Mo Fanning - British writer and comic

Writing

Difficult to put down …

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Rebuilding Alexandra Small

This is a review for Rebuilding Alexandra Small from Ceri’s Lil Blog, as part of my book launch blog tour.

I was drawn to this book as I was intrigued by the emoji style cover and the title. I wondered how each fitted into the plot, and how Alexandra Small goes about rebuilding her life as this was something I had to do, to a certain extent, a couple of years ago.

My thoughts:

I do love a revenge story, so I was taken in by the blurb. However this revenge story focuses almost solely on the experiences and difficulties faced by the victim, and this definitely helped me build a connection with the character of Alexandra, or “Allie” as she is known to her friends.

I definitely identified with Alexandra and in some ways I admired her as well. She is brave and hopeful following the upheaval in her life, and she is extremely strong when it comes to facing her demons and remaining on the right path.

However, I am aware that that description makes it sound like a far more serious book than it is. It does cover some sensitive subjects including suicide, alcoholism and infertility, but I think it is definitely accurate to describe it as laugh out loud and humorous at times too, as well as being dramatic and serious.

I really enjoyed this book and found it difficult to put down. I think Alexandra is a character that will stay with me for quite some time. I enjoyed following her journey and meeting the wonderful support network she finds around her. I would recommend this book to fans of Jessica Redland, Lucy Diamond and Milly Johnson.

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Think of the neighbours

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Neighbours

It’s time for the Fannings to leave Brighton and float up the country. Hopefully coming to land somewhere in the middle – far, far from neighbours.

Like Alexandra Small in my upcoming book, we’re moving from the home we’ve never really loved enough to want to make it forever. While Allie’s hand is somewhat forced after losing her job and her husband all in the space of a few hours, the need for quiet guides our hunt. I’m dread invites to ‘supper’ from former public schoolboys wearing red jeans. I end up sat next to a skinny branding consultant called Justin. We’ll chat about hot yoga, Tom Hiddleston, the hazards of buy-to-let, and the novels of Elena Ferrante. There’s always some woman crying about an imaginary problem she won’t remember in the morning. We don’t fit in.

I’ve had neighbours most everywhere I lived. In Amsterdam, we were crammed in tight, under a hockey teacher who made vigorous love each Sunday afternoon at 3pm to her otherwise placid looking companion, and next door to a man who wore very little in the house, but surely should have. We overlooked one of the five most fascinating places … to pass out wasted. Smoking strong Dutch weed is perfect if you need psychological help, but have made a conscious decision not to get any.

Cigarette stealing spaniels

Years ago, in Manchester I lived next to lesbians whose King Charles Spaniels made it their mission to steal my Marlboro Lights – I was drinking a lot back then, and found it charming.

Our temporary bolthole is my late mother’s house. Or ‘the money pit’ as I like to call it, with a leaking roof, dodgy heating systems, rising, falling and ingress damp and taps that refuse to switch off. Or on again. New neighbours have made matters worse. They have five cars between the two of them and an addiction to solar lighting. I swear the lady of the house is on a mission to create the summer version of those Christmas houses that were all the rage a few years back.

Anti-vaxxer neighbours

And they’re anti-vaxxers. It’s tempting to pass comment as they stage yet another family barbecue on people who’ll eat sausage but decline a vaccine … because they don’t know what’s in it.

Mr Fanning has used the lockdown well. He’s learned how to plaster a wall, plumb in a sink, move electrical sockets and lay paving slabs. I’ve reorganised my spice collection and reupholstered a chair. Badly. And lost most of a fingernail. Something they seldom mention in those smug YouTube videos.

There’s one month to go before we put the place on the market. By a curious twist of fate, that’s when ‘Rebuilding Alexandra Small’ hits the shops for real. I’m expecting to have the audio book on sale around about the same time, so that’s three ways to show you love me more than any of those dreadful neighbours.

Rebuilding Alexandra Small by Mo Fanning

Everybody loves an unreliable narrator … don’t they?

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Rebuilding Alexandra Small

I’ve owned an unreliable washing machine, an unreliable car, and worst of all roller-coaster results from a not entirely trustworthy recipe for spaghetti carbonara. And yet I persist. It’s the same with an unreliable narrator. Make the people who live on your pages too predictably perfect, and nobody cares.

I just picked up my first advance review for ‘Rebuilding Alexandra Small‘. One thing the reader zoomed in on is the fact that Alexandra Fox is far from perfect.

“At times I felt sorry for Allie and at other times I blamed her. Allie is not perfect, hasn’t always made great decisions, and sometimes lashes out. She’s like one version of ourselves, the version we are always trying to hide. Yet even then, I envy her. Allie doesn’t suppress herself. She reacts. She says what she shouldn’t and acts on impulse… but not all the time. She is trying to pick up her pieces and move on with her life, except she’s been thrust into a state of limbo. Mo Fanning has cleverly crafted this complex environment for Allie and I was enthralled watching the ups and downs of her everyday life within this environment. I was forever guessing what she would do or say next. I couldn’t put the book down.”

Who invented the unreliable narrator?

An unreliable storyteller is a narrator whose credibility is compromised. Wayne C. Booth first coined the phrase in 1961 in The Rhetoric of Fiction. Sometimes unreliability is made immediately clear. Also, it’s better if a reader finds out about selective memory once they get to know them – just like in real life. Who hasn’t made a friend with hidden depths?

When writing Allie, I wanted to create someone readers engage with on a deeper level. First person narratives put the reader in the storyteller’s mind, and transmit their exclusive take on the world … but everyone has their less shining moments, and having Allie confront her past is my way of framing an up-down-up recovery. I didn’t want her unreliability to jump out of the first page, rather it should reveal itself in unexpected ways.

Quoting the rather lovely Rachel Barnard once more:

“Allie wasn’t always nice to others growing up, so perhaps the way people see her and treat her now might be some kind of karma, but she doesn’t deserve it.”

 

Rebuilding Alexandra Small by Mo FanningRebuilding Alexandra Small is available this month to request on NetGalley.

It’s also on sale for advance orders as both an eBook and Paperback at all good booksellers.

 

16 ways for writers to create a rounded character

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Character research

One thing I’ve come to accept with writing is the absolute need for character research. And by this, I don’t mean heading over to Google to find out about the town in which you plan to set your story, or looking up how likely it might be to die from a well-aimed gun shot. The single most vital bit of research any writer does relates to the people who populate their pages. Not knowing enough about the characters in your story is the biggest cause of writer’s block.

The obvious objection here is to say: How can I research a character I made up?

Soap writers access huge detailed fact files built up on each and every on-screen face so nobody acts out of character. As a writer, you need to do the same.

Each time I get an idea for a new project, I write the first few chapters (secure in the knowledge not one sentence will make the final draft). This is where I stop.

By then, I’ve created a handful of characters – or in my case, it’s more like twenty or thirty. This is where the initial character cull needs to happen. At least half need to go (or find themselves relegated to bit part roles – often without names).

What you’re aiming for is one or two lead characters and perhaps two (or three at most) supporting ones.

Character 16-point checklist

When you’ve agreed with yourself who gets to live, this is where research starts. My target is to write 2-4 pages on each. This is where you dig into your imagination, but also Google to understand who the character is, what drives them and what has happened to them in their life, where they come from and what sights, sounds and smells they recall and carry with them.

For each character, think about:

  • Their age
  • Where they live when the story starts
  • Background
  • Physical description
  • Typical clothing (here I like to create 5-10 outfits to copy and paste later)
  • Current and former occupation
  • Key relationships
  • What motivates them?
  • Describe their personality
  • Do they follow any hobbies?
  • Do they have habits or twitches/tics?
  • Why is their role in the story?
  • Does anything scare them?
  • What drives them on?
  • Describe their biggest secret
  • What do other people see when they look at this character?

I’m not going to say you must complete every single one of these for each character. Lesser ones don’t merit this level of depth, but having a place to check back and make sure you gave them the correct eye colour or the right hairstyle will save you hours of flicking through chapters. And avoids that horrible day when an editor (or worse a reader posting an Amazon review) points out your glaring error.

As a bonus, nine times out of ten, doing this exercise prompts storyline twists; knowing I’ve created something to reveal about any character is a brilliant motivator.

How do you build your characters? Share your tips.

Photo by Russ Ward on Unsplash

Planner or pantser – what sort of writer are you?

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Writer who plans

There are two schools of thought for a writer working on a story – you either plan – and work out in advance what happens when. Or you don’t. You pants your writing – derived from the phrase ‘flying by the seat of your pants’.

After years of trying to be a don’t care writer, I’ve realised the only way I can ever finish a book is to plan. If I write and see where the characters take me – usually into a deserted parking lot where one of them pulls a gun and tells me to stop bothering them with my adverb-free prose.

That’s not to say there isn’t room for freestyling – especially when you first work on something fresh. In fact, playing things by ear is essential.

Brick walls

My creative process tends towards the same pattern each time I try to work on a new novel. I start off fine, loving everything about what’s clearly the best thing I’ve ever written. And then I run smack into a wall – usually around 15,000 words. The dreaded ‘writers’ block‘. If I climb over, I carry on, only to hit another somewhere between 30 and 35,000 words. It’s only when I’m safely past the 50,000 word mark that I feel sure the story will reach a logical conclusion and stand a chance of making it to a full first draft.

Why do these brick walls appear?

Often, this happens because I’ve taken the current characters as far as I can. Even if I’ve worked out roughly where the narrative should go next, I can’t find a road through. Sometimes, I realise I’ve grown bored with the story or the people telling it. Some might consider 15,000 words a lot to throw away, but I do this often. As a writer, I treat these initial meanderings as a passageway into writing. A chance to get familiar with my characters and their situation and work out who they need around them. Just like when you make a new acquaintance. You don’t know enough about them to determine if you want to spend six months of your life with them, or if they’ll fit with your other friends, or what to buy them on their birthday. Or even if they’re the kind of friend who makes your birthday present list. 15,000 words are usually ample for me to decide.

The same, but better

Even if every single word ends up in the trash, often the people who lived in those words survive. They might say different things or dress better (or worse) or have new homes and jobs and husbands or secret lovers, but when I start again, I understand them enough to clamber over that first brick wall. I’d say it makes me a better writer.

Next time I’ll talk about the second brick wall – because that’s where planning really counts.

Coming soon ‘Rebuilding Alexandra Small’ and if you’re up for reading advance chapters and special offers, please join my mailing list.

The first TEN people to sign up will be sent a Kindle version of ‘The Armchair Bride’ absolutely FREE.

Rebuilding Alexandra Small will be published in 2021. The Armchair Bride is now available now from all good websites and bookstores. If you’d like to support my work (and bag a FREE signed copy of any of my books), consider using Patreon.