It’s teatime and all the dolls are at the table. Listen. It’s that simple.
I was desperate by this point. So, what the heck, I took my characters out for tea.
Great stories stem from great characters. They’re the ones who inspire us through their aspiration, action, or relatability. They’re the ones we can believe in, who come to mind when we are at our most vulnerable; ones who help contextualise our most confusing and frustrating experiences, lighting the way forward.
My character joined me at the table, radiant and happy, dressed in a surprisingly joyful shade of pink, fresh from her yet-to-be-completed Happily Ever After. I was stunned. I had expected her to arrive with a combative face, the person I’d encountered in the first half of the book.
I poured the tea and asked what happened, and then I listened.
In spending time with our characters, listening to them, treating them as if they were real people – all within the safe, sane and consensual boundaries of research (aka. please don’t go and rob a bank because you’re writing about a criminal sociopath) – we end up developing a kind of friendship with them. Come to think of it, or the duration of a book or story, we as writers assume the role of friend.
Not necessarily the Best Friend Forever, more like that one friend who’s kind of annoying but they complete the group so you don’t mind them hanging around. Our job is to be a good friend to our characters, and serve as that “bridging friend” to help the reader get to know them.
“Sometimes people turn out to be not all that funny or articulate, but they can still be great friends or narrators if they possess a certain clarity of vision,” says Bird by Bird. And in developing that clarity of vision for our characters and their relatable quirks, we become the kind of bridging friend who can do justice to the reader–character relationship.
“Here’s what happened to me,” my character said, her vulnerability resonating with the vulnerabilities within myself. “You don’t have to tell people about it,” she added; wise, since dwelling on the past would have turned my contemporary romance into a morose flavour of women’s fiction, “but I wanted you to know why I reacted this way.”
Sometimes that knowledge makes all the difference.
The Guy from the Wedding by Birdie Song
Wedding bells are ringing … but not for them.
Katrina Lee just can’t catch a break. She’s single, failing to mingle, and spending precious weekends surrounded by blissfully happy newlyweds-to-be. It’s just an occupational hazard of working for The Wedding Elves. Another hazard? Her sister’s new business partner, whose first job as co-owner seems to be putting her off guys for good.
Liam Donovan left Melbourne, determined to start a new life in Perth. He never dreamed this would mean working with the sour-faced woman he met at an old friend’s wedding, let alone falling for her. Now he’s caught between the man-in-charge he wants to be and the pathetic loser he swore to leave behind.
The Guy from the Wedding is a sweet enemies-to-lovers workplace romance, set in the world of Somerville Downs.
Get this book: https://birdiesongauthor.com/books/the-guy-from-the-wedding/
Release date: 1 November 2024
Genre(s): Sweet romance, contemporary romance
Keywords: Enemies to lovers, workplace romance, Australian romance, multicultural romance
Heat level: 1.5 (romance.io ratings)
About Birdie Song
Birdie Song is an Asian-Australian writer from Perth, Western Australia on Whadjuk-Noongar country. She pens sweet stories featuring hopeful characters and optimistic endings (spoiler alert!). She believes love is more important than labels, integrity is a person’s most attractive quality, and that no one should be judged for putting pineapple on a pizza. When not writing, she tends to a veggie garden and reads a variety of books, hoping to one day understand the meaning of life.
Find her at birdiesongauthor.com.
Website: https://birdiesongauthor.com
Newsletter: https://birdiesongauthor.com/newsletter
BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/birdie-song