When in doubt, ask WHY

Characters are funny old things. At first, they’re mere idea carriers: a struggle or pursuit, a love interest, opposition. As the story takes shape, they become rounder, interact with others, find their purpose. But it’s not until you’ve asked one question a million times over that they become real people, and that question is Why. 

Why did you hide an airman in the boat shed and let the world believe him to be dead? Why are you staying in a toxic relationship? Why are you so resistant to discover the truth about your mother? Asking why has got me past many rough spots because it always throws up something unexpected by forcing you to dig down to the heart of the matter. 

Because characters are flawed folk, just like you and I

Take Book 3, for example. It’s a lovely Saturday evening in September 1940, and seventeen-year-old Violet begs her cousin Romy to go out on the town. Just for one night, Vi wants to dance, feel young and alive, before letting her mother marry her off to a stodgy suitor. Romy is reluctant — there is something restless in the air that evening, which we later learn is the first devastating day of the London Blitz — but Violet pleads and pushes and finally they go, kick-starting 400 pages of drama, tragedy, friendship and love that will reverberate from 1940 across the decades to 2004. 

And the question is, what are they going to do about it?

For some reason, I kept getting stuck on this opening. I love Violet as a character, she’s funny, impulsive and clever, but this dancing thing seemed needlessly reckless, and it bugged me. Why did she have to go? What could be so important about this one night to warrant the consequences? But then I finally got it. It’s that very question that is actually the overall theme of the entire novel: What price are you willing to pay for your freedom? It all suddenly fell into place, and then I just went with it: Violet gets more reckless from here, things become a whole lot more complicated — until she finally finds freedom in the most unlikely place. 

This picture was taken on 7 September 1940, the day Book 3 opens. It was the beginning of the London Blitz, which was part of the aerial bombardment of the British Isles from September 1940 to May 1941. On that day, which was later known as Black Saturday, there were two air raids. One in the afternoon to set East London and the Docklands on fire (seen here clearly, past the Tower Bridge), and a second raid at around eight o’ clock, where the fires guided the German bombers to their targets.