Today I have the huge pleasure of welcoming Jane Robins, author of White Bodies to the blog to talk about her character Callie. Jane’s book is out now and available to order. One thing that I can promise is that you are in for a treat with this book – the words sinister, twisty and addictive do not do enough to explain this book. Read it if you dare.
Today Jane is talking about Callie, the frist character she created for White Bodies. Read below to find out more – I promise there are no spoilers.
Callie
Callie, the narrator of White Bodies, is the first fictional character that I’ve created. I knew I wanted her to be a little strange, a little naïve – but ultimately a good and trustworthy young woman. But that’s all I had – and a mere collection of characteristics doesn’t necessarily amount to a properly realised character that readers will feel is a ‘real person’, and I felt a little lost. She hadn’t become fully formed in my head, so how could I make her ‘real’ on the page? I’m sure there are many writers who know their characters intimately from the beginning, but that wasn’t me, and when I started to write in Callie’s voice my confidence in her was low. But I ploughed on regardless, hoping for the best.
Gradually, it happened. The more I wrote as Callie, the more convinced I became by her, and the most bizarre thing was, I started to care about her as though she wasn’t fictional, wasn’t an apparition created by my imagination. Over time she genuinely won her independence from me, and I found myself thinking – Oh, Callie would definitely do this, wouldn’t do that. I found it a moving experience.
A sort of exhilaration came from being inside Callie’s head, and it struck me that writing is a sort of performance. That maybe this buzz was like that experienced by actors acting a part. I get a little thrill when readers like Callie, or at least are intrigued by her. Most do root for her, but a few readers don’t like her and I feel a little stab of pain when I read that. Rejected on her behalf.
I had decided that Callie would be quirky, but I hadn’t anticipated that some of her behaviour would be downright bizarre – at the extreme end of weird. This only happened once she had made the transition from ‘collection of personality traits’ to ‘real person that I’m getting to know’. It was only once I could visualise her, see her walking and talking, hear the tone of her voice, feel the extent of her anxieties, that it came into her head that if she ate things belonging to her sister, Tilda, she might feel less overwhelmed by her, more in control. It started out as eating torn-off corners from Tilda’s diary, and then I found her walking around Tilda’s bedroom craving something even more intimate to get her hit – and that’s how she moved on to eating teeth and hair.
My heart went out to Callie. She’s incredibly sensitive and realises that what she’s doing is creepy – and she tries hard to kick the habit and become more ‘normal’. At the same time, she’s unhappy about being weird. Like most of us, she wants to be accepted and loved. When readers have disliked her it’s because she does such strange, alienating things. But I hope most will love her as I do and realise that her good qualities outweigh her weirdness. She’s plucky and loyal and kind… I won’t say here whether the goodness in her ultimately wins the day, or whether the creepy behaviour leads to the climax of White Bodies – that would give too much away.
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