Today I talk to Ruth Leigh about writing effective relationships in your fiction. Ruth's book, The Diary of Isabella M. Smugge, is the perfect example of how relationships are key to any book.
Today I talk to Ruth Leigh about writing effective relationships in your fiction. Ruth's book, The Diary of Isabella M. Smugge, is the perfect example of how relationships are key to any book.
Hi, and welcome to the writing and Marketing Show brought to you by author Wendy H. Jones. This show does exactly what it says on the tin. It's jam packed with interviews, advice, hints, tips and news to help you with the business of writing. It's all wrapped up in one lively podcast, so it's time to get on with the show. And welcome to the writing and Marketing Show with author entrepreneur, Wendy h. Jones. This is Episode 73. isn't time going fast. We're going to have another short intro because I'm still trying to look after my voice, which is playing up a little at the moment, shall we say? So I've been told to preserve it when I'm doing things like recording. And so what's been happening in my life? Well, it's been a lovely sunny week. And we've been able to sit outside and do a bit of writing, which is nice. And we're getting to go a little bit further on this week. I'm recording this in advance because this week, I am going to be in Edinburgh. So as you listen to this, I will be in Edinburgh doing research for my book about Thomas Graham. And I'm sure you'll hear all about that next week, so or the week after, should I say and I am I've been having a good week really, I've been writing up a storm and that is fantastic. So today we are going to be we're going to be talking to Ruth Leigh. And we're going to be talking about writing and authentic relationships in your fiction. So a great topic to discuss before I introduce Ruth, I would like to say it's an absolute pleasure to bring you the show I do so willingly every week and I love doing it. I consider it an honour. However, it does take time out of my writing time. If you would like to support this time, you can do so by going to patreon.com forward slash Wendy h Jones. And you can do so for just $3 a month which is the price of a tea or coffee per month and I would be eternally grateful. And it would let me know that you enjoying what I'm doing and that you want me to continue. So thank you in advance if you do that. So what's our Ruth? Well, Ruth is a novelist and freelance writer. She is married with children, one husband to budgies to quail eight chickens and a kitten. Her first novel The Diary of Isabella M. Smugge came out in February this year, and she is writing the sequel, the trials of Isabella M Smugge. She writes for a number of small businesses and charities and blogs are Ruth Lee writes.co.uk. She has abnormally narrow sinuses and a morbid fear of raw tomatoes, but has decided not to let this get in the way of a meaningful life. You can find it on Instagram and Twitter at ruthleighwrites. And as you can tell from her bio, she's also extremely funny. And she is an extremely knowledgeable author. And I've had her on before to talk about freelance writing. And I'm delighted to have her on today to talk about writing about relationships in your writing. So without further ado, let's get on with the show and hear from Ruth. And welcome, Ruth. It's an absolute pleasure to have you join me today.
Ruth Leigh:Oh, it's so nice to see. Wendy. Thank you very much for having me on again. Oh,
Wendy Jones:you're welcome. You're always welcome. Your last show when you did one, it was off the stratosphere. Everybody loved it. So hey, I knew I want to talk. And I knew I wanted to have you on because your book perfectly fits what we're going to be talking about today. So we're going to be talking about relationships. Yeah. And I think they're key when it comes to developing characters. Why do you think relationships are so important?
Ruth Leigh:Well, I think they underpin everything in life. And you can write about so many dynamics put in pressures, you can hint at staff allude to things through relationship. And I think really having written is a barrier, I'd say they're the building blocks of a novel, I will actually go as far as to say that
Wendy Jones:I would tend to agree and I like the way you say you know, you can hint at things because that is so true. Just to throw away a mark can bring so much into the into the manuscript into the story. Yeah. And it can be said in a different way, depending on who they're talking to.
Ruth Leigh:What they say, isn't it show don't tell. And I realised that when I was writing Isabella and if I hadn't actually realised it until you just said that quite how much that I did it. It was the throwaway lines that said the most you know, you can write a page of text that this is like oh, but if you just write one little throwaway line from a particular character, all the readers prick up there is and think all what's really going on. That relationship.
Wendy Jones:And yeah, you can also get the nuances of what they think are different people, you know what of the different relationships by the way they talk. So know that you're right, relationships are key. So, when thinking relationships, our minds often spring to the romantic type. But there are so many other types of relationships. What are they?
Ruth Leigh:Oh, there's so many aren't there are friendships, obviously, in all the different kinds of friendships, parental relationships, the child to the parent, extended family, work colleague, school friends, all the mums and parents you meet, it taught us in school, business relationships, church relationships. I mean, there are so many on there, those ones off the top of my head.
Wendy Jones:Yeah, I mean, they're just to be honest, every I would take it as far as saying that every single encounter you have is a relationship, even though of course relationship. So even if you're just chatting to the people in the supermarket, you know, for example, I know, I would say I know some of the people that work at the checkout, but I don't really know them. I just happen to have been through the checkout 25 times. So yeah, very good point, actually. Yeah. So the relationships, all encounters can be classed as relationships, but we don't count them as that we literally think that the romantic type.
Ruth Leigh:Yeah, that's right. Which is only a very small part of life. Really?
Wendy Jones:It is. Yeah. I mean, to be honest, I'm, I'm not in any romantic relationship. But I would consider myself to have a lot of relationships. Yeah. Oh, gosh, yeah. You're one of the most relatable people I know. Right now, tell us about your book, The Diary of Isabella m, smoosh. And tell us what the different types of relationships are. They're contained within it. Right?
Ruth Leigh:It's a big question, isn't it? Well, it's about a snobbish lifestyle influencer, who when we first meet who is absolutely at the top of the tree, she's rich, she's pretty successful, happily married with three children. And crucially, she's got people to do everything for her so she can get on with being a star. So we've got a grumpy Polish cleaner brigada we've got Sofia, the loyal let you know, pair. We've got Ted, the gardener, but mainly her agents and lots of people around Isabella. And of course, those in themselves are relationships, and we find out lots about how she looks upon them. Yeah, I kicked it off. A Shin of family leave London for the country, giving me the chance to do the whole fish out of water trope. And thinking about it when I was looking at these questions, I realised that on page one, Isabella's most significant relationship is with her followers on Instagram and all her socials, closely followed by those with her husband and au pair. Sony, as time goes on, that starts to change. She makes real friends in the playground. And that means that she has to start navigating really tricky and unfamiliar territory. And that starts to help her to grow, which she certainly needs to do. And I wanted to make it interesting and like real life, where we all have difficult relationships that we think are you know, this is a real pain in the bottom. So we've got her relationship to her sister, which is very difficult. And her mother, very difficult. We've got her agent, good, although her agent is not a good person. And balance that out a bit. We've got her mother in law, which he has an excellent relationship. And I put in the extended family as well, again, lots of little throwaway remarks, and lots of different dynamics hinted at which I'm going to explore more fully in the second book.
Wendy Jones:Yeah, I mean, you've got the relationship spot on. And it is interesting. This is why I wanted to interview you because it is interesting, seeing how Isabella or Izzy develops the relationships because she doesn't have a clue to start with. You're right. I mean, she's only had, I would say I might have picked this up wrong, but she's only had superficial relationships up until this point, you know, and she'd find she has to develop some real relationships somewhere along the line to navigate this new territory. Am I right in thinking that?
Ruth Leigh:yeah, that's a good point. I mean, again, it's it's so interesting being interviewed because it makes you as a writer realise stuff about what you've written. I think the problem that Isabella has is Arrested Development, you know, started out as we all do with a blank slate born into a, you know, a rich family, but a family based on a very unhappy marriage, which is not good. However, she has unconditional love from her nanny, good. looks after her sister. She's very responsible for her. Good, but I think it all goes wrong. The development starts to erase around age 12 when catastrophic things happen. I won't say what they are, but but you know, catastrophes happen in her young life. Yeah, she carries on but then when the next catastrophe happens with her sister, I think that's when she loses her last real relationship. And I think partly, well, mostly probably the reason that she has chosen the preferred She has is that she gets affirmation. And what she sees is love, from people liking following, which, of course, is something we see in real life.
Wendy Jones:Oh, absolutely. I mean, people are obsessed with likes and follows, you know, that we think that their relationships, they're not relationship. They're not relational, social media, but they're not relationships, you know, shouting into a void often.
Ruth Leigh:It's I mean, that said, I mean, I would say that I have made some excellent friendships with people online in writing groups, you know, example, their group were on where to chat. I love those people I've never met in my life, but I feel that there's a relationship. But that's because we invest in it. We meet regularly, we have shared interests, we support each other. That's a relationship.
Wendy Jones:Yeah, you're right. You can't build up relationships in online. But you I think you need to build them up in a different way. We're all learning navigating to learning to navigate a new, a new system, especially in the last year. Yeah, you know, where everything's been online. But I think your book, I love the way you tease out the different relationships and how they're important. But you don't get it all at once. It's teased out. So you can see through the book, how she is growing, and how these relationships are growing, and in what way, so I think he did it beautifully. So that was why I wanted to interview you because this is seriously if anybody wants to know how to write relationships they need to read I'm saying this for the listeners, they need to read the diary of Isabella M Smugge. That is the title, isn't it? I'm not giving it the wrong title
Ruth Leigh:title. Yeah. Gosh, thanks. That's a ringing endorsement. Thank you very much.
Wendy Jones:Why do I need to send that to you in writing? So you can do? Yes, absolutely. I'll put it back or something. As a something somewhere on social media. Yeah, absolutely. So getting more likes. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. You'll be like you have as many likes as is available, where you are. o I'm curious, what key points did you consider for each type o relationship? Hmm,
Ruth Leigh:that's a good question. Well, I think probably the one that I first really thought about, because as I started to write her and found her voice, which I found very quickly, she, she sounded, you know, everything sounded so perfect. I thought there's got to be a snake in the garden. And I decided that it would be her mother. And so that's where I started off from, and I knew it was going to be fraught, but I had to ask myself, Well, why is it Why is that? Excuse me? You know, how would a child from a broken home, who doesn't really know if he'd loved or not not really wanting validation later in life, so I thought, okay, there's got to be a reason why her mother struggles with parenting. And we do find out partly little bit wise towards the end of the book. So I really worked hard on the very think fractured relationship, you know, Isabel wants to please her mother, and she wants to be loved and feel that she's done a good job, but she never really knows where she is. And I wrote the mother was in a quite villainous, and that was loads of fun, because I'm so used to writing really lovely, generous, kindly content. It was nice to invent someone who's just really horrible. But of course, she couldn't just be a horrible person. There's a reason for that. Yeah. So then on the other side, you have to balance that out a mother substitute her nanny, who gave her unconditional love and boundaries, but then snatched away. And I think the pain and the uncertainty of that whole mother relationship really informs a lot of Isabella's character and personality. And the other really big one, was her behaviour as a mother. That's, that's something it's interesting. That's something that people really picked up on my first readers all spoke at length about the way she parents, you know, she certainly loves her children. But at first, she uses them as props, while her opare does all the hard work and all the grunt work. And then that led me on to another very important relationship, which I think was in many ways at the heart of the first book, two women in close proximity working and living together in an employer employee relationship, but also with real affection and trust and loyalty from both sides. Although Isabella with her throwaway remarks, shows, unfortunately, because shows the rage and you should be starting to feel quite uneasy by that chapter, perhaps or is not quite as she thinks it is. So those were the main ones I worked on.
Wendy Jones:No, I think you did it extremely well, and it does show that you know, relationships can change, they can. Key points for every relationship and, and writing the questions for this. It made me think, you know, in my own books, am I looking at the relationships closely? am I working them out? Or am I just putting them together and they happen, you know, so I think it's worth thinking about how the relationships are happening? Absolutely, yeah. But also give room for them to happen. And surprise you. Yeah. Yeah. love surprises. Yeah. So what I think we've touched on this, but is available, views relationships differently as the book progresses. Can you tell us a bit about this? Yeah, yeah, that's, that's again,
Ruth Leigh:that's a really interesting question. And certainly at the beginning, it's all about how everything looks and what she can get from a person at the beginning. And that makes her you know, fairly unlikable character. And what I found really interesting when it first went out was that quite a few readers and especially the male readers, in fact, nearly exclusively, the male readers took a real dislike to her in the first couple of chapters, which is exactly what I wanted to happen. They said, Oh, I'm really sorry, Ruth. I just can't stand her which made me very happy. And the first change I think, really comes in with relationships when Claire vicar's wife in the first chapter extends the hand of friendship. And at first Isabella was quite dismissive and just talks about how she looks now overweight, really do with a chemical peyote is something that her hair, oh, my goodness, her house is so shabby. What do you think is? Well, obviously not enough to make the for an icemaker in a good coffee machine? very superficial, very sort of? Not very nice. Yeah. quite quickly, she starts to see past the outward appearances, because she's so generous with her with her friendship, excuse me. And her friendship with Lauren is another school mom and one of the playground kingpins is also really significant for her because again, it's the word I do come back to, she starts to experience the generosity of true friendship, when someone is prepared to commit and to invest time in you, and really listened to you no one really listens to her. You know, she talks an awful lot. But it's all very superficial, quick bursts, now who really sits down and listens to what Isabella m smoosh the woman has to say. So the two of them become her champions in the playground. And they, I suppose they really helped negotiate or new way of life for her, because she's the outsider at the beginning with different roles, and she doesn't know what those roles are. So by the end of the book, I think she truly loves those friends. And she mostly she doesn't change that much puts them before herself. And of course, that changes her as a person through those relationships.
Wendy Jones:Yeah, you're right, absolutely. You know, things do change their relationships, and you see some different. So you've, you've touched on this at the very end of what you've just said, but how did her character develop as a result of these changing friendships, these changing relationships?
Unknown:Oh, I mean massively, just massively. If I'd written a book about an influen er, bragging on Instagram for 12 chapters, no one would h ve read it, you know, that would be really boring. He ha to develop and change, he had to become a bit better. And a lot of that was through, ou know, really diffi ult and painful experiences, as in life. You know, unfortu ately, it's the painful stuf. He makes this change, I th nk, rather than life being al easy, which it rarely is. And o what I did, I laid a trail o breadcrumbs to give readers h nts of what was really going on in the background. An that subtle It was pretty obvi us. I think, to most readers, w at was going on in the backgrou d, was the poor Isabella didn t know what was going on. And hey didn't know what was terr bly painful for her. And I'll ac ually felt even though obviously I made her up. I felt so sorry for her. In the scene where she inally realises what's going on. It's a very painful scen. However, in a way, that was t e turning point for her be ause she became stronger perso through closer to her childr n. I think in a funny sort f way, her self esteem, almost w nt up the right kind of self e teem, you know, yes. And her hee ed relationship with her sister which was key, showed us what s e was like as a child. You know when she first started out n life, she was loyal and brav, and 100%. her sister's pr tector, is what happened in be ween the change to into the s allow person we see at the eginning. And I think the ther thing that changes he slowly, is the repeated clas es with her old enemy from s hool, who's the gossip colum ist live in New Harcourt. And th re, you see the difference be ween the online and the real, because Lavinia knew her at s hool, loads her absolutely loads her again for a very funny reaso, which I won't go into in case ou haven't read the first book. ou need to read that same as a good one. And Lavinia uses ll of his about his success to bring it out or try to weaponi e is everything is about a r ghts and rights these are all our pieces, you know, in this terrible trashy downmarke, rag, and poor Isabella has no comeback. So what does she o? It's the old story, isn t it? You can't change the o her person. And what the on y thing you can change is your eaction to them and yourself and I think is what starts to
Wendy Jones:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. No, it was a brilliant book, The Diary of Isabel and smooth and I know you're currently writing a follow up. Are you able to tell us Anything about this, I should promise you're going to be out.
Ruth Leigh:Because if you do, I'm sure the publisher is jumping up and down and say roof talk about it. Police tell you everything you need to know. It's called the trials, it was a better and smoother. It's out for pre orders on the first of October, then it'll be in the shops on the 22nd of October. And it takes up the story, just our two we left this about her in her kitchen, praying for good outcome for terrible situations, we ended on a massive cliffhanger with my, with my readers very, very cross in nice way. We'll find out what happened there. And it shows us where she goes next. So what I mainly have brother and sister in law, Toby and Vina, but I really flesh them out because they've had a baby. And we do that quite a lot more about money. And Isabel explores faith a bit more. So I'm taking this you still the same person, you know, she hasn't changed in some amazing, sweet natured, fantastic, perfect woman. She still has her moments, but she's had to really dig deep and look into herself and realise that she can't do it all by herself, and she has to change. And so it's quite a lot about that she still has her moments. However, however I send over a chapter as I write it to my first readers, and they've all reported they've been shouting at the screen as she remains blind to her husband's true nature. So it's quite a lot of that going on. All right. Oh, yes.
Wendy Jones:We won't go into that you need to read. And you should probably.
Ruth Leigh:My publisher was Instant Apostle, who are bsolutely wonderful. I love hem devotedly. And my agent is ony Collins also love him evotedly. They're fantastic eople so supportive.
Wendy Jones:Well, hello to Instant Apostle and to Tony ollins. We've had Tony on the how, actually. Yeah. Brilliant. es. What that man doesn't know bout publishing is not worth nowing. Absolutely. He's henomenal, phenomenal. person ith a vast wealth of knowledge. ight.
Unknown:My agent, obviously, i the book is Mimi, the agent and the book is awful, brilliant. J b, really a horrible person. S I had to assure Tony, that wa in no way based on him.
Wendy Jones:No, absolutely not. So my final question, because our podcasts have to come to an end, where listeners find out more about you and your books.
Ruth Leigh:Okay, they can follow me at ruth leigh write, that's Facebook, Instagram, a d Twitter. And they can visit y website ruthleighwrites.co.uk Blog twice monthly at big words and made up stories listeners can subscribe by the website. I also blog for ore than writers with an associ tion of Christian writers And I blog for authors lectric. So any of those places they can find out more about me nd read my works.
Wendy Jones:And it's absolutely worth finding out more about Ruth and her writing. Let me tell you, she's a lovely lady. And she's also an extremely talented writer. So do well, thank you very much. Refer I was about to call you, Lee then. Thank you very much. It's a boy Jones. It was a pleasure. Joining me and my senility today. pleasure having you on the show. And lovely being on. Well, thank you. That brings us to the end of another show. It was really good to have you on the show with me today. I'm Wendy h Jones. And you can find me at Wendy H jones.com. You can also find me on Patreon where you can support me for as little as $3 a month which is less than the price of a tea or coffee. You go to patreon.com forward slash Wendy h Jones. I'm also went to h Jones on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. Thank you for joining me today and I hope you found it both useful and interesting. Join me next week when I will have another cracking guest for you. Until then, have a good week and keep writing. Keep reading and keep learning