CREATING REAL, FLAWED CHARACTERS

Heroines Don't Have To Be Beautiful, Blonde and Boring

The journey of a plain girl through your novel can be far more interesting. In my latest novel, ME, DINGO AND SIBELIUS,  my heroine Charlie has become more lovable and more alive with each chapter. I'm really very fond of her and felt sad when I finally put her to bed! Perhaps I'll write a sequel one day.

Here's the first chapter. I hope you like it. 

It's Monday. And it starts like any other Monday.

Mum downstairs cremating breakfast. My sister Georgie and my niece Rosie screaming at each other in Rosie's bedroom. My other niece, Daisy, screaming for her morning bottle. The kitchen radio blasting out the Chris Evans Show. And me, grumpy because my hair drier, the only one in the house that still works, is missing.

Looking into the mirror I see my Dad. As usual. With the hair drier I might at least move up a notch or two on the charm scale.

'OK, who's got it?' I yell.

Of course, I already know. Rosie, who spends hours each morning creating elaborate hairstyles to impress her schoolmates. Is it worth marching into her bedroom and trying to claim it? I've tried that before and it's come down to a physical fight for possession which Rosie usually wins. It's surprising how strong a skinny twelve year old can be.

Right now her quarrel with Georgie is escalating. I can hear them through the thin wall.

'I don't care what the others wear, Rosie, you're NOT going to school in six inch heels! Apart from the fact that you'll probably break an ankle, you look ridiculous.'

'Everybody's wearing them, I'll be the odd one out.'

'I'm sure they're not. And you can take off those false eyelashes, too. They're mine, aren't they? For heaven's sake, you're twelve, Rosie.'

'And ten months. Practically a teenager!' Rosie's sobbing increases in volume, but it's not going to soften Georgie's heart.

Who'd be a Mum? Me, I admit. But fat chance now. Thirty two already and only one proposal to chalk up. Jason Fishlock, former handyman at the Sundowners Retirement Home. Clammy hands and a noticeable squint. He must have thought he was in with a chance, being that I wasn't likely to attract anyone else.

Pausing only to give my bird's nest curls one last despairing comb through, I grab my rucksack and run downstairs.

In the kitchen Mum, a vision of cool elegant efficiency, is stirring something vigorously in a large pan. A stranger watching her might assume she knew what she was doing, despite the scatter of eggshells on the floor, leaving slimy trails of albumen across the tiles. Once upon a time Georgie reigned in the kitchen, but that was in the days when she still had dreams of owning her own restaurant. Nowadays, leaving out Mum's occasional urge to cook breakfast, our family's diet consists primarily of tins, packets, takeaways and pizzas, unless I have a day off and I'm prepared to cook a meal from scratch. The irony is that the others appear to thrive on it. I'm the only one who ever gets zits or stomach ache or lank hair.

'I'm making scrambled egg,' says Mum.

'I guessed.'

She turns the pan upside down. 'Hmm. Seems to have set solid. Still, shame to waste it. Want some?'

'Just toast for me, Mum. I'm having lunch out.'

Her eyes turn bright with hope. 'Anywhere nice? Who are you going with?'

'British Home Stores, and Alice Howell. We're taking the residents on a shopping trip.'

'Still. You never know who you might see while you're out. You should wear that nice green jacket I got you from the charity shop.'

Yeah. The one that makes me look like a leprechaun's kid sister.

'Give up, Mum. I'm not likely to meet Mr Right in BHS or anywhere else. I'm past my sell by date and I look like – like - '

'You look very nice, love.'

Nice. Not beautiful. Not even pretty. Just – nice.

'If you'd do something with your hair, and maybe a bit of make-up?'

'It's no use. I'm never going to look like you or Georgie. I look like my Dad.'

'Your Dad was a very handsome man, God bless him.'

But handsome in a man equals plain, or at most, passable, in a woman.

No one else in the family has inherited Dad's genes. The hair, uncontrollable without half a pot of gel and half an hour of blow drying. The snub nose and wide mouth. The golden brown eyes that practically disappear when I smile. The lack of height.

Georgie and Rosie have blue eyes and slender figures like Mum. They also have Mum's long golden locks, like Rapunzel in the fairy stories. It's too soon to tell with Daisy, only ten weeks old and still bald as a coot. At the moment she looks like Harry Hill without the spectacles but no doubt she'll metamorphose into something blonde, slim and elegant like the rest of the Churchill clan.

I walk past the hall mirror without bothering to look. What's the use? I'm stuck with what I am. The ugly duckling. The runt of the litter. The one that's nearly but not quite.

And if I don't set off now, I'm going to be late for work.