Toni Jordan

Jo Case interviews Melbourne author,

What made you decide to write about a family of charismatic con artists? And was it a challenge making your heroine – whose aim is to hoodwink her love interest – sympathetic?

Ha! I love this question. It makes me sound like I know what I’m doing. I’d actually sat down to write a very serious novel that said extremely insightful things about the human condition couched in lyrical prose. This took one year of eyeball-bleeding effort. And it was awful; pompous, overwrought nonsense. So I threw it in the bin, forgot about writing for publication and just started writing a story that would entertain me, the same way as I wrote Addition. The biggest challenge I have in writing is just getting out of my own way. And Della is a product of her conditioning, like the rest of us. She thinks she’s completely in the right. I’m continually amazed by the ability of people to justify almost anything. I hope readers can see the world from her point of view.

Della says, ‘Memory is the most important tool of the trade’. Is this also the case for a writer? Do you draw on the remembered, or the observed, in your writing? Or is it all imagined?

I have a rubbish imagination, but I’m very observant and have a very good memory. I think it’s a matter of noticing a few different things and then combining them in interesting ways.

Fall Girl

Actually I did have exactly those films in mind as a model. I love them. Today’s romantic comedy films give the genre a bad name, I think. A proper romantic comedy has witty and intelligent dialogue and fascinating characters, and also says something broader about the world. All the time I was writing Fall Girl, I tried to imagine Cary Grant as Daniel and Audrey Hepburn as Della. Bringing up baby inspired the chasing of the wild animal bit and Charade inspired the false identity bit. (Della even chooses Canfield as her surname, which was one of Cary Grant’s.) And the glamour came from To Catch a Thief.

Your books use humour beautifully to tell a story. What draws you to humorous writing? Is it a conscious stylistic decision, or is that simply the way you naturally tell a story?

I’ve thought a lot about this. For me, it’s impossible to start to write a novel. They’re 75,000 words, for heaven’s sake. That’s just ridiculous. It’s like stepping out of your front door and saying, ‘I’m going to climb Mt Everest, be right back.’ But what I can do is write a good 1000 words today. For me, funny bits and sexy bits are little treats to get me through the marathon that is writing a novel.

Della employs a number of psychological tricks and strategies based on her father’s set of ‘rules’ for a successful con. Taken together, they’re a canny and intimate study of human behaviour. How did you come up with these ‘rules’?

When I was a child, my parents had quite a few nefarious friends and I also read a lot of reference books on crooks and conmen. Absolutely fascinating. I hope I use what I’ve learned for good, not for evil. Mwahahaha.

Romantic storytelling often gets its frisson from the unattainable or taboo relationship. Della says, ‘It is fatal to sleep with a mark … this is perhaps the only unbreakable rule.’ How important is that kind of obstacle to the central relationship when you’re plotting your novels?

See, that’s the problem with writing romantic comedies set in the present day. What stops your protagonists from just getting it on in chapter one, and then not phoning each other again because they both have a fear of commitment? It’s not difficult to write people who are attracted to each other, but how to make an obstacle to their relationship that takes a bit of energy to circumvent? It’s vital.

Della says, ‘If I can intrigue myself, it’s also possible to intrigue a mark’. Does that reflect the way you approach your writing?

Absolutely. I’m just a normal reader. If I’m interested in what I’m writing, the odds are that someone else will be interested as well. I love nothing more than writing something amusing. Julius, Della’s cousin, had me in stitches the whole time. I just thought he was hilarious.

‘Every family is like a country … With its own leadership and language and customs, just like a country has.’ Was it fun creating this particular family, with its very particular code and dynamics? How integral is that ‘country’ and its customs to the book?

That was the greatest fun. I loved the idea of this family of ten, all living in this run-down mansion, just interacting with each other. I could have written scene after scene of them just doing stuff–cooking or arguing or playing Scrabble–except it would have had nothing to do with the story. And yes, the family was vital to the story. They all have the ability to take on almost any identity they want. Almost everyone changes their name over the course of the book. So if you’re not defined by your name, or your job, then what defines you? Your family? And then what happens if you lose that? I think that identity is more tenuous than we think.

Your first novel,

What do you mean ‘unconventional ingredients for romantic comedy’? Are you implying that science isn’t sexy and/or funny? Both mathematics and evolutionary biology are incredibly amusing and sexy as hell, thank you very much. Or maybe that’s just me.

Cover image for Fall Girl

Fall Girl

Toni Jordan

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