Title : Guest Post: An Interview with Allayne Webster
link : Guest Post: An Interview with Allayne Webster
Guest Post: An Interview with Allayne Webster
Allayne speaks with Anastasia Gonis about her novel.
You have two leading characters, Tully and Dene, total opposites. Their friendship, initiated too fast by Dene, is cryptic, therefore suspect. An Insta famous influencer and a lonely girl. Is this unusual friendship the central theme of the story? One hundred and ten percent. This story is about relationship power dynamics—who holds power and who relinquishes it, and the interchangeable nature of that. It’s about the desperate need for connection and friendship in the face of living up to other’s expectations and keeping everyone happy (and failing dismally in the process.) Selfie is about how individuals may employ manipulative tactics to achieve desired relationship outcomes, but how they often fall victim to their own guilt/moral compass and regret certain decisions. Ultimately this novel is about settling into the idea of letting go, of ceasing to attempt to control everything and everyone, and to simply trust in another person. It is also about dodging grief—as we soon learn both girls are grieving the loss of loved ones who are not yet in fact dead.
Can Selfie be described as an exploration or an uncovering of the roles played by Social Media Influencers, to manipulate and gain power and control over their followers?
Definitely. There’s a blatant portrayal of this in Selfie when it comes to Dene’s engagement and likes on posts. Influencers do their best to harness social media algorithms and make them work in their favour, and so invariably, their decisions are strategic and not necessarily from the heart.
Too soon, Tully is emotionally controlled by Dene, and the relationship totally consumes her. How difficult was it to write the powerful scenes surrounding Tully’s conflict?
I think Tully presents herself as relatively confident, but internally she struggles with self-belief and confidence like anyone else. The opening scenes of Selfie highlight the things she values; signposts or markers, if you will, are provided to the reader with what Tully thinks makes a person valuable. As the novel progresses, these values come into question. In a way, Tully is the victim of capitalism and the messages she’s internalized about money, status and value.
When writing any emotionally powerful scenes, I need to tap into my own fears and misgivings and harness them for the story. Writing is like acting on paper. I think I very much feel/react emotionally when writing and this helps to make my characters believable. You must be honest with yourself. You can’t ‘put on a show or a brave face’ when writing. You effectively have to let it all hang out—as soul-cringingly embarrassing as that can be. No shame here!
You have perfectly captured the gap between adolescents and adults, and the attitude and behaviors of teenagers. Please comment.
I often give myself pause for thought about what makes me an adult. I mean, quite often I just feel like a big kid. At what point did I grow up? Perhaps we’re the same person, just a little wiser with every passing year? When writing for young adults, I speak to them, not down to them.
Some adults infantilize young people, which helps no one, and certainly doesn’t foster strong open communication. Stop. Listen. Learn. Don’t discount young people’s experiences as being somehow world’s away from your own. They’re not. We exist in the same space. Our feelings and our reactions are valid, no matter what our age. If anything, young people are learning to access their internal toolbox for dealing with complex social situations; they’re learning self-reflection, endurance, self-confidence, empathy… Allow them the space to do that and to f*ck it up.
Your leading character Dene is complex, Insta famous; a pyramid character created by her exploitative mother. How difficult/easy was it bringing her to life?
I will confess Dene took a little more work than Tully. Dene is more often than not the antagonist in the story, and I think I struggle to inhabit that as a writer. When I removed blame from Dene, she became easier to write. In order to write about her successfully and three-dimensionally, I had to consider her actions with a level of empathy; I had to think about the drivers making her behave in the manner she does. Are they really her fault? That said, Tully is by no means a saintly character either. They’re both flawed, which is what makes them interesting, and is what makes the reader invested and (hopefully!) question whose side they’re on.
There are several sub stories that enrich the storyline, such as Tully’s family upheaval, the ending of Kira and Tully’s friendship, and crushing outcome of Dene and Tully’s relationship. How important are these stories to the novel?
The sub stories of any novel should always enrich the overall narrative. All killers, no fillers—as they say. In the case of Dene and Tully, what goes on for them in private at home, or when separated from each other, has a compounding impact on the overall story. How they perform in other relationships says something about their character and their nature. Humans are multi-faceted. We all know that in the company of some people we present a different face or a different version of ourselves. The same thing goes on in the story. That said, I think the most powerful and telling part of any story is what is revealed via the character’s internal monologue versus their action/what they actually do and say. That’s why I love writing in first person—because our actions don’t always marry our words, nor our thoughts. I love the interplay between these.
Full of tension and at times painful to read, how important was writing about this theme for you?
In all honesty? It was cathartic. Authors have a responsibility to assist publishers to promote their work, and this means regularly and actively being online. Adults are just as suspectable to subliminal messaging, just as vulnerable to images of perfection, etc. For me to write Selfie, I had to be in touch with those positive and negative emotions produced by social media. If I, as a rapidly ageing adult, sometimes struggle with the messaging of the online world, what on earth is going on for our young people? I am always thinking: Thank God I didn’t have social media as a teenager, I would’ve embarrassed myself no end. I would have over-shared, overthought, potentially shared dangerous images of myself for attention and validation, and I would have written/said things that two seconds later I would have evolved from, yet would be recorded for years to come and for history to judge. The idea frightens the hell out of me. In a way, writing this novel was protecting younger me from the things I could have done had I grown up in the era of the online world.
What do you hope readers will come away with from Selfie?
As a writer, I hope to hold up a mirror and reflect society back at the reader. I would hope Selfie provides Aha! moments, or vigorous head-nodding, or exasperated sighs of OMG, that’s me! I’ve felt like that! Or I’ve been guilty of that. I don’t ever hope to deliver moral judgements or to lay foundations for what might make things better.
What I hope to do is A) create empathy, B) incite questions; make readers interrogate their own viewpoint and consider other angles. Ultimately, at the core, I want young readers to know their self-worth is not defined by the adulation or condemnation they receive from friends or strangers online.
Selfie is about empowering young readers to see through the glossy veneer of the online world. In moments of vulnerability, I would hope they remember Selfie and question any unhealthy thoughts induced by online interactions. I would hope it’s a tool in their toolbox for thinking beyond surface level.
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