Allayne Webster's latest novel, Selfie, is highly appropriate and current. At a time when Social Media Influencers control and break apart many people’s lives, comes the brilliant, riveting Selfie.
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.
