Too much of myself in my story

"It's just such a Bindy story!"

This was the statement that stuck out of a conversation between myself and Tim. After a week where I moved from work, to packing to sleeping and back again for Four days straight- Tim and I had a well deserved date night. We found a little path by one of the many gorgeous bays of our adopted city and walked and talked. It was lovely.

As sometimes happens, our conversation turned to my story. I had been getting into writing again (the inspiration always seemed to hit when there are less fun jobs like packing to do), and Tim was asking questions about the story.

As Tim is the only one I tend to discuss the particulars of my story with, I really value that time. Idea's rise and fall in those conversations- as saying things out loud that seem really great in my head often put them in a harsher and truer light.

Now Tim is quite happy to leave the novel writing of the relationship to me- but he actually very perceptive about creative things. He's also easily bored (lucky I'm such an exciting person!) and so he knows what draws you in- because it needs to be a page turner or a really fascinating story in order for him to keep going.

His comment about it being a "Bindy" story was explained something like this. "You like to be happy. And so you write things that would make you happy, that would make you go "ahhh". Your characters are always asking questions, because you love questions. You want to love all your characters, so you make them all good, or pretty good, and then just make one or two really bad. But you don't read a novel because the whole things makes you happy. Things have to annoy you, things have to shock you, things have to make you cry. Otherwise there is no suspense"

So true!

I remember when i was in my early teenage years my sister commented that in anything I write my main characters were always exactly the same as me. An old novel I started writing at Uni was written from the perspective of four very different girls and their take different takes on their life events and friendship. It began not as a novel at first but as an exercise to teach myself how to write in different voices. It was an awesome experience, to take a known weakness in my style and skills and just throw myself at the task of beating it.

So my next challenge is to make my story less "Bindy" and more sad, annoying, shocking and suspenseful ;)

love B
PS Bindy is my family nick-name- in case that whole post didn't make sense!