I have spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about likeability.
It’s not the kind of thing I think about that much in my day to day life. I am not really that bothered about people liking me. I try my best to not be an asshole but I am not a people pleaser. I just can’t be bothered with the energy that it takes to try to make everyone happy.
I don’t think I have always been this way, but when you grow up mixed race you learn very early on that people will just make up their mind about you based on colour within moments.
You will be the one that gets hit with the ruler and asks for it stop but get in trouble for speaking out of turn. You will be the one that needs to try and calm the angry black boy down because maybe you have something in common…? You will be the one that gets hit in the tit to prove that you don’t have boobs because you supposedly have a higher pain threshold. When the whole class, with the exception of a handful, drive a substitute teacher to tears there will be the look of surprise on the headteacher’s face when said sub says ‘Sophie has been wonderful today, she can go out to playtime’.
The list goes on, and you kind of stop giving a shit because the line between being a ‘normal’ person and ‘the angry black girl’ is the width of a hundredth of a second. If people think I’m bitch, so be it. Not my problem.
But caring about likeability is something that I have found myself doing for my fictitious female characters. And yes, the fact that I specified female is important.
One of the notes that my editor made for herself to keep track of what was going on in each chapter of Looks Real Good Now was ‘She asks AITA’ (am I the asshole). I laughed, because the summary is accurate. It is also something that I had to talk myself into writing.
Alana Fitzpatrick (meet Looks Real Good Now’s female lead) came to me with the kind of clarity that scared me. Because she came to me as a woman who knew exactly who she was. She made a wrong decision. Except she didn’t see it as wrong. It was the right decision for her. It changed her life. She doesn’t feel bad about the decision, she is annoyed that she can’t pinpoint why she made the decision. There is no concrete reason. It was black and white yet somehow still grey. Because it wasn’t really the wrong decision at all, it just wasn’t the expected decision.
I didn’t want to write that version of a woman. One who was seemingly so careless with people’s feelings. One who was overtly selfish. One who is shown to have been that kind of selfish more than once. One who can be almost callous. I didn’t want to write the kind of woman who could be summed up with the comment ‘She asks AITA’.
So I put off writing her story. Even as the whole plot revealed itself to me and I knew that the only way to get it to leave me alone was to sit down and write it. I tried to think my way into making Alana different. Making her more broken over the mess she caused. More remorseful. More likeable. Because the second I wrote this mixed raced woman as the kind of person who could be called an asshole I would feel like I had doomed her.
But here’s the thing. This plot had formed in my head and guess what, this maybe an asshole woman had a love interest.
At no point did I even doubt that Liam Mulligan (and there is your male lead) would love this woman. Exactly as she was. Yes, there is some conflict there, because everything needs conflict at some point or why even bother? But there is also understanding. There are jokes. There is love.
The reason that part of my brain was so stubborn in leaving Alana as is (for the most part, I’ll come back around to this in a second) is because if she isn’t the way she is then Liam doesn’t want anything to do with her. He needs her the way that she is. The story doesn’t work any other way.
With one exception.
The third act that I had in mind before I started felt right when I went into my first draft with nothing but a hope and a prayer. I wrote the ending, mostly because the middle was pissing me off and I needed to abandon it for a short while. I felt like it was the right ending.
But then I went back to the middle and had found that new ideas had formed and suddenly the ending no longer served me. It also no longer served either of these characters.
So I rewrote the third act. Not in a bid to make Alana more likeable, but in a bid to give them the correct conclusion.
There is always an element of fear when you give someone else a story to read that you have so lovingly cared for for months on end (in this case it was close to 6 months). The characters within the story when you have drafted a re-drafted a piece do start to feel like real people and you care for them.
And so giving them to someone else is like opening up a vein and hoping you don’t bleed out.
I’m not the kind of person who believes that the book I wrote was absolute perfection and needed no notes, but I did send the whole thing off to my editor and it felt like I was now holding my breath.
Editors are there to make the suggestions that they feel would help improve the story and the entire time that I sat and waited for the moment I got the comment that there were maybe parts where I could make Alana nicer. Or more likable. I started formulating arguments defending her and thinking of places that yes maybe I could soften her. But only a little bit. Because I know these characters so well I knew that I could pull examples of how ‘likeable’ Alana was they just weren’t relevant to the story so had to stay in my notebook and not make it to the page.
I waited and I waited.
Except when my editor messaged me she said that she was really enjoying it and gave me the reasons why. And at no point did she even make any comment on likeability. There was no flagging of places where maybe she could be different or nicer or places that she could change.
In fact there was just a deep rooted understanding of who she was as a character and how she worked well with Liam. The comment she made about the AITA thing was more just a comment on the way that Alana was viewing herself in the context that of what was going on on the page.
And as I feverishly read all the comments and editorial letter made by my editor I found myself letting out a breath I didn’t actually know I was holding (IYKYK).
Because one other person got these characters. They got Alana and that was enough.
The hardest part about starting to put this book into the world is knowing that you no longer control anything about it. But knowing that one person liked this book, understoood this book, read a lot of this book in one sitting…it’s a relief.
And now to officially introduce my main characters of Looks Real Good Now, done by Ink and Velvet Designs (full credit on my Instagram). The book is available to pre-order now and if you want to be one of the first to see the book cover (which won’t be until late next month anyway) then sign up to my author newsletter here
Jumpin’ Jumpin’
What I’m reading - It’s been a minute since I’ve done of one of these. This is everything that I have read in the last week.
ARCs read - Love Story - Lindsey Kelk (out today), Not Another Love Song - Julie Soto (out today), Dishonestly Yours - Krista & Becca Ritchie (out today)
Other books - One is Never Enough - Kali Noir, Salacious Park Avenue Prince - Ella Frank & Brooke Blaine
Currently Reading - Leather & Lark - Brynne Weaver was my reward for finishing Looks Real Good Now again (its back with my editor), The Cruel Dark - Bea Northwick
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What I’m watching - We watched America’s Sweethearts and the second (and final season) of Break Point. Plus Wimbledon started (and I was there yesterday) so watching a lot of that.
Title Inspiration - I’m just saying Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me? is very eldest daughter (with a brother) coded (said as an eldest daughter with a brother). Song is by Taylor Swift.