What would you do if you became invisible?

Posted on Monday, January 9, 2017
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In Ross Welford's WHAT NOT TO DO IF YOU TURN INVISIBLE, Ethel Leatherhead is terrified to discover she's invisible - but that is soon the least of her problems. We ask author ROSS WELFORD to tell us more.

What Not To Do If You Turn Invisible follows Ethel Leatherhead, aged 13, as she grapples with problems at school and secrets at home. Ethel tries to do the right thing but, when a combination of mystery pills and a dodgy sun lounger turn her invisible, things get out of hand. Much chaos, hilarious challenges and surprising friendships follow. Here, Ross Welford to tell us more about his new novel: Q: How are you enjoying the life of an author as your earlier book, Time Travelling with a Hamster, was so successful? A: It has been terrific fun, I have loved it, although it was intimidating for a while because of the positive response to the book and I wasn't sure if I'd manage to do the same with book two - but a contract is a powerful motivator and I just had to get on with it. I also love the fact that I have a second career after spending so much of my life working in television. Q: Why did you decide to turn your main character in this story invisible? A: Actually it came from an entirely different idea that I had had even before I finished writing Time Travelling with a Hamster. I was thinking about what I would like to write about and I had enjoyed the science aspect in Time Travelling with a Hamster. I had this idea of children searching in the wilds of Northumberland for these strange, hybrid monsters that had been created by a mad scientist. The key thing was the nature of the creature but I couldn't envisage it. Then, after writing 50,000 words, I thought, 'what if the monster was invisible?', so I started thinking of ideas around that. The only things I had liked in my first draft was the relationship between Ethel and Boydy, so I decided to retain that. I also liked the gran and I brought her into the novel - initially she was going to be the invisible one, but it took the attention away from Ethel so I started the novel again with Ethel as the invisible character. That's when I realised it was going to work. Q: How hard was it to abandon your first two drafts, especially after writing 50,000 words for the first? A: I don't feel either of the drafts was wasted since I developed the main characters Ethel and Boydy in the first draft and I knew what the gran was like from the second draft. It just meant unpicking things a bit and re-writing them, although it helps that I can write quite fast, 2,000 words a day, so in a month I can do a rough first draft and you know after that if it's working or not. I have come to writing fiction late in life and I don't really know how to do it, so I'm discovering things as I write. For me, if I have to write an entire draft and junk it, that's just part of the process. The only sad thing for me is that there were some scenes in the earlier drafts that I thought were terrific, and I never got to use them. Q: What was it that made you want to keep Ethel and Boydy as your main characters in the final novel? A: The key was knowing that, at heart, they are both nice kids, they both want to do right. Boydy is a cocky loudmouth who hasn't quite grasped when to just be quiet. He decides to rejuvenate the local lighthouse because he wants people to like him and he thinks that showing off is the way to do that. They are a couple of misfits really, and they find friendship in each other. Ethel isn't unpopular and she hasn't been viciously bullied but she's taken a bit of flack from some twins at school, and she's open to the friendship with Boydy. Q: The centenarian great gran also has a part to play in the story, how did she come about? A: There are a lot of children these days with who have great grandmothers and centenarians are becoming less rare. I realised I'd never come across someone who is one hundred in a book and who plays a proper role in the story. She's not altogether there but she does play a part in the story, she's not just there for the sake of it. Children are more familiar with very old people than we might think. Q: Ethel faces lots of challenges and questions around who she is. Do you think this age range is a particularly difficult one for young people? A: I think any age for children is difficult in terms of what they have to learn but the ages ten to thirteen are hell. A ten year old will be looking forward to being a year or two older, that's the age they start secondary school, but as adults we probably forget what a massive step towards adulthood this is. A lot of children abandon their old friends when they move to other schools and house moves are common at this age and for many children that is a rebirth. They might struggle to identify themselves or might want to try out new personality traits on their friends, or they might just want to melt into the background - become invisible. But as Ethel finds out, even this has a price and you discover things about yourself. Q: How did you decide what would make Ethel invisible? A: I didn't want it to be a 'magical' potion, so many writers use magic very effectively in children's stories but I wanted something that would be rooted in pseudo-science so I used rays and the nature of light. She has an unexplained medicine and a dodgy sunbed that turn her invisible. For me, if a story has something that is largely implausible, the rest of it has to be really believable. Given that invisibility is a big 'what if' in the story, I decided that Ethel wouldn't find it something that was fun and consequence-free. And, for the first few moments of being invisible, she's terrified, which is what anyone would be. Q: What rules did you need to put in place around being invisible? A: I decided that it would only make sense if it was organic or living matter in your body that became invisible. I couldn't take the step to make her clothes invisible too, it's just her body, which means that she can only be invisible if she's naked. That offered lots of opportunities around pre-teen embarrassment and that leads into one of the key scenes when she is invisible - and naked - in the school hall. It also meant I had to set the book in the summer otherwise she would have been freezing cold! Q: How did you develop the evil twins? A: I enjoyed creating them and they are inspired by my own blond twins, a boy and a girl, although mine are much nicer! My two villains are called Jesmond and Jarrow, which are two places in the North East, and although I'm not fond of the twins, they were fun to write. I also liked the idea that everyone in the story is hiding a secret of some sort, including the twins. They are really just a couple of crooks. Q: Would you like that super power of being invisible and if so, what would you do with it? A: I think it's one of those superpowers that you can't do an awful lot with, other than listen in on the meetings of world leaders, perhaps, if you were deeply interested in politics, that could be fun. But since I enjoy magic tricks, maybe I'd like to conjure a fantastic magical act!