Write the Character You’re Scared Of. Alison Espach on Grief, Humour, and The Wedding People.
Alison Espach set out to write a fun, breezy book. She ended up writing about a woman who checks into a luxury Newport hotel to end her life. Here’s what she taught me about craft.
Start with one thing and follow it
Alison doesn’t build characters from the outside in. She starts with a single known fact and writes toward the rest. With Phoebe, that one thing was: she’s arrived at this hotel with no luggage. Then the bride keeps asking why she’s there, and Alison tried out different answers until she wrote: I’m here to end my life. That surprised even her.
The character revealed herself through the writing, not before it. If you’re stuck on a character, the question worth asking might not be who are they, but what’s the one thing I know about them right now?
The character you resist is usually the right one
Alison put the manuscript away for two years because she wasn’t ready for it. When she came back, she realised the bride’s line, “No, it’s my wedding week, you can’t do that,” was actually her own voice as a writer, policing herself. Writing Phoebe was her way of ignoring that voice. It freed her to write the rest of the book.
The stranger sees what the insider misses
Phoebe works as the novel’s centre of gravity because she’s an outsider. Alison drew this directly from her own experience working as a photo booth attendant at weddings during graduate school. Dressed like a guest, people would confide in her in ways they wouldn’t with their own friends and family. She had no stake in any of it.
As a structural choice it gives the reader a way in too. We’re watching alongside Phoebe, making the same quick judgements, and being slowly proved wrong about everyone. Worth thinking about in your own writing: who in your story has the most to gain from seeing clearly?
Complicate the character you’ve already judged
Almost every character in The Wedding People starts as a type and becomes a person. Alison said she’s most drawn to the moment a quick negative judgement gets dismantled. She talked about how Lila, the self-obsessed bride, ultimately helps bring Phoebe back to earth. The very thing that’s irritating about her, her total investment in small details, is also what creates the conditions for everyone else to connect. Someone has to throw the party.
If a character is annoying you, sit with it. What are they doing that no one else will?
On humour and grief sitting side by side
The day Alison found out her brother had died, she called a friend over. At some point the friend mentioned that another friend was furious at not being invited. And they both started laughing. Hysterically. The day of.
That’s what the book does. It doesn’t plan for the laugh. It just lets it happen. Be open to moments of absurdity when they present themselves, she said, because they shift something, even just for a second. Sometimes that’s enough.
The full episode is available here: