2023 Fellow Katie Kalahan discusses their work with BookEnds mentor Eve Gleichman, whose forthcoming novel Trust & Safety (Dutton, co-authored with Laura Blackett) is available for pre-order now. 

Sometimes what’s obvious to outsiders is invisible to us. In my BookEnds novel The Flicker, narrator Ida becomes romantically and professionally entangled with Lolo, who might or might not actually care about Ida. Early readers, including my BookEnds podmates, wondered why Ida puts up with and even likes Lolo. 

The question of “why Lolo?” was raised once more when I was paired with mentor Eve Gleichman, co-author of The Very Nice Box (Harper Perennial). Early on, Eve identified one of the core challenges of my novel: how to build tension in a romantic relationship that savvy readers will realize is never going to work. Eve asked me more than once why my narrator liked the love interest, saying, “Is it just because she’s hot?”

Readers tend to like Ida, and since Lolo doesn’t treat Ida particularly well, readers tend to not like Lolo. So how could I make Lolo compelling to my sweet readers who want to step into the novel and save Ida? According to Eve, “being hot” isn’t enough. Eve wanted to be compelled by Lolo the same way that Ida is. They wanted to get it, to understand why Ida keeps returning to Lolo. They wanted to fall in love with Lolo, as a reader, and then have their heart broken. 

Picture me, grumpy in the general direction of this feedback. When I get grumpy about feedback, often it’s because I haven’t done a good enough job (yet!) of teaching my readers how to read my book, leading them in the directions I want to lead them, and being a trusted guide through the world of my novel. 

Eve counseled me to look at novels that create compelling, complicated characters well, including We Do What We Do in the Dark by Michelle Hart, and The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith, pointing out that in both of these novels, the power imbalance which is in the love interest’s favor at the outset shifts to the narrator by the end. When the power balance shifts, the narrator can see the situation more clearly, and, now holding power, is no longer entranced. 

Likewise, in Eve’s novel The Very Nice Box, co-written with Laura Blackett, the narrator also gets sucked in by someone who turns out to be both less and more than what they originally presented. How, Eve asked me, might I do this in my novel? They asked me the following questions over our sessions, which I copied down close to verbatim:

• What is it about Lolo that is so captivating to Ida?
• Why does Ida continue to pursue Lolo?
• What is Ida getting from Lolo?
• Why wouldn’t Ida leave? 
• What does Ida like about being in this situation with Lolo?
• Why doesn’t Ida demand more from Lolo?

Eve also guided me to commit to telling the story from start to finish, reorganizing the book from the fragmented narrative I had been trying to use into a chronological one. Though seemingly unrelated to making Lolo more compelling (but not less hot), shifting to a chronological structure was key in deepening Lolo’s character. The new structure forced me to slow down, which forced me to spend more time with Lolo. As I moved through revision in this new structure, I considered how the characters moved between scenes and how each interaction led to the next. I had to trust that I could hold the reader’s attention. 

I realized that I had been jumping around in the narrative because I was worried that my readers would get bored if I went step by step. Eve assured me that my readers would not get bored, and that I could linger in scenes and linger in specificity. By telling the story chronologically, I was able to explore more fully the weirdness and awkwardness and fits and starts of their romance. I made Lolo weirder, their interactions more awkward. I lingered in the moments of friction between Lolo and Ida. This way, readers discover Lolo as the narrator discovers Lolo.

As writers, we teach readers how to read our novels. The question “why Lolo?” that I had been receiving from readers like Eve was not the question that I wanted my readers to ask. So, in revising my novel under Eve’s mentorship, I explored my own questions about the narrative, in hopes that readers would join me in asking the same questions. When Ida finds herself unaccountably drawn to Lolo, what is it about their dynamic that feels familiar? What feels exciting? How do people behave when they feel as though they don’t have choices? What do we do when we get exactly what we think we want?

Perhaps Lolo is fascinating in the same way that grifters or cult leaders are fascinating. From the outside it’s easy to say that we wouldn’t fall for it, but from the inside it looks like the only obvious choice. To bring readers to the inside with Ida, I’ve found that making the novel chronologically structured allows me to reveal information more intentionally. Although readers will naturally have more distance and perspective than the narrator, by keeping what the reader knows and what the narrator knows more closely aligned, the reader’s experience of Lolo will more closely track to Ida’s experience of Lolo. 

As I continue my revision process now, the question I am facing is: how far am I willing to go? In order to make Lolo break hearts, first I have to make her someone readers might fall in love with. It’s funny, I have to do to readers what Lolo is doing to Ida, drawing her in before she can realize who Lolo truly is. 

My yearlong BookEnds fellowship and mentorship with Eve Gleichman built my confidence, helping me understand that I am sculpting an experience for my readers, and that storytelling includes more than a splash of manipulation. I’m writing a book about two characters who are, in their own ways, manipulative. As I work to illustrate that in the world of my novel, I am coming to terms with the understanding that I may need to use some of their tools in order to tell their story. 

Katie Kalahan (she/they) has a 2021 MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington and a 2013 BFA in Printmaking/Drawing and English Literature from Washington University in Saint Louis. Katie was a 2022-2023 BookEnds fellow at Stony Brook University. Their work is published in Crosscut, Witness, and Split Lip, among others.