An interview with myself over a flat white

Sitting across the table from one of your own characters is a peculiar form of writing research. The cafe hums with the usual Melbourne mid-morning soundtrack of milk being foamed, jazz on the speakers, and a queue of regulars arguing over their flat whites. The character opposite you is technically part of your own imagination, but they order like a paying customer and answer questions you never meant to ask.

Most writers keep a notebook. I keep appointments. Booking a stool for two at a Brunswick cafe and telling the staff that the second seat is genuinely for someone earns you gentle nods from the barista and concerned glances from the couple by the window. The character cannot flatter you, cannot pretend to enjoy a long preamble about process, and knows exactly where the weak jokes are buried.

The setup at a Brunswick cafe

I picked a small place on Sydney Road with an espresso machine louder than the music and a back courtyard where the afternoon sun hits the tin fence just right. Brunswick suits the experiment because the regulars have seen stranger things than a man interviewing an empty chair. A cartoonist muttering notes about a fictional knight is hardly going to raise an eyebrow.

The character turned up, eventually, looking faintly annoyed at being summoned. They ordered a long black because the milk in a flat white, they claimed, made them feel like a character in a children's book. The barista simply nodded and asked if I wanted my usual oat latte. We sat, I opened a notebook, and the interview began the only way an interview with yourself can begin, with a question I immediately wished I had phrased better.

The questions go sideways fast

The first question I had planned was something gentle. The first question that actually came out of my mouth was about their deepest regret. This is the trouble with interviewing your own creation. You are both the journalist and the source, the therapist and the patient. The character blinked, considered, and answered with the kind of honesty I would never have permitted them in a published strip.

What came out was a confession about cowardice, about running from a dragon in an early draft of a story I had thought was finished years ago. They knew I had rewritten it to make them braver. They resented the rewrite. Sitting in that courtyard, watching a magpie stalk a chip across the flagstones, I had to admit they had a point. The rewrite had been for me, not for them.

The honest answers

There is a particular flavour to honesty you only taste when your own character is the one serving it. They do not bother with your brand voice or wonder whether the answer will play well in Brisbane or translate for an audience in Perth. They tell you, plainly, that the second act sags, that the supporting cast is a little flat, and that the running gag about the witch is funnier than you think it is. That is the sort of feedback a writer rarely gets from anywhere else.

By the second coffee, the conversation had drifted into territory I had not planned to visit. The character wanted to know why I kept putting them in medieval settings when I lived in a city full of trams and laneway bars. I told them the medieval settings were a comfort. They told me, gently, that the comfort was mutual, and that perhaps I was the one hiding behind the armour. I have no comeback to that.

When a knight turns up for a latte

Around the third round, another character wandered into the cafe. This one was smaller, redder, and considerably more cheerful about being invited. Carrotty Kid simply climbed onto the spare stool and demanded a babycino. There is no proper response to this. You order the babycino and let the knight-in-training explain their worldview.

Carrotty Kid's take on knighthood involves a great deal of enthusiasm and a rather shaky grasp of the difference between a joust and a juice. The Carrotty Kid knight adventure page has their misconceptions catalogued. The barista watched the whole performance with the resigned patience of someone who has worked a Brunswick cafe long enough to accept that fictional characters occasionally order off-menu.

The cup gets cold and the barista notices

Every time I have done this exercise, the coffee goes cold. I forget to drink it. The character, being fictional, does not need to drink theirs at all, though they have developed a habit of stirring the long black in a way that suggests deep thought. The barista, who has seen me do this three times in a single month, leans over at the end and quietly offers a fresh cup. There is no judgment in the offer, only the weary kindness of someone who understands that arvo-long writing sessions require occasional caffeine top-ups.

I take the new cup. I close the notebook. The character waves, climbs down from the stool, and disappears somewhere between the courtyard and the front door. They will be back. They always are, usually at the most inconvenient moment, usually in the middle of a deadline, usually with an opinion I did not ask for and cannot ignore.

What to do with the transcript

The first thing to do is read it again, somewhere quieter, with a cup of something strong. The second is to find the moments where the character is closer to the truth than you. The third, and this is the one most people skip, is to write the scene the character wanted you to write, the one you talked yourself out of because it felt too raw, too slow, or too strange for readers of The Dandy.

Some of what comes out of these sessions becomes new strips. Some becomes backstory that never makes it onto the page. And some ends up on the Poesy Feline site, where the more contemplative pieces go to graze. The exercise is less about producing a finished piece and more about producing a slightly less finished version of yourself, which is, on most days, plenty.

If any of this has stirred up the urge to argue with one of your own characters, the contact page is the place to send a message. I read every note that comes through, even the ones from people who, like me, would rather interview themselves than wait for the questions to come from anywhere else.