CCLaP Journal #5

people. Usually the number of dramatic events is pretty narrow too. You’re not going to cover the entire length of a family in a short story. And also they’re usually focused on language in a way novels usually aren’t. There’s a real specificity, a real luxury to the way language works in a short story. Since it’s limited, language does ten different things in a short story. Those are all things I was definitely trying to bring to the book.

So yeah, without having really thought about it before, it does take the things I love about the sense of focus, of smallness, of briefness in a short story, and tries to draw it out into a novel form.

And you just brought up something else I wanted to talk about. You’re known for being unusually good at writing female characters, and being able to get into a female mindset. And that’s certainly the case with [Office Girl] as well. But again, on a surface level, your main female character is close to this stereotype that was made famous by the AV Club a couple of years ago, the “Manic Pixie Dream Girl.”

Are you familiar with this phrase?

No, not at all.

They sort of lump all these eccentric female characters in all these pop movies into this one stereotype. In many ways, the story circumstances of your character fits that stereotype they talk about. And I should explain, as the book progresses, that character becomes much more...I just found her story arc really wistful and heartbreaking, and I found it really interesting that you could go in there and show what these short infatuations by these guys towards girls like that must seem like from the girl’s point of view. I was curious about how you go about finding that in your own head, when it comes time to write it all down.

Well, you know, like most [fictional] characters, they’re based in some way on some of the real experiences we have. A lot of times you’ll take parts of one person and combine them with another person, so it’s way more like a collage or a sculpture. And I’ll reveal that that main female from the book, she’s not based on any one person in my life, any one person I once dated. She’s built from all these parts from all these people I’ve known. What’s interesting is that I think you’re talking about an archetype, this character you find in other films, probably other novels...

The doe-eyed, short-haired, hipster bicycling...

Right. You could probably sit in this cafe for another half-hour and come across three of those girls.

Yeah! [laughter] So those archetypes resonate because we have some sort of common experience with those people. They probably wouldn’t resonate if they were just complete inventions. I think that character, maybe she’s familiar in a way that you’ve seen in some films and books, but I think in this book, she’s specific enough that as the book progresses, you come to realize this rich interior life. You ask how to build a strong female character, and for me it’s no different than building a male character. You talk about the way they use language. You talk about the way they look. The wants they have. What things they’re good at. What things they’re bad at. You try to use all those parts to assemble a 90 | The CCLaP Journal