Something doesn't seem quite right.
Welcome to Not Quite Right.
My name's Ed and I'm Amanda, and we are at Words on the Waves where we
spoke with Marmee Blue.
We spoke with Marme about her work as a novelist as well as her workshops on
writing family drama and what compels people to want to write about family,
as well as getting her tips about writing unlikeable characters.
So here is our discussion with Marme Blue.
We're here at Words on the Waves with Marmay Blue and you're part of the
writing about family session.
So tell us about that.
Yeah.
So my latest novel, The Rest of You, is a multi generational story.
It's kind of set in present day London.
And then it also goes to the mid 1990s in Ghana.
OK.
And it follows like one family and how one thing that happened in the mid 90s
has an impact on the present day character.
So is this fiction?
Non fiction.
Very fiction, very fiction inspired by many family
stories.
OK, I would say.
But yeah, definitely fiction.
Yeah.
So I, your workshop is all about writing about
family, right.
Yes.
So what were some of the, I guess, key takeaways that you wanted your
attendees to?
Yeah, I kind of, I wanted them to think about rather than
like the structure of a story, whatever story is really think about what
happens when you're in a family.
Mm Hmm.
And especially if you're writing family stories and it's very common,
I think Australia has a big interest in non fiction actually.
You guys are like really up there with that.
And I think people are really interested in true stories.
So a lot of people are writing about real family stuff and their real families.
And so I wanted them to think about kind of drill down into what happens when
you're in a family.
What role do you play?
How does that ripple reflect happen and impact other things that happen in the
family.
So starting with the family almost as the character or the.
Yeah.
And working back out from there.
Yeah, exactly.
And because people are writing real stories, it can be like,
I've got all this information, but actually I don't know how to make a
story out of it.
And so I kind of the workshop is about helping you focus on maybe it's 1
character, maybe it's contextualising the history of
the family and or maybe it's just focusing on the conflict and building out
from that.
And do you have any references that you like to show?
Like which books do you think that that's been done well?
Oh yeah.
It's like, who's your favourite child?
Well, OK, so there's a book called Son of Sin by
Omar Sakhar and I think he writes about like this big family relationship that's
kind of chaotic and traumatic, but also very there's like a growth and
change.
I think that shows like multi layers of a family.
There's this other book called When We Were Birds by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo and that
is like it's told from two different characters perspectives and they have two
very different families, but they have two very big
responsibilities in their families.
And I just think that's another really good way of like like family.
I like this idea of starting with it.
It's almost like the framework or the skeleton of the stories,
these these family relationships.
How do you find that that works then in tying it up into a satisfying story?
Well, that's a good question.
And I think you have to be clear on why you're writing the story in the 1st place,
especially when it's about family.
Like inevitably our own stuff is going to go into,
anything we're writing about is going to go into it,
but especially when it's about family.
So I think helping to focus the narrative is usually just about having an answer to
that question.
Why am I writing it?
Why does it have to be me that's writing it?
What am I trying to reveal in writing this story?
Because if you don't really have those answers,
then you're just recounting facts rather than, oh,
actually I want to reveal this thing and I want to tell this.
Really interesting story and that can be the challenge probably in in all sorts of
types of non fiction writing, but in memoir in particular,
like trying to discern the story rather than just the interesting things that
happened.
Yes, yeah, yeah.
And I think one of the things that I find easiest is to help with like a really
structural framework of just what is your timeline that you're covering?
Because you can't.
We'd lovely to go from zero to like.
And then I was 75.
But actually that's a lot of information versus actually, is it about this.
During your teenage years or this.
In the history of your family that's really that you really want to focus on?
Because I feel like that's where the most kind of meaty bits of the story come out
and you're a bit more focused on the time, but you're talking about yourself writing
fiction about families.
So how does that differ?
I don't know that they're that different.
I think my story was impacted by obviously a very like personal experience
with family, but also friends experience as a family.
And also the focus of my novel is very much focused on children of immigrants.
And so there's that whole, the migration part of the story is a big
factor.
So I think when I'm fictionalising that I'm more thinking I'm focusing on themes
rather than this family member.
And I'm not trying to make a character based on someone I know.
I'm actually just thinking about the contextual things that happened and how
that influences what a character could become.
Hmm, so looking at the themes that you have
experienced or that your families experience and creating new characters to
express those themes without implicating anyone in your family.
Exactly.
Yeah, maybe that's a challenge of of writing
family based fiction is your family will get to read write as well.
Yes, that is a question I get every single
time I run this workshop and it came up again this morning as well.
You just have to really think about what's the most important part of this
story.
Is it that I write down every single detail about this person and, you know,
their height and their, their, you know, or do I need to go into the detail of
just the emotions and the impact of some of the actions that they did?
And can I build a character around that while still keeping the things that I
think were most important about that person?
When you're running your workshops, what do you think motivates most people
who like, seek to write about family?
Is it characters?
I can guess trauma.
I'm going to guess resentment.
Yeah.
Working through issues.
Yeah.
Working through the ****.
That's it.
Unanswered questions.
That's a big one.
That was that was definitely my most motivation for writing about family was
kind of like the gaps that come with the migration stories and the things that,
as I said, like child of immigrants.
There is an element of my elders story that I am never going to know because I
live in AI grew up in a different place with a different culture.
And there's always going to be like a gap, but the gap is widened when it's not
communicated or, you know, that kind of thing.
So yeah, it's usually unanswered questions and
yeah, and curiosity and wanting to often
probably know yourself a bit better as well.
Yeah, true.
Is this a session that you've done elsewhere?
Yeah, I've done it a few times a bunch of
different places, UK, Australia, But I do, I also run like workshops on one of my
favourite workshops that I run is like complex Characters, Yeah.
Which obviously is some crossover just because I really like digging into how to
write, like an unlikable character and what that
actually looks like when you write one that's really,
even if you're actively rooting against them,
that's a really good thing to kind of get to the depth of that.
So to care, to care.
Yeah.
Even if you like rooting for them to fail, that's great.
I like characters like that.
Do you like to write unlikable characters as the main protagonist or as like side
characters?
A bit.
A bit of both, I would say.
I like to think of a yellow face.
Yeah, very wholly unlikable character.
But you have a such a depth of understanding of why she is the way she
is that you still care about what happens to her.
Even if you don't want her to succeed, you still care what's gonna happen.
She feels like a real person.
Yes.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, those are my favourite types of like,
workshops.
I guess people can relate to unlikable characters because a lot of people
recognise their own problematic traits.
Exactly.
So to see that reflected in fiction can be confronting, I guess.
I think a lot of a lot of people push back often on when characters are
unlikable in in books and even like TV shows and movies,
like they consider that a strike against the the show.
But they're really important to have.
And I think what makes an unlikable character work, as you've said,
is for them to be human and for the reader to understand that they're not
just like a cardboard cut out for no reason.
Like they have their own motives and their own reason for being how they are.
And we can all relate to those kinds of causes,
even if the effects are not the same for us.
Yes, 100%.
And I think when I'm running those kinds of workshops,
I always like to use scenarios where you've got 1 character playing off
another character because that's often a really simple way to show the reader,
like, reveal some more things about this really
unlockable character is how they interact with other people who are not
unreasonable and how, you know how those two things like knock
heads or like, if I think about like, TV, some of those like really successful
series.
This is a terrible example.
I'm gonna give.
Go for it.
OK, Grey's Anatomy, bear with me.
A lot of people do not like the main character, who is Meredith Grey,
but she doesn't need to be likeable.
In fact, her unlike ability is the point because
everyone else around her gets to be then multidimensional and feed off of her.
You know, whatever her unlikeable things that she
does, it makes it interesting.
You still, you need that character that's going to
bring conflict.
That's true.
I think that's quite a fun thing to do when you figure out how to do it.
Absolutely.
And so are you working on your own writing now as well?
I am, yeah.
I have another book hopefully coming out next year.
OK, yeah, I'm looking more in the speculative
fiction.
Oh, OK.
I'm changing.
So yeah, yeah, I like to read around.
Yeah.
So I'm, I'm working on my my next few things.
Alright, so when we say speculative fiction,
are we talking dystopia?
Are we talking?
I don't know.
We, we are, we are talking dystopia.
OK, you probably don't want to say that.
Yeah, yeah, I know I'm being, I'm being coy.
Not not on purpose.
I'm just like, oh, but yeah, it's dystopian and it's my first kind of
world building and much more.
My 2 novels are very like character focused, character driven.
And this is, but in a very different way, said much more about the world as well.
Yeah, interesting.
Like it's quite a leap to me.
It seems like a big leap.
Yeah, yeah.
Of focus and just approach to storytelling.
Do you apply any of that same logic of writing about family to the speculative
fiction?
Oh yeah, yeah, definitely.
It's a hard thing to do where I I usually like those are like if I'm thinking of a
story are usually the characters usually come first.
And this was the first time where the world came first before the characters.
And so what's, I guess interesting for me is thinking in
the same way that I think about the layers of family,
which I think just sit in all kinds of stories,
is also thinking about how then these characters interact with the world.
If I'm really trying to make really fulsome characters,
I think that's become a thing I'm learning to do that I feel have been
quite interesting because it's bringing out much more about characters than I
realised.
I'm wondering as well.
So in your workshops about family writing, have you ever been challenged or
surprised by something that an attendee has put to paper that has either
challenged you from like a writing perspective or just from a girl?
I mean that across the board, all kinds of workshops,
there's been a lot of like, what the hell?
But you know, not the family one.
I would say the family one, there's been some like amazing,
like writing that's come out.
The family one, I would say when they just start thinking
about differently or they're writing into a different scenario and it kind of
unlocks something for them.
Those are like my favourites.
I also teach like AI haven't taught it for a while,
but a romance workshop because my first book has a lot of romantic relationships
and I I did teach one, which is often the case.
The majority of the attendees were women and then there was like one man.
That's usually the ratio for writing in my experience.
The task was about writing a sex scene, which, you know,
is tricky if you've never done it like takes practise and you figuring out what
you're doing.
And it was just a very detailed counting.
Yes, right from unfortunately the only male.
Yeah, in the in the.
And I I give it to he was really trying.
I don't think he he wasn't trying to be salacious.
It was just he was embracing the challenge.
Yeah, yeah, he was embracing.
But this is this is what, you know, that's where he was at with it.
And it was just kind of a you know, when you're the facilitator,
you kind of have to be like.
And how do I now.
Yeah.
Manage how everyone else gets to react to this Really detailed.
Why am I picturing that scene from my girl where she goes to the writing
workshop and there's that couple that are reading the really sexual story?
Anyway, that's what I'm picturing.
Yeah.
But that, you know, but nothing, nothing's so, so crazy.
But yeah, that's, that's kind of what comes to mind.
Good fun.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, yeah.
Thanks for having your chat with this one.
Thank you.
Thank you for chatting, B Thank you.
This has been a special presentation of the Not Quite Right Podcast in
collaboration with Words on the Ways Riders Festival.
Check the show notes For more information about Words on the Waves and the books
mentioned in this episode.
If you're new to the podcast, please join us again for our regular
episodes where we talk about media, culture, and the art of writing.
Something doesn't seem quite right.