Guest Post with Georgia Hill
Georgia, welcome. I think you're going to tell us about how you create your characters. Over to nyou!
Digging Deep – Creating a Character
Hi
everyone! It’s really lovely to be back on Jan’s lovely blog. Thank you for
having me back, Jan. Diolch.
I have to
admit to wracking my brain for a subject for this guest blog but a chance
comment on Facebook got me thinking about how I create my characters …
My new book,
which came out on the 19th, New Beginnings at Lullbury Bay, features
at its heart a florist’s shop. In it, Daisy the owner of Va Va Bloom
receives a mysterious order to deliver very specific flowers to an empty house
on the edge of town. Daisy, after having her heart broken, has given up on love
but then a handsome stranger comes into her shop and gets her romance muscles
a-twanging. Just her luck, then, that he’s buying flowers for his girlfriend. Could
it be the weird flower order and the gorgeous stranger are connected?
There are
many similarities between me and Daisy. I think we both have the same sarcastic
sense of humour, a warm heart hidden well, we both lost our fathers when young
and we both have teaching backgrounds. However, I think Daisy might look upon
my twenty-odd years of teaching with suspicion.
Daisy lost
her father when she was sixteen. She was at that vulnerable threshold, crossing
from childhood to adulthood when she was being asked to make the decisions
which would shape her later career. She was a Grade A student (unlike me) and
her specialist subjects were the sciences (very unlike me!). When the school
careers advisor suggests teaching, this is what she chooses. To Daisy, reeling
from the sudden death of her father, it seems the safe option. She’s concerned
about her mum and doesn’t want to cause her any problems by rebelling. I read around
teenagers’ grief processes and this fits into a pattern. Mum Jan is only too delighted
Daisy is headed into a secure career and encourages her all the way. Daisy
sails through teacher training but, when teaching at the very same grammar
school she attended as a pupil, begins to question her career choice. She can’t
understand why, when she was so good at learning science, she can’t teach
it very well. A crisis in her personal life leads her to make a drastic decision;
she studies floristry part-time at evening class, leaves teaching and opens a flower
shop.
As the
novel opens, she’s at that tricky stage, having run the business for five
years, of not being in quite the right position to expand and so is reliant on
Jan and part-time assistant Marion (although, if you read the book, it’s
questionable how much help Marion is!). Daisy’s working all the hours she can
and has little time for romance. And then a handsome man with dark eyes
brimming with humour, wearing a pair of snug-fitting chinos turns all that on
its head. Soon she’s re-evaluating her life all over again.
In my
research, I read that grief-stricken teenagers can make muddled or wrong decisions,
and this became the inspiration for Daisy’s backstory. There’s hardly a mention
of this in the book but that’s because it was part of the process behind
interrogating my main character when I was creating her. The reader doesn’t see
it in the book, but it informs everything the character goes on to do. Having
invested in a risky change of career, Daisy feels she has to make a
success of it, so it explains why she’s a workaholic too.
I loved
writing Daisy. She works hard, doesn’t really care much for ‘girlie’ stuff and,
while supplying flowers for Lullbury Bay weddings, doesn’t think she’ll ever be
lucky in love herself. I was desperate for her to have her happy ending. Does
she? You’ll have to read the book to find out!
About the
book:
Daisy's started a new life with her very own flower shop on the English coast - but she doesn't believe love will ever bloom for her again...
A disastrous love affair and the loss of her father has made workaholic Daisy rethink her life. Now, instead of teaching grammar school science, she runs Va Va Bloom - a florist shop in the town of Lullbury Bay. She supplies beautiful flowers for special events in the Dorset community, including Lullbury's wedding of the year. But she has given up all hope of a wedding in her own future.
When Rick, a charismatic stranger, comes in to buy his girlfriend flowers, a spark ignites between them. Just her luck, then, that the only man who gets her heart fluttering is attached! But soon Daisy realises that this little town may yet change her life in more ways than she expected.
New Beginnings at Lullbury Bay was out on 19th February and can be ordered here:
About the author:
Georgia Hill writes warm-hearted and uplifting contemporary and dual narrative romances about love, the power and joy in being an eccentric oldie and finding yourself and your community. There's always a dog. It's usually a naughty spaniel of which, unfortunately, she has had much experience. She lives near the sea with her beloved dogs and husband (also beloved) and loves the books of Jane Austen, collecting elephants, and Strictly Come dancing. She's also a complete museum geek and finds inspiration for her books in folklore and history in the many places she's lived. She's worked in theatre, for a charity and as a teacher and educational consultant before finally acknowledging that making things up was what she really wanted to do. She's been happily creating believable heroines, intriguing men, and page-turning stories ever since.
You can find her here:
Twitter/X @georgiawrites
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/georgiahillauthor
Website www.georgiahill.co.uk
Thank you, Georgia, for this interesting insight into Daisy's character. It's so true that what the reader sees on the page won't be all the details of the author's research that went into the book. However, your portrayal of Daisy wouldn't be the same if you hadn't researched teenage grief. I feel I like her already and am hoping she gets her happy ending. I look forward to finding out.
Thank you for reading. I'm sure you agree that Georgia's new novel, and especially the character of Daisy, looks and sounds wonderful. Writers, what research have you done that informed what a character went on to do? I'd love it if you commented and shared your thoughts. Thank you.
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