by Sarah Archer
I’m a firm believer in giving characters as much conflict as possible, so by creating a female protagonist working in a competitive, male-dominated industry, I could believe that Kelly’s career would be that much more hard-won and she would be even more afraid of doing something to jeopardize it. Anita, Kelly’s boss, is slightly older than she is, so her trajectory would probably have been even harder. I like to think that the difference of even a decade or so allows Kelly and Priya to feel more at home in the tech industry than Anita might have felt when she started.
What kind of research did you do for the novel?
I was fortunate to speak to several experts in the robotics and product design fields about their education, the work they do, the challenges they face, and how they think about their contributions to the world. These conversations were so illuminating. I’m an English major to my core, so I’m still a long way from truly understanding Kelly’s work, but these interviews gave me a window into her world. Then, as with everything in my life, I turned to Google to fill in the gaps, consulting journal articles, interviews, and blogs to answer questions that arose along the way, including those about life in Silicon Valley. The latest developments in AI and robotics are intriguing, intimidating, and exciting—it was tough to avoid getting lost in research rabbit holes on the internet.
Before writing The Plus One, your background was in comedy. Why did you decide to write a novel? Did anything surprise you about writing fiction?
I began The Plus One at a transition period in my life. I had just relocated from Los Angeles, where I was working crazy hours in the entertainment industry, to St. Maarten. Even after moving to a Caribbean paradise, I managed to overcommit myself with work immediately, but I still had more time in my day for writing. So I finally decided to attempt a novel, something I had always wanted to pursue. On a creative level, I wanted to try this idea in novel form because I sensed that Kelly’s voice could be a major part of the story and I was eager to play with that on the page.
Having focused on screenwriting for years, I found writing fiction delightfully freeing. I still sometimes feel guilty when I just come out and say what a character is thinking. Poetry is another passion of mine, and I relish the chance to really climb down into the language and walk around among the words, something that’s harder to do in screenwriting. But writing humor definitely requires an adjustment for the page versus the screen: you can’t rely as much on the visual and on the manipulation of timing.
As you portray it, the modern dating scene—particularly in Silicon Valley—is a bit grim. Have you lived in Silicon Valley? Why is it so hard for Kelly to meet relatable men?
Here’s my confession: I’ve never actually been to Silicon Valley. San Francisco is as close as I’ve gotten, but I did live in Los Angeles for years, and I think LA and Silicon Valley are similar in that both are industry towns. In terms of the social and dating scene, that can be a negative: many people care only about what they can get out of you professionally—they care more about knowing you for the sake of knowing you than about really knowing you. There’s a tendency to flex and talk oneself up, and there’s an atmosphere of artificiality, where image rules. But on the plus side, when you live in that kind of area it’s easy to meet like-minded people, people who are so passionate about the things you’re passionate about that they were willing to uproot their lives and move there to pursue their dreams. I met my husband at a networking event for writers in LA—it’s not all bad!
Without giving anything away, did you always know how Kelly and Ethan’s story would end? How did their relationship evolve as you wrote their characters?
The central arc of the story line came to me pretty much fully formed and never altered, even while so much around it did through various drafts. The place where Kelly and Ethan end up felt right to me from the beginning, but how they got there evolved. I think their relationship became deeper, more passionate, and more human, ultimately challenging Kelly at a more elemental level. My focus was always on her character arc, so it helped to play with Ethan’s arc as well, and with how he might force changes in the relationship through his own evolution.
The Plus One is terrifically funny, but it also tackles serious questions about love, loneliness, work/life balance, honesty, and the power of expectations—both our own and those of our families. What was it like to keep up this balance while writing?
I like to include both drama and comedy in almost anything I write, because life has such a mixture of both. It just feels natural. But balancing the two and maintaining a consistent tone is always difficult. It helped me to use Kelly’s voice as a sort of filter—thinking about how she would view a situation, what she would find funny and in what ways, or where she would be emotionally in different moments. Thinking about your audience is another useful filter. I wrote the first several drafts of this book just for me, with no audience or commercial concerns like genre categorization in mind. As I advanced in the process and fixed on a more refined sense of who might actually read the book, I was able to make some appropriate adjustments.
What do you hope readers will take away from Kelly’s story?
First, I hope they have a good time with it! But on a deeper level, for me, the heart of the book is the idea that love is a choice. I believe that one of our greatest gifts as humans is our inalienable ability to love, and our greatest responsibility is to decide how we exert that power. When Kelly comes to make different choices about how she loves, her relationships are transformed, not just with Ethan but with family and friends too. As artificial intelligence evolves into the future, I think we’ll face many questions about AI beings’ ability to “feel” emotions (and about what that even means) and to make choices. I’m so curious to see how we as a society will approach these issues.
What’s next for you?
I have some screenwriting projects on the back burner, but my focus is on diving into my second novel. I can’t wait for it to come into the world!
Discussion Guide
1. When we meet Kelly, she’s struggling to make her voice heard, both at work and at her family dinner. Why do you think this is? Do you relate to Kelly? Why or why not?
2. Why do you think Kelly hasn’t found love before? What changes as she gets to know Ethan?
3. Kelly’s mom is certain she just wants what’s best for Kelly (p. 11). Do you agree? Why do you think Kelly feels she has to lie to Diane to make her happy? Is their relationship different at the end of the novel?
4. When Kelly tries online dating, she finds herself limited by the qualifications she thinks she’s looking for in a man (p. 56). Is this kind of profiling helpful? Does Kelly come to understand differently what she’s looking for? What qualifications in a partner would be on your list?
5. Why does Kelly struggle to finish Confibot? How does Ethan help her think differently about her career?
6. Kelly teaches Ethan to eat Cheez-Its and Nutella, her favorite snack. Do you have a surprising favorite treat? Is there a particularly memorable time you shared it with someone?
7. Priya is Kelly’s best friend, but things become complicated after Kelly creates Ethan. Why does Kelly feel she has to lie to Priya? How does their relationship change? Have you ever felt that you had to lie to a friend? What happened?
8. Were you surprised by how Kelly and Ethan’s relationship evolved? How did you think their love story would end?
9. If you were in Kelly’s shoes, what would you do with Ethan? Do you think you would make the same choices she did?
10. What do you think the future holds for Kelly?
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