I wrote a few weeks ago about the fact that I’, Number 1 Strength Relator in the Clifton Strengths test. You can thank Becca Syme for that, it seems to be something that most writers are buying into.
I wrote about how as a Relator, (Understanding Catherine Mede – Blog dated 12 January 2025) impacts my life. Now, I’m going to explain how it impacts my writing, because until I heard this, I didn’t realise that it was what I did in my writing.
A writer, who is a relator, will often delve into relationships without understanding why. They want to express the dynamics and the unusual aspects of relationships, that isn’t normally talked about.
And I see that in my writing. In Cursed Love, Jinny didn’t want to have a relationship because she’d lost her first love and blamed it on a family curse. It was only through perseverance that Ethan managed to convince her to give love a chance.
In Running Away, we see Larissa trying to escape a bad time in her life, so she goes on a tramp, where she runs into Harley, who is hiding out at a Lodge in the Abel Tasman National Park. Their relationship might seem to be normal, except Harley is keeping his identity a secret.
In Compromising Positions, we have Jo who has been burned in a relationship. But this story also looks at the relationship she has with man she works for, Edward, and his son, Logan as well as the relationship between Edward and Logan.
It seems that I look looking into relationships that are unusual too. Like Second-Hand Daughter, where Sylvia and Peyton have to build a relationship after Slyvia’s husband (and Peyton’s dad) is killed in a car accident.
I could keep going on all of my books and the strange relationships that they encounter and how they work to make the relationship work. Because often relationships aren’t as simple as “I love you, lets move in together.”
Relationships fascinate me, and I think that as long as I am writing, all of my stories will look at the relationships that form and where they come from and why they do things the way they do.