“Writing a novel is falling in love and then accepting it is a long-term relationship with ups and downs, not a fling. ”

A chat about romcoms with Mhairi McFarlane.

I think I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve been told the Romcom is dead. Or that it’s been resurrected. Perhaps it’s dead again. I’m not sure which of the Culture Gods decides these things? (The Great Yentob? The Guardian Culture Deity?). I do know it’s rare for a genre that isn’t female-skewed to be so relentlessly trolled about whether it still matters.

ANYHOO. For those of us who have consistently enjoyed romcoms in whatever form – book, film, television series – there is a name that has stood out consistently these last few years. And if you’re new to it, here is your three minutes to pause reading and go and order one of hers immediately. Her latest is called You Belong With Me, and is a sequel to Who’s That Girl, published in 2016.

Done it? Good. Right - Mhairi McFarlane (it’s pronounced Vari) is a former local newspaper journalist whose first novel – You Had Me At Hello – was published in 2012 to instant acclaim. She has since written nine more romcoms and recently joined the Writers’ Room for the hit television series Slow Horses. Yes, that’s how good she is.

J: Firstly, Mhairi, how much life is left in the Romcom? It’s frequently filed under “chick-lit” in women’s fiction, and cinemas keep telling us it’s no longer happening….

M: It’s bizarre and surely must be weapons grade sexism that it’s so often spoken of dismissively as somehow passé or defunct. You have a writer like Emily Henry coming along and Godzillaing in the NYT bestsellers list, acquiring a devoted fan club,  yet somehow it’s in the doldrums?

Onscreen, they simply haven’t made enough good ones, then when they flop (remember that cheese dream one with Katherine Heigl, and chauvinist pig character Gerard Butler? I’ve staggered out of Cineworld with PTSD a few times) they tell us there’s no appetite for the thing they’re not catering for properly. The response to Sally Rooney’s Normal People and David Nicholls One Day, or straight genre like Bridgerton, shows the desire for stories about relationships is rabid, but it goes largely unmet.

Also, we need to slay this monster that it’s somehow a huge turn off for a male audience. If it’s good, it’s everyone’s thing. There’s no gender skew among fans of When Harry Met Sally, it's simply beloved.

I’d be very interested to hear about your experience of adapting Me Before You, but that’s probably a whole newsletter in itself?

J: It is, but I’ll do it! Why do you love them?

M: Not to get too flowery, most stories tell the story of an adventure, and romantic comedy is the adventure of falling in love with someone unexpectedly. And that’s an adventure most of us will have in our lifetimes, so it’s sat there in an incredible storytelling sweet spot of escapism and relatability. I love its freedom to describe, unpick, and satirise so much more than simply falling for someone too, as the great Jane Austen demonstrated. You get it all: the laughs, the emotional sucker punches, and trying to accurately nail the way some people are always the victim in their own mind, no matter what dank shit they get up to.

J: “There were an awful lot of bakeries, and everybody seemed to live in West London, and it was very cupcake-y. There was somebody who was dating a guy who worked in the city, with an incredible jawline and a black Amex card .With the best will in the world, nobody I knew was doing anything like that.”

I loved this quote of yours from an interview about how you came to write in the way that you do. Is it important to you to keep your set-ups embedded in a slightly grittier, less glam version of real life?

M: Thank you! It’s funny you say that: I don’t think you know a lot about yourself as a writer with your debut, or I didn’t, you fumble your way through. But what I did know was there was no point or joy in writing a book I’d not want to pick up myself.  So I was determined my heroine and love interest would have ordinary names like Rachel and Ben, I set it in wonderful but not hyper aspirational Manchester, she’s a court reporter, not a highly unusual, coded-feminine rich girl job.

I felt ‘chick lit’ had almost developed unspoken rules and I was determined to break them and see what happened, because I couldn’t see why they existed. Hark at me thinking I am the Sid Vicious of the kissylols.

Ten books on, and I realise this need to believe in the story is key for me. My kink is taking a chick lit trope like fake dating and turning it into a credible thing. My rule of thumb is the pub anecdote test of fictions: strange enough to be interesting, but not so out of this world it’s implausible.  If someone said to you over the second pint: ‘Well it’s a weird thing actually, turns out they were pretending to be a couple…’ you’d go oooh what really? Tell me more? But not: no way, are you high.

It’s a limitation I’m trying to turn into a virtue really: my whole process starts collapsing if my petty, prosaic brain is shouting BULLSHIT! AS IF! as I write something. I have to kick the tyres.  If I don’t fool myself first, I can’t fool you.

Luckily I’m not that hard to fool.

J: What do you think is the biggest challenge in writing a romcom?

M: The ongoing biggest challenge for me is plot. I just waxed lyrical about needing something to believe but of course, the other pressure is, it’s got to be exciting and intriguing and original. There are a lot of talented and inventive peers out there coming up with brilliant premises and you’re trying to stand out, move forward AND stay true to yourself.  So finding that perfect fit idea that you are absolutely dying to write? That preferably comes with a saleable one line hook descriptor? At those times I realise this might actually be a proper job.

Challenge in writing rom com, full stop is that all the momentum and tension comes from, at heart, Will They Won’t They. We don’t get to throw a dead body in to up the stakes (*cough* except when we do). The world and the characters need to be vivid and we need the reader to care, to sustain it.

J: Are you a plotter or a pantser?

M: I am solidly both. I’d say the first third or half of my stories are sorted out beforehand, I couldn’t freestyle it. But there comes a point where the road runs out and I start figuring it out in motion, based on what’s gone before. I don’t think I could A to Z it upfront because I don’t have all the good ideas at once, and also you sort of need to meet the book? Like seeing a baby and ditching the name you chose?

I’m always fascinated by how things just develop in the writing. I know some authors hate the “the characters just did it and I was along for the ride!” mysticism because it downplays how much is boring old planning, but for me, a percentage does come from being open to what might happen.

J: What made you want to write a sequel?

M: I always said I wouldn’t! Simply from the terror that ‘more is more’  isn’t a good enough reason and those who’d clamoured for it might say eeesh well OK turns out you were right I DID want to leave it there. There had to be another story to tell. Then last year, a reader friend Kay, whose opinions and insights I trust, very skillfully managed me into writing the chapters that come after the cliffhanger ending of Who’s That Girl as a little exercise. I couldn’t stop writing as soon as I started.  It showed me that actually, although WTG tilts at the end at: ‘what it’s like to date a very famous person’ that I’d not explored it at all.  There genuinely was a whole second book in how the star crossed civilian and celebrity navigate a romance in the public eye.

I’d be interested if any of this chimes with how you tackled ‘After You’? Following a monster hit like Me Before You, the pressure must’ve felt considerable?

J: I think we could do a whole newsletter on this topic alone. Watch this space… Were there any challenges you hadn’t expected?

M: I quite abruptly realised that I was going to have to write a lot more being in love scenes than I was used to. You might think that’s a very weird difficulty for me to have, but my characters usually get off with each other, as said, right near the end! Whole thing’s a slow burn scam! But Edie and Elliot in You Belong With Me are right in that phase of intense infatuation having to level out into something that works.

I was surprised how little I missed ‘will they won’t they’ as the hook, though, I feel there’s plenty of tension without it but it probably helps that my leading man is meant to be Paul Mescal levels of obsessed-upon, so there’s plenty of peril built in.

J: Do you have a typical writing day? If so, what does it look like?

M: I sort of do and it looks deeply unimpressive, Jojo. It looks like drinking a lot of black coffee and sharing memes to Instagram Stories while laughing like Beavis and Butthead, then getting to 11.30am and saying SHIT I’ve done nothing and opening the Word file.

I generally always get my 10k steps during the afternoon too. I am a huge proponent of the ‘walk with music to shake out the answer to a plot problem.’ There’s an Indian restaurant about five minutes from my house, and I swear to God, the number of times I’ve had a lightbulb moment passing Tipu Sultan.

J: All good love stories thrive on obstacles, often of communication. Some think the advent of the mobile phone has been a nightmare for the romcom. But you seem very comfortable using technology in your plotlines.

M: Thank you, I love it! A friend on Twitter  once said: ‘Your WhatsApp conversations read like real WhatsApp chats’ and honestly I think I felt less pride receiving my English degree. I’m a bit baffled by the idea tech spoils the rom com. Crime or thrillers have much more heavy lifting now everyone’s spying on each other with Find My, but why would we be adversely affected?

If the idea is that there’s less mystery in interaction, I disagree, social media platforms largely provide more smoke and mirrors than ever before. We didn’t get all these new ways to communicate and suddenly become truth tellers! Human nature hasn’t changed. The only difficulty I’ve encountered is that characters looking at screens is a passive act that isn’t very dynamic on the page. In my book If I Never Met You they were originally going to fake date on social media, which I imagined would simultaneously be this subtle takedown of how we’re all full of shite online, so it makes their sort of caper very easy. But I instantly stumbled over the problem that ‘Hey Lucy, look at this tagged photo on Facebook, which I will have to describe for the readers benefit,’ is quite tedious in aggregate.

(There’s a perfect example of why I pants as well as plot: I could only really discover that by trying to write it.)

J: What do you think is the most important element in getting a romcom right?

M: It’s got to be the characters. You can have an anti-hero detective because you still care if  D.I. McArsehole cracks the case, but if you’re hanging in there to find out whether the person they fancy, fancies them back, you’ve got to root for them. Which isn’t the same thing as excessive likeability and sparkly niceness, but obviously you hope the reader takes to your leads.

J: What was your route to publication? Did you get a deal first time out?

M: It was five years of moving to working part time to make space for book writing, and then getting a deal by the skin of my teeth, HarperCollins were the only ones to offer. When my agent was shopping my first book around circa 2011, I don’t think chick lit was of much interest to publishers and I got a lot of ‘it’s nice, but no thanks’ indifference (having thought I was doing something a bit different! Oh the hubris.)

Naturally I internalised this as the book being mediocre, so when it was published, I wasn’t sure it’d do well. I discovered that getting in the door is the most important thing, and that creative industries decisions are built on a lot of guesstimating and the judgement and taste of a handful of people. You have to keep the faith. Like most newbies, all I wanted at the time was the huge fuss, big ticket, mega deal debut, but I am so grateful I didn’t have that with hindsight. It was in fact much, much better to sneak out more quietly with fewer expectations, and let readers find me.

J: Are you difficult to live with when you’re writing?

M: Haha, I am not the person qualified to answer, but – I actually think I’m difficult to live with when I’m not writing. When a book is working, my life makes sense and all is harmony and my frog green kitchen is spotless (not a euphemism).  When it’s not, everything is terrible and my chakras are all out of sync and it’s proof that I cannot write for shit, you will find me trotters up of a Sunday, watching Netflix true crime, complaining volubly about my imaginary problems.

J: Hahaha word. Tell me the worst thing that’s happened to you in your writing career. Failed to back up a manuscript? Insulted the boss of your publishing company?

M: I had an early lesson in the terrors of creative coincidence after I’d delivered my first book You Had Me At Hello to my agent, before getting a deal. I went on holiday to Los Angeles in 2010 with a friend. She can sleep on planes and I can’t and she handed me a copy of this huge new hit “One Day.”  I start reading it and of course it’s incredible but also, it’s about two people who meet at university, stay in touch, friends who are destined to be together, but keep missing their moment. Even though it’s wildly dissimilar, the plot chimed with YHMAH way more than was comfortable. I got to the part where Emma says to Dexter: ‘you’re like shingles’ and I had the same joke in mine, but psoriasis. At that moment, I feared I was truly screwed and was going to go down in history as a lame copycat,  and burst into tears.  I still remember my friend waking up, seeing me in tears and saying: ‘You’ve finished it then!’

Later down the line, one of my rejections did indeed cite One Day. (In a very kind way, I should add). I separately contacted David Nicholls to pre-apologise as I was horrified to think he might think I was his own personal little AI plagiarism machine, and he was of course completely charming about it.

It’s given me a lot of humility that people might say ‘well obviously X was influenced by Y’ but do you know what, we’re all swimming in the same warm soup of cultural influences and it might just be fluke.

J: What’s the best thing?

M: There are so many ridiculous and wonderful things about our job, but, something that springs to mind is my then-editor telling me when she made a ‘business case’ to HarperCollins for taking me on and was asked if she thought I had more books in me, she’d said ‘Mhairi is a natural writer.’ The validation of hearing that was quite something! That’s what I cling to on the days when me opening my MacBook is like Baldrick in Blackadder opening his paint box.

J: How did the Slow Horses gig come about?

M: It looks from the outside like it came from the books, and obviously they weren’t irrelevant but in fact, sort of from Twitter. Years ago I made friends with the actor-writer Will Smith from The Thick Of It on there and we stayed in touch as his incredible career took him through VEEP and novels, and so on. Sat watching the first series of SH I saw his name on the credits, and cheered. Will is lead writer and show runner. Then I had a request, would I be interested to join the room for series 5? I nearly broke fingers with speed of typing YES PLEASE OH MY GOD.

J: How different was the writing room process, to novel writing?

M: Night and day, frankly, obviously some storytelling skills are relevant, but the practical considerations really make you aware that a novelist is without budget or without logistical concerns. You’d come up with an incredible set piece idea and be gently reminded there were about five reasons that wasn’t going to happen, because “permission from the football stadium” in your flight of fancy had been forgot. We novelists can repaint the Kremlin and install a jukebox, who’s gonna stop us?

I also learned even your most plotty novel is about four episodes of television, so  part of what you’re doing is extending and building outwards to get your six for a series.

Writing a novel is so selfish and solitary and it was such a gear shift to be in a group. It was amazing to be able to say “Wait, if she’s gone to that house already wouldn’t she recognise him?” and instead of sweating the problem alone, a bunch of clever colleagues finding the solution in real time. It was a super welcoming, ego free, collaborative room. Also – I would say this – I think you’ll all love the series, I am so keen to see it as a viewer even though I roughly know what happens!

J: Ten books in, what’s the most important thing you’ve learned while writing?

M: Keep a Notes & Jokes file, full of every last scrap that inspires you in daily life. The “amusing thing you overheard at the local shop” stuff.  Not only are you certain to forget funny lines or observations if you don’t, whenever you go back to it, you’ve got a moodboard. It can capture moments of enthusiasm, so that when you’re having a This Is Crap day, you can be reminded of how exciting it felt before it became a disappointing thing.

Aha - and that’s the other important thing: your manuscript will disappoint you, you will often hate it, you will want to cheat with a different, new idea. Writing a novel is falling in love and then accepting it is a long-term relationship with ups and downs, not a fling. It’s no reflection on whether your thing is any good.

J: Are there any other genres you have a secret hankering to try?

M: I admit that I’d love to write a female detective. My next rom com (the one out in 2025) is about two journalists who pretend to be a couple in an undercover investigation, so you can see me Slow Horseing it up somewhat. I’d love to create an ensemble and a returning world. There’d be a slow burn romance with a sidekick in it though, as we all know I simply cannot bloody help myself.

PS: my detective would not be called D.I. McArsehole.

You Belong With Me is out now published by HarperCollins in the UK