My novels always start with a seed of an idea. It’s usually the twist part of my ‘love stories with a twist’ that comes to me first. In the case of my novel “Invisible”, I had an idea that I wanted to write a story about someone who was invisible. And, to align with my genre, I knew it had to be a romance. This is how I normally start. With just a crumb. But soon the ideas grow.
As I started to consider what this book could be about, I began to imagine that our invisible protagonist would meet the love of her life. But she was invisible. But that soon felt limited. It wasn’t rich enough to make it a good story.
That’s when I changed my way of thinking. Instead of having Alice stumble upon the love of her life, I thought it would be far more entertaining if she was stuck having to date someone she absolutely couldn’t stand.
As I mapped out the plot, I decided that one night Alice would unexpectedly collide with this disgusting man. In that moment, she would snap back into visibility – something she hadn’t experienced in years. As she’s celebrating, thinking that her nightmare is over, that’s when she realises the catch – of course there’s a catch. Her newfound visibility only lasts when this awful man is around. The moment he’s out of sight, she fades away again.
Alice has a predicament: she wants to be back in touch with the world, so she needs to hang around with this man. But doing so is riddled with complications.
That’s when I knew this had to be a comedy.
With the concept locked in, I needed to bring my horrible man to life. I decided to call him Karl.
SinceInvisible was going to be a comedy, I wanted Karl to be an exaggeratedly annoying presence, but also not so over the top that he felt like a cartoon. Alice had to be utterly exasperated by him, but in a way that felt believable.
I started with his appearance. I deliberately kept descriptions of Karl’s looks vague, wanting readers to form their own image of him. What’s in your own mind is far more powerful. That’s why horror movies that don’t show you all the gore can sometimes be far more scary.
For Karl, I focused less on specific features and more on his overall vibe. He’s unstylish, clueless, and carries a faintly unpleasant scent.
But appearances weren’t enough. She could always just not look. No, if Alice was really going to loathe spending time with Karl, his behaviour had to be the heart of the problem.
For inspiration, I turned to real life. I started jotting down memories of awkward, over-eager encounters I’d had with men on nights out. Like the time a man, so intoxicated he was practically drooling on himself, asked me for a kiss. (I politely declined.) Or the time I made an offhand comment to a stranger in a bar about how long we’d been waiting to be served, only for him to take it as a sign that we were suddenly on a date. For the rest of the night, he stuck to me like glue. And there was that one time that I’d been friendly to someone, only to later overhear him telling his friends that I was his new girlfriend. Talk about mixed messages!
I poured all of these experiences into Karl, making him the embodiment of the kind of man who just doesn’t get the hint. The kind who mistakes politeness for interest. And, yes, I even threw in a little bit of dribbling, because how could I not?
When I sent the book to beta readers, I was eager to hear their thoughts on Karl. Would they find him amusingly awful, or would they think Alice was being unfair to him? The feedback was exactly what I’d hoped for. One reader even confessed that she’d had a nightmare about being trapped on a date with him. That was when I knew I’d done my job right.
Writing Karl was both a lot of fun and a little painful. He made me cringe at times, even though I was the one creating him.
His “relationship” with Alice provides a lot of the comedy early in the book, and I was thrilled that readers responded so well to it. Balancing humour with depth can be tricky, but I put a lot of effort into fleshing out Karl’s backstory. In fact, I developed so much of his character that I could probably write a spin-off. Maybe, just maybe, Karl will get his redemption one day. Could he transform into a heartthrob? Stranger things have happened…
You can read Invisible on ebook or paperback: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Invisible-Lindsay-Woodward/dp/1999585542/
