Whenever the heroine of a TV show or movie has two good friends, one of those friends is the plain or buttoned-down goody-two-shoes and the other is the trampy lush. Think of Rosie and Tanya from Mamma Mia. Or Dena and Andrea from the Samantha Who. Even Sex and the City plays with the friend stereotype. Charlotte is the goody-two-shoes, Samantha is the tramp, and Miranda seems to be the foil for those two characters.
I’m told that this stereotype is used with the idea of an angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other. I get it, but the idea can be stale if not done properly. And, truth be told, none of my friends are plain goody-two-shoes or trampy lushes.
So when I started writing The Year of Living Shamelessly, I knew the friends would play an important part, but I wanted to make the friends a little different. Since the setting is a college town, I thought about what types are often found on colleges. Soon Hilary became the research librarian who will go to questionable clubs as an anthropological experience and could list how things could go wrong both alphabetically and chronologically. Melissa is the athlete who has a unique talent of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time to the wrong person.
Melissa and Hilary aren’t trampy lushes, but I’m sure they have their moments. They are neither prim nor proper, but they follow the rules of their own worlds. They see things differently, offering Katie well-meaning, yet opposing (and sometimes bad) advice.
After all, what are friends for?
