Sophie Bédard’s brilliant Lonely Boys was recently nominated for a Doug Wright Award. In order to celebrate, we’ve decided to translate this interview from 2020 which was done right after she won a Bédélys Award for Best Book. We hope you enjoy it!
One of Lonely Boys’ greatest strengths is that your characters feel very real. I know you spend a lot of time working on them, and that you end drawing inspiration from them. I’ve even heard you say you need to spend some time “living” with them in order to write. Can you tell us a bit more about that process?
I remember designing some of the characters from Lonely Boys as early as 2013 and 2014. Back then, I remember there was one more girl in the group and some of the characters didn’t have the exact same personality. Jen, for example, ended up being a lot more strict. But, at first, she was sort of a party girl. I basically gave her the personality of another character, who I ended up scrapping. I think I really need a clear design, and then I can start imagining scenes with my characters. And once their personality becomes clear, I can really start writing a script. Back in 2015, I had dont layout for almost 40 pages of an early version of Lonely Boys. But it didn’t work at all. I had to give the characters some time to inhabit my mind, because they didn’t feel real enough yet. Everything was a little out of focus, a little superficial.
Considering you spend so much time creating these characters, do you have an urge to write more stories for them? Or do you just want to start all over again and create some new ones from scratch?
So far, when I invent characters, it’s also because I have a very specific narrative arc in mind for them. In the case of Lonely Boys, for example, I knew what I wanted the book to be about before I had created any of these characters. I knew exactly how I wanted it to end. I had that final scene in mind. So even though I spend a lot of time working on them, they end up being very much inseparable from this one storyline. People have often asked if I’d be willing to make a sequel to this book, and the only I can imagine them doing is just meet at the corner store by accident and ignore each other. But I’ve managed to make a small zine in French about what about happened to them before.
I feel like a lot of people start writing with both a beginning and an end to their story, not knowing exactly what’s going to happen between the two. Is that your case?
Yes, that’s exactly it. For Lonely Boys, I had both an opening scene and an ending very early on. But then again, sometimes things don’t go according to plan. I had an ending very early on for Almost Summer. But I changed it entirely. Which is a good thing. Because that ending really was shitty. I learned a lot about storytelling while making Almost Summer.
One thing I really like about the book is how we can really recognize specific places. Parts of Montreal, but also parts of the Villeray neighborhood. How important is that sense of space in your writing process?
Places really were a part of my writing process, while making Lonely Boys. That coffee shop where the girls spend a lot of time is a place where I would go to write and draw. So, when writing scenes, I would think to myself it would be cool if they happened in this exact place. I really like Montreal, and I want my characters to live in the same neighborhood that I do. Even now, I envision them doing things I regret not having put in the book. I wish they’d spent time in a lineup for some ice cream. I’d have liked them to have brunch in some restaurant I go to. Places really became a way for me to make the story progress. But, at the same time, I just do it for fun. When they go to Pho Mylys, it’s just because I wanted to draw that restaurant because I was there all the time!
Are there some graphic novel which inspired you, while you were working on this book? Influences which you’d come back to as a reference?
Maybe not comics, but definitely some films like Obvious Child by Gillian Robespierre or Frances Ha by Noah Baumbach. When I saw Frances Ha, I really felt like I’d have wanted to write it myself. It’s that kind of friendship, that kind of energy which I’m trying to represent with my book. There’s also an Australian TV show called Please Like Me which I really liked.
I recently read This Is How I Disappear by Mirion Malle and I like how the two books have these explicit connections between them. Can you tell me a little bit about how that happened?
Early on, I’d drawn Mirion as a character in the book and then she started drawing a lot of people, including me, in her own book. But then, at some point, she just asked if she could use a specific scene from Lonely Boys in This Is How I Disappear. We exchanged a lot, while working on our respective books. She would make me read her pages and I’d make her read mine. So it’s sort a joke she did. But I find it super funny. It’s the exact same dialogue and everything!
There’s a nice balance between drama and humor in the book, which feels very natural. How did that sort of balance come about?
As far as I’m concerned, you can’t really done one without the other. I have no interest in doing a book which is either one or the other. I’d find it painful and sad to write an entire book in which there is only drama. Anyway, I think humor can really work well to actually support drama. I think readers will associate much more easily with characters they find funny. But, even then, I don’t think about that a lot. I just write the sort of stories I want to write and that’s it.
