Her Empty Chair: Creating Sylvia
For student and waitress, Sylvia Morelle, it’s just another day at the French café in Covent Garden – that is, until her beloved elderly regular, Mrs Ida Laine, mysteriously disappears…
Her Empty Chair follows the story of Sylvia Morelle, a young journalism student in London, and her unlikely friendship with Ida Laine, a sophisticated Parisian who frequents the café where Sylvia works. As they both hail from Paris, they soon develop a deep bond. Ida becomes a cherished figure in Sylvia’s life, improving her French and sharing vivid tales of her past. However, when Ida mysteriously stops visiting the café, Sylvia wonders where Ida has got to. As weeks pass with no sign of the elderly Parisian, Sylvia begins to worry for her wellbeing, and sets out to uncover what happened to her friend.
Using her journalistic skills, Sylvia goes on a journey through London, encountering clues to piece together fragments of Ida’s life. But it is in the most unexpected of places that she finds the clue that sets her down a path of discovery that shockingly collides with her own life.
Creating The Character: Sylvia Morelle
Sylvia is a young, aspiring journalist with a hardworking attitude and excitement for life. She was one of the more difficult characters to get right as there’s a level of naivety to her due to her only being in her early 20s and having had a comfortable lifestyle, yet she’s also quite strong willed and stands up for what she believes in. She’s just finding her feet in life and gaining some independence.
Sylvia is highly intelligent and introspective. She’s spent a lot of time in her own company, reading books, writing, daydreaming, and generally following her curiosity, learning about all sorts of subjects. She’s a deep thinker with a sensitive soul, but you wouldn’t know it – on the surface, she comes across calm and considered.
Having grown up as an only child, left to entertain herself with two busy professionals as parents, she likes to figure things out alone and doesn’t often ask for help. This leads to her quiet search for Ida when she disappears, not letting anyone else in on the inner turmoil and worry she’s experiencing. When the events of the story turn her life upside down, she turns to her notebook rather than other people to untangle her thoughts and feelings.
Though she’s learned to only rely on herself, deep down Sylvia wishes she had a sibling - someone to do life with, share childhood memories with and be by her side when she can’t turn to her parents (we don’t always want to confide in our parents!). In fact, she doesn’t let many people in at all - with few close friends. The few people she does click with and feel like she can trust, she really cherishes - like Ida.
Sylvia loved dinner time with her parents but for the rest of the evenings, while they ‘got ahead’ with work emails, sorted bills or something else ‘important’, Sylvia would usually spend her time seeing friends, busying herself with coursework or getting lost in a good book. Her shelves were packed full to the brim with colourful rectangles of various sizes, evolving from teenage romance to classic literature, thrillers and fantasy. She could spend hours frolicking around fictional worlds and consuming chapters at rapid pace.
Though she loved reading and spending time with curious characters, Sylvia did wish she had some real-life company at home – someone closer to her own age who she could chat to while her parents dedicated their lives to work.
As a child, she’d begged for a sibling but been brushed off and told, “one day”. But “one day” had never come, and with only herself for entertainment, she would often fall deep into her own imagination, which she believed was one of the traits that made her a great writer.
Some of my favourite scenes with Sylvia are when she’s lost in conversation with Ida, drinking up every word and savouring her stories from Paris. These scenes, though short, took a long time to write due to all the French history / Paris geography and culture research and rabbit holes I ended up in – though that’s part of the fun of writing a book I think! I was delighted to learn that there was a Rue des Croissants! For the scene below I was inspired by a story my husband told me from his own childhood: a very winding road they called the Curly Wurly Hill, and therefore, insisted upon having a Curly Wurly to eat anytime they were driven down there.
“What street did you live on?” Sylvia asked eagerly.
“Avenue des Beau.”
“That’s only fifteen minutes away from where we were! You lived near Rue des Croissants?”
Ida smiled. “Oui.”
“I loved that road! Every time we drove down it, I insisted on having a croissant to eat. My dad always told me that all the croissants in Paris were stocked in those houses...”
“And you believed him?”
“Of course I did! I was only five!” Sylvia laughed.
Most of all, I loved Sylvia’s character arc. She is the one who changes the most through the book, coming into her own and learning to vocalise how she feels more by the end of it. Writing her towards the second half of the book felt much more natural to me as I love strong minded female characters. She moves from timid and unsure of herself to assertive, decisive.
“I’m being rushed into making a decision and it’s not fair,” Sylvia complained.
“I understand, mon ange, but we don’t really have time on our side,” her mother reasoned. “Our flight leaves tomorrow morning. So… it’s now or never.”
“Thanks, Maman, pile on the pressure, why don’t you? It’s not like this is a huge life-altering moment for me or anything.”
“Take your time, think about it for a bit. But then you need to come to a decision. We will understand either way.”
“We? Whose side are you on?”
At the start of the book Sylvia is an innocent, people-pleaser. By the end, she has been forced to confront her feelings and ask for what she needs from the people around her. At the point in the story where we leave her, she has wisened and is much better equipped to deal with the challenges of life, certain in who she is and what she deserves.
Want to know more? Read Creating Ida here and click here for the book’s blurb and reviews.
Sunna x