Lexie Elliott

Lexie Elliott grew up in Scotland, at the foot of the Highlands. In 1994 she began a Physics degree at University College, Oxford, where she obtained a first; she subsequently obtained a doctorate in Theoretical Physics, also from Oxford University. A keen sportwoman, she represented Oxford every one of her seven years there in either Swimming or Waterpolo, and usually both. Elliott works in fund management in London, where she lives with her husband and two sons. The rest of her time is spent writing, or thinking about writing, and juggling family life and sport.

Elliott's latest novel is How to Kill Your Best Friend.

My Q&A with the author:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

This particular title — How To Kill Your Best Friend — does a very good job of dragging the reader right into the crux of the matter! Immediately the reader must be wondering why anyone would want to do that? What must be lurking in the past of these friends for either of them to even contemplate murder? The novel is a psychological thriller, told through the eyes of Georgie and Bronwyn, who, together with Lissa, have been inseparable since dominating their college swim team. But Lissa, the strongest swimmer they know, has somehow drowned off the coast of the fabulous island resort she owned with her husband. As they gather with their closest friends on the island for Lissa’s funeral, with the weather turning ominous and threatening to trap them on the island, each of them find themselves questioning both the past and the present and whether there is anyone at all that they can trust.

What's in a name?

I think very hard about names: they really have to fit. When I’m beginning a novel I try names on each of my characters until I get one which feels right; the programmes of my sons’ swimming galas are often a rich source for potential names! Diminutive forms are especially important—for example, Georgie is known to all as Georgie, not Georgina. That immediately tells you that she’s not formal or precious. Lissa, on the other hand, is also a diminutive form—of Melissa—but an unusual, and very pretty, one; Mel would be a more obvious choice. That suggests that she cares about appearances and likes to be different. Where a character is sometimes called by their full name and sometimes by a shortened version, it’s always instructive to think carefully about which characters would use the shortened version, because even if readers don’t consciously notice the difference, they will intuitively understand that that implies a more familiar relationship.

How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your novel?

Not terribly surprised, I think. As a teenager, I went through a phase of working through Agatha Christie’s novels and also M.M. Kaye’s Death in…series, so the fact that I’m writing in the psychological thriller genre wouldn’t surprise my teenage self at all. I would have to add, though, that I think it would be a surprise to my teenage self if I never wrote any novels in a different genre, and in fact I do have plenty of ideas for novels in other genres that I hope to someday put on the page.

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

I normally have a very good sense of the starting place and also of the destination, but I’m a little muddled on exactly how the characters will travel from one to the other. The start almost never changes from what I initially envisaged, but the end certainly can – and it should, if the original ending doesn’t fit with the arcs of the characters. I don’t think I’ve ever changed an ending after writing it, but I usually find that, when I get to that part, I need to take some time to work it all through in my head before committing to the page. That particular part of my creative process looks remarkably like drinking a lot of coffee while staring blankly into space!

Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Do they have any connection to your personality, or are they a world apart?

They pop up in my mind as whole, distinct people; they are certainly not a reflection of certain facets of myself or of people that I know. However, I recognise that, like every writer, I’m clearly influenced by my own experiences and by the people that I interact with, and that can’t help but have a bearing on the characters that present themselves to me. There are always certain characters that I particularly miss spending time with when I’ve finished writing a book and in that sense, I can see the appeal of writing a series: you get to pick up a new narrative, but in the company of an old friend.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

This particular novel has been influenced by my own past experiences with both competitive swimming and open water swimming (I swam competitively as a teenager and at university, and in 2007 I swam solo across the English Channel). That personal experience made it very easy for me to create the group dynamic for these particular friends, for whom swimming provides a reason to keep in touch even when living continents apart. Whatever I am experiencing in my life—be it with family, work or friends—also creeps in to what I write, albeit in less obvious ways, and sometimes I don’t even pick up on that until some time after I’ve finished the novel, when I’ve had a chance to take a breath and view it with a bit more perspective. One can set out with an intention of exploring certain themes, but find oneself rather more influenced by something else entirely—the uncertainty over quite what you’re going to end up with is both the joy and the terror of writing!

Visit Lexie Elliott's website.

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