← The Shit No One Tells You About Writing
The Shit No One Tells You About Writing
The Evolution of a Novel
00:30:20
Author Interview Gráinne O’Hare
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- [00:00]
A
Hi there. We've got a lot we're really excited to tell you about, but I'm going to make this real quick so you can get to the episode. The Deep Dive is coming up at the end of January. The lineup of speakers is incredible and the range of topics is mind blowing. You do not want to miss out on the last Deep dive ever. Then the beta reader matchup is open once again with the matchups going out early in February. Sign up to kick your creative year off with a bang. Lastly, there's an amazing writer's workbook available which will make the perfect gift for you or the writer in your life. Head to our website the Shit About Writing to find out more. Hi there and welcome to our show the Shit no one tells you About Writing. I'm best selling author Bianca Murray and I'm joined by Cece Lehrer of Wendy Sherman Associates and Carly Waters of PS Literal. Hi everyone. Today's guest is a writer from Belfast based in Newcastle upon Tyne. She received a Northern Debut Award for Fiction from New Writing north and was awarded funding by the Arts Council for the development and completion of her first novel. She has also been shortlisted for the Francis McManus Short Story Competition and the Bridport Pies and came in the top three of the Benedict Kylie Short Story Competition. She is media subject, editor of Critics Reviews for the British Society for 18th Century Studies and has a PhD in 18th Century Women's Life Writing from Newcastle University, it's my pleasure to welcome Granier o'. Hare. Granier, welcome to the show.
- [01:45]
B
Thank you so much for having me.
- [01:47]
A
Wow, that's one impressive bio. Very, very impressive for our listeners. I'm just going to read them the flat copy and then for those of you watching on YouTube, I'm going to show you the COVID of the book, which is incredible. But just for now, here our flap copy to tell you what the book is about. The book we're chatting about today is called Thirst Trap. So Harley, Rocha and Maggie have been friends for ages after meeting in primary school years ago. The women are still together, spending their nights on the sticky dance floors of Belfast grungiest pubs. Each woman is navigating her own tangle of entry level jobs, messy romantic entanglements and late nights. But they always find their way back to one another and to the ramshackle house they share. And amidst the familiar chaos, the three are still grieving their fourth housemate whose room remains untouched, their last big fight hanging heavily over their heads. The girl's house has witnessed the highs and lows of their roaring twenties, raucous parties, surprising and sometimes regrettable hookups and hellish hangovers. But as they approach the tee, their home begins to crumble around them, and the fault lines in their group become harder to ignore. In the wreckage, they must decide if their friendship will survive into a new decade or if growing up sometimes means letting go. Brimming with heart and humor, this trap is an exuberant ode to friendship, to not having it all figured out, and to ordering just one more round before heading home. So I loved this book so, so much. And I must be honest, the first thing that grabbed my attention was the COVID And we always say don't judge a book by its cover, but I'm going to show this to you. And it just seemed so simple. Simple. I mean, for those of you aren't watching on YouTube, it a cigarette that looks like it's wearing a little plastic high heel and it's like a felt purple background and a pink background and that's it. So, Granya, how much, say, did you have in this cover?
- [03:50]
B
So whenever my UK editor said she was going to sort of kick off the COVID design process, she asked me if I had any, like, ideas or, like, a mood board or anything. Anything I sort of envisaged would be on the COVID And I was like, I don't really know what I would want or expect the COVID to look like. That's. It's not my area of expertise and that's why you have designers for that. But I was like, I can send you over, like, a mood board of images that I kind of associate with the vibe of the book. And, I mean, there was a lot of stuff, a lot of Pinterest pictures of heavy partying, and I had a lot of screen caps from Absolutely Fabulous on the Pinterest board as well, which I think probably fed into the design that ended up being the final cover. So the designer then went away and got. So the piece of artwork is by this artist called Vanessa McKeown, who just, like, I could have thought for a thousand years and not come up with the idea of a cigarette and a doll shoe. But she's got this real eye for, like, weird things and combining weird things and. Yeah, and as soon as I saw it, I was like that completely. I never would have come up with that. But that completely captures the spirit of the book. Yeah, I think it's just really unusual and I hope distinctive. So, yeah, I was really happy with it.
- [05:16]
A
Very distinctive. And again, so simple, you know, so it really grabs a person's attention. I love that you use mood boards because I also use them. The funny thing is, when I was asked for my last book cover and I sent my mood boards, they were like, no, this looks way too much like ya. And they just ignored the mood boards completely. So for me, what I do is I put up big whiteboards, magnetic whiteboards, and I print everything out and I put it above my writing space as I'm writing, so that when you get those moments where you just stare into space, I'm looking at the feel of it. Tell us how you use your mood boards. Are they also printed out? Are they on your laptop? How does that work?
- [05:54]
B
They're on my laptop, I think, because I do. I do collect postcards and images and things. So I have always intended to actually have a physical pinup kind of board for that space. But I have moved, I think, a couple of times, so I've, like, not settled enough. I am now, so I'm like, I should really get myself a physical mood board sorted. But I think any time I was in a flat, I was like, I don't know if I can stick this to the wall. I don't know, can I nail it to the wall? So I've always just worked off my laptop.
- [06:28]
A
Yeah. I can't imagine working without a mood board, I must be honest. But there's a lot of writers I know who don't use them at all. So I love hearing from others who do. So could you please just read us a page and a half excerpt to set the scene and then we will take it from there.
- [06:45]
B
Yeah. So this is from the very beginning of the book and the first chapter is called Any Old Moment. It is almost midnight and the three of them are trying to persuade a member of doorstaff to let them bring a house plant into the nightclub. Maggie, Harley and Rocha take turns to explain that the plant was a birthday present given earlier this evening by a friend who went home around nine. Apparently blind to the practical challenges of accommodating a cactus on the dance floor. Rosha turns 30 next week and was informed by the gift giver that this particular breed is known as an old lady cactus on account of its white cobweb of spines. Maggie resents overhearing this information. The sea urchin crown of the plant has, in her mind, taken on the earnest personality of an elderly woman for whom Maggie now feels responsible. Despite Rocha having been ensured that it doesn't need much watering and should in fact thrive on neglect, they are allowed eventually to check the plant into the cloakroom with their jackets and Harley pays the attendant with a five pound note. She is folded into eight to stop it springing back scroll wise. In the club, Maggie notes with disappointment that the spinning pole has been removed from its plinth on the dance floor. Maggie has been coming here with Harley and Rocha since they were 18. She once engaged the pole too aggressively in a dance tribute to Wham and needed medical attention for a bruised perineum. She claimed to the doctor that it was a cycling injury and had to sit on a ring shaped cushion for a week afterwards, feeling like a humbled pet in a cone collar. That night has gone down as one of the greats in their group lore. They had gone into town on a Friday afternoon chasing a rumour that Jimmy Nesbit was drinking at the Sunflower. The rumour turned out to be unfounded and the night ended at 4am with Maggie injured and Harley getting off with two cast members for maturing production of Cats. Only Rocha had been uninvolved in the drama of it all, spending that night on the edge of the dance floor with her face lit by the midnight fridge glare of her smartphone screen messaging her new boyfriend. She doesn't use a smartphone anymore. Her new phone is an old phone without any apps or features. Her then new boyfriend is her now ex boyfriend. The two things are not unrelated.
- [08:46]
A
Love it. That really, really sets the tone. This book is hilarious, but also just so tender, so heartbreaking, just so incredibly well written. So what I'd like to pick your brain about first is your journey to publication. Because I read your acknowledgments and you were talking about like an agent taking a chance on a messy draft, et cetera, et cetera. So take us through that.
- [09:09]
B
So yeah, in my, I think in the bio you read out, it was talking about I got a Northern Debut Award for fiction from an organization based in the north of England called New Writing north. And they do these annual awards for sort of up and coming authors and they include like you get funding and mentorship and things. And so I got one of those for a couple of my short stories. And the idea was that I was going to get mentorship, which I did, to work on my short fiction, which I did. And Jenny, my agent, I think, sort of keeps an eye on the Northern Writers Awards because she's always kind of looking to see who might be someone she would be interested in reading or working with. And she emailed me asking if she could read some more of my short fiction. So I sent it to her. And I hadn't planned to send her because the novel wasn't finished. It wasn't anywhere near finished at the time. And I said, just in case it's of interest to. Here's the first three chapters of a novel I'm working on. And she really enjoyed the stuff that I'd sent. And she was like, I really like the idea of this novel. I love the first three chapters. I wouldn't normally offer to represent someone if they haven't got at least a finished first draft of a manuscript, but she was like, I have. I have a good feeling about this. So I was working with her on that towards. Well, for. Since then, basically. And I finished it sort of lit a fire under me to actually finish my first draft of it. And then I worked on it with her for a while and then it went out to publishers on submission. So, yeah, I was very lucky because not everyone has that experience with agents.
- [10:54]
A
Yeah. And there's. I keep saying on the podcast, there's so many different journeys to publication and you never know where you're going to snag someone's attention. And selling short fiction, like an anthology of short stories. Stories would have been so much harder, you know, than selling a book. And a lot of times agents are like, I really like your short stories. Are you working on a novel, etc. So, you know, you never know when you put yourself out there whose attention you're going to grab. So I love that. That was a more unconventional approach. The editorial process. Were you sending her chapters at a time? Did she go, okay, send it to me when it's done? I'm always interested in agents who are sort of editorial, how you work together.
- [11:34]
B
Yeah, I think I sent her the first full draft when it was finished, and she sent back notes and I think we did maybe two rounds of that. So she was reading it all in one go, which I think was probably helpful because I think I'd been writing it for a couple of years, so I'd been working on it in chunks and, you know, like, not really being able to see it as much as a whole because I'd been working on it for so long. So it was helpful to have that input from someone who was just reading it start to finish.
- [12:05]
A
It's great to get that objective feedback from an agent. But you also wrote in your acknowledgement about your writing group friends, and I'm a big cheerleader for beta reader groups, for writing groups, etc. So can you tell me a bit about their input in the evolution of the novel as well.
- [12:23]
B
So I met my writing group whenever, after I'd gotten Northern Writers Award from New Writing North, I was able to go on an online writing course. I think it was 2022, so there were a lot of things that were still kind of hybrid. And it was helpful for me to have like two nights a week where I was doing that and the other people who were in my session group, I think there was 10 of us in total, and six or seven of us stayed in touch after the course had ended. And we were writing very regularly. So like two or three nights a week together on Zoom. And I think we've been doing it for a year. And someone suggested one or two of us had been to the same place for like an in person kind of writing retreat thing. It's this library that you can stay at in Wales. And we suggested, like, should we do like an in person thing? So we all met up in person. Yeah, I think just having that kind of accountability and routine for a while and, you know, being able to chat through, like, so what do we want to do this evening? What. What does everyone want to achieve? And kind of anytime someone's having, like, specific trouble with one thing that they're kind of in a slump with or. Yeah, anything like that, then being able to chat it through and realizing, like, you might need to take your own advice at times as well. So that was really helpful having that.
- [13:46]
A
Yeah, support and accountability. And I also found that I became a much better writer through critiquing other people's work than actually just having my own work critiqued. Because suddenly you have to evaluate it in a very different way as opposed to just, I enjoyed it or I didn't enjoy it. You have to be able to substantiate, which, like you say, is stuff that you can then take your own advice in terms of your own work. Okay, so you have three characters on the page, one character off the page, who who has passed away, who are all pretty much the same age, they're living together. And that is so difficult to pull off in terms of differentiating the characters. If you have an ensemble cast and they're different ages and different genders and all kinds of things, it makes it so much easier. So can you tell us your approach to the character development and making sure that each of these characters was so distinct, including the character who's off the page, who has passed away, who feels so very present?
- [14:48]
B
Yeah, I think a while back before I kind of was working on the. What would turn into Be like the. The first draft of the last draft, I suppose. I was writing each of the different perspectives in the first person, which I think even though I didn't kind of stick with that as the way of telling the story, it did help me get into each of the women's heads a bit more and write from their point of view and kind of develop their tone of voice and like, attitudes towards things and how they would react to something. So I think that was definitely helpful for me as an exercise, even though it didn't pan out being a first person novel. So, yeah, I think that was helpful. I think as well, like, one thing that I find with my groups of friends who are similar age and background to me is that we will adopt the same kind of tone if we're retelling a story that we all know or a memory or something. And it's almost like this kind of hive mind thing, this lore that's embedded in our shared history. So I find that even though I wanted to have the characters have different energies and different personalities, obviously there is a lot that they've shared together as well. And there's this kind of shared language and shared memory and experience that I think helped too, if that makes sense.
- [16:18]
A
Yeah. And I love what you said about how it started off as first person and then moved to third person because I call it circling the building of your work to try and find the best entry point and that sometimes figuring out point of view, it's tense. It's like, where do we begin? Do we begin in the middle? Do we begin at the beginning? Where is the beginning? So at what point did that POV change? Was it like early on in the writing of it? Was it much later on? And why did you decide the first person wasn't working?
- [16:51]
B
I think I probably changed it to third person, like around about a year and a half before I finished the full thing, which would have been three and a half years into the writing of it, which is quite, quite a way. I think I'd done various different. In the beginning when I was writing it, it was centered around one character and the group of friends were kind of side characters. And then I was like, I'm actually more interested in their friend dynamic than this one main character's sorry excuse of a dating life. So I wanted to write more about the friends than I did about just one person's kind of interior monologue and bad one night stands. Although some of those did make it into the final version. Yeah, I think I had gone round a lot of different, like you said, kind of trying to find the right way to enter. And I'd done first person with one protagonist and that third person with one protagonist, and then first person with four protagonists, it was at one point, and then first person with three, and then it became third person eventually. And I was like, this is the one I'm sticking with. This is the one I prefer. But, yeah, I think with the question of how to kind of make Lydia, who's passed away a year before the novel, feel so present, I think one thing that I find whenever I'm reading something or like watching a film or something is that if a death or a breakup or something like that has happened kind of off the page or off screen, I find it difficult sometimes, unless the writer's done a really good job of making that absence feel present, unless they've done that, I find it difficult to be convinced by someone being heartbroken or grieving someone. I need to, like, be able to imagine what it was like when this person was there or when this relationship was still going on. So I really wanted to make her feel present. I ended up doing a mixture of kind of storytelling through flashbacks and then also little everyday things that just kind of remind the main characters who are still around of things that they liked or missed or didn't like about Lydia, who's not there anymore.
- [19:17]
A
Yeah, no, you did an excellent job. And the thing is, is that when it comes to intentionality with storytelling is, you know, you could have begun the story when Lydia died, right? If you think about it, you can start a story anywhere, but then you've got characters that are experiencing grief and you having to write more about the grief. Whereas starting, you know, a year later, when we know this terrible thing has happened and we know that they're all dealing with it in their own way. And so you can skip past that sort of debilitating part of it. And, you know, like you say, you bring the flashbacks and we feel her presence the whole time because they all live together and her room is still there and no one's gone inside it, you know. So was that intentional in your part, to not begin with when she died? Was it something you played around with, or were you very much. No, I know exactly where I want to begin.
- [20:09]
B
I think when I first started writing the novel, I had the four of them all together, and I was gonna have her die towards the end. And then it just. It felt. The more I wrote of it, the bleaker it felt that that was what it was going to be rattling towards So I wanted to change it around and have it happen off the page. And I think in terms of setting it a year after it's happened, I think it was maybe trying to combine these things of, like, there's not an expiry date on. On grief or something like that, or it's not linear and it doesn't have an end point necessarily. It just changes. So I think I wanted to kind of have these characters feeling like, you know, oh, we should have got over this by now, or we should. We should have made some kind of change after, you know, we've passed the point where it's cute and acceptable to be just really distressed over this horrible thing that's happened. And I think even if their friend hadn't died, they're still at this point in their life where they're sort of starting to think because they're turning 30, they're like, we should be past all this kind of behavior by now. We should be more grown up. We should, like, own a house instead of renting this horrible, mold, cursed place. So, yeah, I think it was kind of trying to show, like, how they were feeling versus how they thought they maybe should be feeling, how they were repressing things.
- [21:43]
A
I love hearing about the evolution of it because so much of writing a novel is moving things around. It's constantly moving things around and trying to find the entry point and realizing that not the entry point and things shifting. So for me, that's always incredibly fascinating as well, is, you know, what you've just said is. What I realized with this book is with a lot of books, we see a huge change in the characters in terms of their character arc. Who they are at the end is completely different to who they are at the beginning. What I found satisfying about this book is that we did see them change. There were changes, but it wasn't like a complete change. It was like they had changed, but they were almost still the same, which to me felt much more authentic and true to life. Was that something, again, in terms of intentionality that you were aiming for?
- [22:36]
B
Yeah, I think because the story had been one of this kind of chaos and using very unhealthy coping mechanisms for grief and also just for life, then I think it would have felt quite disingenuous to have the ending unless. And even if I'd sort of jumped forward to, like, years on or something, that wouldn't have, I think, clicked for me at the end of this story that I've written about the kind of chaos and feeling quite unmurrored at the end of their twenties, but trying to hang on to the things that they can that they think are providing them with stability. It wouldn't have felt right for me to just go kind of oh, and ta da, they're healed now, everything's all right, everything's better. I think I, I hope that the ending is, is a hopeful one because.
- [23:30]
C
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- [25:18]
B
You know, I think I didn't want to end it with just. And, yeah, they're gonna stay the same forever, and it's all gonna be really grim and bleak in different ways as they get older. And that's life. Unfortunately. I did want to have a sense of hope and a bit of warmth in the ending as well. Even though things. Things aren't perfect. Yeah, it was definitely intentional.
- [25:42]
A
I found it very hopeful, but also very authentic because you're going to have these crises throughout your life. At the end of your 20s, you freak out about turning 30. Then at the end of your 30s, you freak out about turning 40. You know, so it's never like, I think I wrote in my first novel that a story that's ended happily is just a story that hasn't ended yet. So I think I like much more realistic endings, which I really loved about this one. Something else I want to discuss is writing a plot with high personal stakes, but a quieter storyline. Because, yes, you have a friend who has died, and yes, they're going through dating issues and this house and whatever, but these are sort of common things that we go through. Every. Everybody goes through these kinds of things. It's not like some huge plot, plot, plot. And when we speak on the podcast, we say that when you write a quieter novel, because this is a quieter novel, it's an examination of friendship. There's so much interiority, you know, like, to. To film the movie trailer of this book would kind of be difficult because it's not boom, boom, boom happening. So much is inside them, and yet you made it feel so compelling. So your advice to our listeners who are writing quieter novels and raising those personal stakes, what would you say to them?
- [27:03]
B
Oh, that's a good question. I think good advice to bear in mind generally is just. Just that something is a seemingly everyday and not, you know, blockbuster experience doesn't mean that it's not worth writing about. I think the more that I wrote Thirst Trap, the more that I kind of began to bear in mind. I was like, okay, I've written another. Another chapter about a bad one night stand or a terrible hangover or a night out. But I did eventually have to start thinking about, is this serving the overall story? Because, you know, even though it is, as you say, like a quieter novel that hasn't got this enormous climax or a spike of an arc and then dramatic conclusion, I think I didn't just want it to be this kind of, you know, clop of endless chapters, just kind of showing the way that their lives are spiraling, I guess. So that was definitely something that I started thinking about more whenever it was getting to the stages of, okay, I'm coming towards the end of this novel now. So I do think that just because you're writing maybe more of, like, slice of life stuff or more everyday kind of scenes, it doesn't necessarily make you immune to questions about momentum or plot arcs, even if there isn't a huge, you know, roaring sense of plot. So, yeah, I think that's something. It's good to have a balance of both. I really love reading stuff that spends, you know, half a page talking about how someone feels about a particular type of drink or noticing something really small. But I think it is important to think as well. There's no point in just kind of mirroring yourself in detail for the sake of it. It's like, what is this telling you about the character and their story? If that makes sense.
- [29:09]
A
Right, yeah. And it also, you know, it makes those moments relatable. And when the character is vulnerable, the reader is like, I've been in that situation. I know how that's felt. And this has been articulated in a way that at the time, I didn't see it. And so it makes you stop and it resonates with you. And so you're able to apply it to yourself. Which I think is a point of quieter novels is that you see yourself reflected in so many of these experiences, and so it becomes sort of deeply personal. We've passed our time, but I have to ask you one more question. Your dialogue is just phenomenal. It is just so witty. It's authentic. You've got, especially with groups of friends who know each other so well and who, like you say, have law. They finish each other's sentences. They know what the other one's going to say, and if the one looks at them in this certain way, they're like, you know, I know what you're thinking, etc. So, you know, again, advice for our listeners in terms of capturing that kind of really authentic, organic dialogue.
- [30:12]
B
I think I was very scared whenever I was writing dialogue, especially because I hadn't written anything that was set in modern times. Before I used to write historical fiction where I felt like there was a lot more freedom to just make the language as flowery and kind of Oscar Wildey or Jane Austen as I wanted, because I was like, well, it's historical fiction. I don't need to worry so much about it sounding authentic, coming off, tripping off a modern tongue or anything like that. So I think I got quite intimidated and the thing that I did was try to make the dialogue sound more authentic by making it very how people would speak day to day. And it came out quite boring because people are mana and don't speak in full sentences and don't do what I've just done, which is trail off in the. In the middle of a thought. So I think it is helpful to. For me, anyway, the stuff I kind of like reading and that I like writing is something that you're like. I can believe that someone would say that, but it's the kind of thing you might like write rather than see. I'm rambling now and I'm like, none of my characters do this because I've been a bit more creative about how they speak. But yeah, and I definitely wanted to have in this book have a lot of Belfast kind of slang because that was something that felt very authentic to the characters and to the book and to me as well.
- [31:43]
A
Yeah, yeah. Dialogue really can bring setting alive in so many different ways. Okay, well, our time is up. I could pick your brain all day. I have a long list of questions that we didn't get to, but for our listeners, we are linking to Thirst trap on our bookshop.org affiliate page. If you get the book there, you support an independent bookstore and you support the podcast at the same time. Get this book, read it. It's one of my favorites of the year and we wish you much luck with it.
- [32:09]
B
Granya, thank you so much. Thank you for having me.
- [32:12]
A
Cece Lira is a literary agent at Wendy Sherman Associates. If you'd like to query CC, please refer to the submission guidelines@www.wsherman.com. carly Waters is a literary agent at P.S. literary Agency, but her work on this podcast is not affiliated with the agency and the views expressed by Carly on this podcast are solely that of her as a podcast co host and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, policies or position of PS Literary Agency. Hi there. We've got a lot we're really excited to tell you about, but I'm going to make this this real quick so you can get to the episode. The Deep Dive is coming up at the end of January. The lineup of speakers is incredible and the range of topics is mind blowing. You do not want to miss out on the last Deep Dive ever. Then the beta reader matchup is open once again, with the matchups going out early in February. Sign up to kick your creative year off with a bang. Lastly, there's an amazing writer's workbook available which will make the perfect gift for you or the writer in your life. Head to our website the Shit About Writing to find out more.