The first draft is finished and I’ve become obsessed with it. It’s provisionally titled Softening and I’ve a better idea what it’s about now. I’m taking a break from it for a few weeks, so it’s a good time to reflect.

Premise

Perry is a hyper-controlled executive with simmering anger issues. She meets Rob, a chaotic Australian maths teacher, at an introduction to meditation course, at a local rundown community centre. They meet every Saturday morning at the classes, and after a rocky start, their relationship develops. They pull towards each other and push apart, but by the midpoint of the book they are (mostly) together, only to fall apart again in the third act.

Characters

Being a meditation class, there are a number of characters that wash in and out of the narrative. The main ones are

Perry, the female romantic lead
Rob, the male romantic lead
Vanessa, a meditation teacher and old hippy
Clayton, the second meditation teacher. He is initially severe, but he isn’t really.
Dolores, a fellow student and stressed mum.
Sophie, Dolores’s sullen daughter.
Esteban, another student. He is shy and strange.
Ryan and Kyle, the abusive teenagers who hang around outside the community centre.
Ann, Perry’s mum.

These characters carry plot points which affect the character arcs of Perry and Rob, or influence their relationship. There are other characters, who are there for colour and interest. I might drop those ones in future drafts, or move them into the background.

Subplots

Running alongside the romance, are some intersecting subplots featuring Perry, Rob or more minor characters.

The collapse of Tyke Analytica, the company Perry works for, when the story opens.
The mother/daughter relationship between Dolores and Sophie. Initially Sophie is sullen bordering on hostile, but softens as the class progresses
The strange unpaid community warden job taken on by Esteban.
Dolores quest for a decent cup of coffee in the class.
Perry’s mother’s ongoing problems hearing what her daughter says to her.
The softening relationship between Ryan and Kyle and their friendship with Perry.
John and Julie’s obsession with Reggie, their toy poodle.

Some of the subplots feed directly into the main plot i.e the growing relationship between Rob and Perry. Some don’t. I might drop the ones that don’t in future drafts. The future of John and Julie is looking shaky.

Structure

Chapters

The book is structured into pairs of chapters, Bardo and Meditation.

Bardo are events that happen in between the meditation classes. These are short chapters of a few scenes. Critical events occur in the Bardo; they are short but significant. Bardo is an in between state, which is a strong theme of the book.
Meditation are chapters set during the meditation class. Each meditation chapter features a new kind of meditation and it’s name mostly reflects that practice e,.g Kindness, Breath. They are much longer than the Bardo chapters, most of the character development and world building is here. Each meditation chapter starts with a short description of the meditation practiced, which I hope has a poetic quality to it. The next scene is one of the major characters meditating and reflecting, typically revealing something previously unknown about their character, or their past.

I have doubts about starting the mediation chapter with a poetic (I hope) description of the meditation. Is this the much reviled info dumping? Does it break the narrative drive? I’m not sure. I’m hoping the beta readers will tell me, when I find them, and I’m a few more drafts in.

Point of View

The POV mainly limited third person. This is mostly Perry, and to a lesser extent Rob. Several other characters have one of two POV scenes. The descriptions of the meditation practices are third person omniscient.

Tone

I mostly find the world a humorous place. Frankly, it’s sometimes absurd. The novel shares that perspective. I’m not sure if the book is a hundred-percent-down-the-middle-no-question-about-it romantic comedy, but it’s close. The tone is light and the romance is sweet. The people are ridiculous but they are kind. Things get serious, but there is a twinkle of humour in it; if not in the serious scene, then in the next.

Themes

Work isn’t everything

This is Perry’s central dilemma and drives the story. She loves her job, is great at it and has made a lot of money doing it. It has taken its toll, which manifests as impatience and anger issues. During the first act, the company she works for gets into trouble, which increases her stress and cause her emotions to spin out of control. The rest of the book is her coming to terms with her new situation.

This is contrasted by Rob, who truly doesn’t care about his teaching career. This is presented in a light hearted way, but ultimately causes problems of its own.

Everyone softens

Most of the characters soften in some way; either they change, or the perception of the POV character changes towards them. Many of the subplots revolve around this softening.

The story opens with Ryan and Kyle shouting homophobic abuse. By the end of the second act, they are happily helping Perry and Rob pack up for a meditation retreat.
When we first meet her, Sophie hates her mother, but quite quickly reconnects with her. She’s not a bad kid really.
Clayton, the severe meditation teacher, is gradually revealed to be a kind and humorous man. He becomes a mentor figure for Perry.

This is contrasted by Vanessa, the hippy-dippy meditation teacher, who by the third act, is revealed to have a streak of ruthlessness, thankfully now mostly suppressed, but still unnerving when evident.

Meditation

When I started writing Softening, all I wanted to do is stitch together various scenes about meditation; things that I’ve experienced over the years, or stories people have told me. Fortunately, I realised that squishing a bunch of humorous scenes about people meditating, wouldn’t make a very good story. A novel about meditation would be dull at best, and nauseatingly preachy at worse. So the overarching romance between Perry and Rob was brought in to glue it all together. The meditation is secondary now, and the romance is what the book is all about – thankfully. Still, meditation is what brings all the characters together. It is the water in which they all swim.

In the first draft, I know there are sections that are nauseating preachy; fiction readers don’t want to be lectured at, especially on the virtues of meditation. So, any scenes that are guilty of that, need to be edited or removed in subsequent drafts. Still meditation is good for you – promise.

The places in between

I’ve long been interested in the edge of things, where one thing becomes another, in between places. When I go to a city centre, I like to go to the edge and see what’s there. It’s often the most interesting things; little shops that can only exist where rents are cheap, forgotten statues, weird little public parks. The characters in softening spend much of their time in between places, geographically or psychologically.

Perry loses her job and spends half the novel outside of the working environment, an in between place she finds difficult.
The retreat centre in the second half of the second act, is within the city boundaries, but is pastoral in character. It is between urban and rural.
Many of the scenes take place on the stone steps outside of the community centre. It’s where the characters go to have their heart to hearts. The stone steps are in between the meditation class and the world outside. The characters haven’t yet fully left the class, but they know they will soon.
Sophie, Kyle and Ryan are teenagers. They are in between childhood and adulthood. Sophie struggles with it, and Kyle and Ryan exemplify it; Ryan is small and child like whereas Kyle is fully grown, although they are of a similar age.
The Bardo permeates the novel. It is by definition an in between place.

The city

It’s a cliche to say that the non-living are characters in some way, and no writer wants to be cliched. Completely ignoring that, the city is a character. It is Perry’s home which she loves, and her reluctant to leave the city is a difficulty for her. Nevertheless, she does everything she can to stay. She is of the city.

I linger a little bit more on the description of the city, than I do with other locations. I fundamentally like cities. They are astonishing places, and much under appreciated. Henry James on London sums it up.

It is difficult to speak adequately or justly of London. It is not a pleasant place; it is not agreeable, or cheerful, or easy, or exempt from reproach. It is only magnificent.

Neurodiversity

None of the characters are labelled as being neurodiverse, but a few are, although it is never openly discussed in the novel

Esteban has some form of autism spectrum disorder. He also suffers the long shadow of a traumatic childhood, which he hasn’t come to terms with, and perhaps never will.
Rob has ADHD though it is undiagnosed, so he doesn’t know it. A lot of his quirks and character flaws are a direct result of his condition. From my own experience, having ADHD is fine if you know about it, but it sucks if you are undiagnosed. Rob is stuck in the sucky state.

Other characters may or may not be neurodiverse, or have distinct psychological issues. Perry could have the edges of OCD. Clayton has suffered trauma, and the shadow of that impacts him in the narrative. Perry’s mother might have Generalised Anxiety Disorder, and Perry’s father, who is unnamed, could have suffered from depression.

Even the characters that have no diagnosable mental health problems, have their issues. John and Julie are obsessed with their dog, Brenda and Dorothy are delusional, and Dolores is just very very stressed. Of everyone, Vanessa is perhaps the most well balanced, although she presents as being the most eccentric of all.

Meditation classes attracts people who are searching for something. People in there have either seen through the delusion of life (very rare) or are just not very good at it. They are also an interesting bunch, and on the whole lovely, once you get past their quirks. The story is founded on that notion.

Ideal Reader

I’d like to think that the ideal reader of Softening is gender neutral, but realistically the vast majority of readers of romantic fiction are women – a great shame, as romantic fiction is a lovely genre – so reluctantly, the ideal reader is a woman.

This woman is established in her career, and is quite successful, and reasonably affluent. She likes her work, but has other interests outside. She dabbles in meditation, but has struggled to keep a consistent practice going. Each new year, she resolves to meditate every day, but by mid January she is skipping, and by February she has stopped. She used to be a yoga teacher, but her life is busier now, so she doesn’t have the time anymore. She misses it.

She has a long commute to work, and she reads fiction to pass the time. Her go-to genre is romance, but she also reads a lot of literary fiction and historical novels. She is an avid reader and eclectic, so she is happy to read fantasy, thrillers and science fiction too, especially from established mainstream authors like Margaret Atwood or Kazuo Ishiguro. The only genre she wouldn’t read is horror.

She feels like an outsider sometimes, but people wouldn’t know that about her. She is perhaps an immigrant, or has slight neurodiverse tendencies, but these are undiagnosed and cause her no other issues. She is well liked and friendly, though she is an introvert. She may or may not have children.

Comp Titles

Comp titles are difficult. Softening isn’t derivative of any book I’ve read. I didn’t set out to write a book like this novel or that title. I wrote the book I wanted to. So with hindsight, these are some comp titles.

One Day by David Nicholls (2009).

One of my favourite novels. It has a similar tone to Softening but his earlier books like ‘Starter for Ten’ are closer still. It has he same kindness that I aspire to, and a humorous tone which my writing naturally falls into to. Also, it is structured periodically, the characters meeting year after year on St Swithin’s Day. Softening also has a periodic quality, the characters meeting every week on a Saturday morning, over the course of a month or two – until act three where this loosens.

Therapy by David Lodge (1995).

My favourite writer, though out of fashion now. The title is again a romance at heart and has the same spiritual searching quality as Softening. Also David Lodge’s tone is similarly humorous, without descending into farce. I love humour, but find farce boring.

Leonard and Hungry Paul by Ronan Hession (2019).

Comp titles should be recent, and the previous two titles are older works. This one is my contemporary comp. Its tone isn’t totally the same, but I love its kindness, and above all else I want my writing to be kind. I’ve spend hundreds of hours in the company of the characters in Softening and it’s important to me that I love them – and I do. I love my characters and I love Ronan Hession’s characters too.