Writing Charlie: How a Fictional Character Helped Me Heal

When I created Charlie, the protagonist of the prequel to my novel 100 Days, I had no idea just how much of myself I was pouring into her. On the surface, she’s a woman in her thirties with generalized anxiety disorder, caught in the grip of endless worry and fear. She’s lost her job, is isolated, and finds herself hovering at the edge of something drastic—a moment where everything feels too heavy to carry anymore.

What drew me to Charlie was her stillness and silence, the way she moved through life with a constant internal dialogue that never quite let her rest. She discovers an ad for a social experiment—one that offers meaning, connection, and a way out. She’s not told upfront what it really means to “leave” this world through the experiment, but once she knows, she still chooses to go. Not because she wants to die—but because, in her mind, she already had. She wants her end to mean something.

And in writing Charlie’s story, I began to understand my own.

When I had my breakdown, everything in my life collapsed—career, business, routine, identity. I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and suddenly found myself in a one-bedroom flat, surviving on benefits, unable to function. The highs I’d once mistaken for productivity were actually part of a condition I didn’t understand. The crash was unbearable.

Like Charlie, I had days to fill and nowhere to go, so I started writing. I wrote her story—her doubts, her fears, her yearning for something more. In doing so, I gave shape to emotions I couldn’t yet express in real life. Writing Charlie was like holding a mirror to the most fragile parts of myself, but with compassion instead of judgment.

She’s fictional, but the pain she feels is real. The isolation. The shame. The quiet desperation. And yet, she finds a strange kind of peace when she decides to go forward with the experiment. Not because things get easier—but because she chooses it. She makes a decision. And for someone who has felt out of control for so long, that decision is everything.

Writing Charlie didn’t just give me a character to create—it gave me a way to survive.

It reminded me that even in the darkest moments, there’s always a story unfolding. And sometimes, writing it is the first step toward rewriting your own.

If you’ve ever seen yourself in a character, or written your way through pain you didn’t have words for, you’ll understand what I mean. Fiction may not fix everything, but it can hold space for the parts of us that feel too broken to say out loud.

Charlie gave me that space. And in telling her story, I began to reclaim my own.

Excerpt from Charlie’s Prequel to 100 Days– The Last Conversation

“What if it happens when I’m on the bus, Mum? What if I freeze again and no one helps? What if it’s a bomb, or a knife, or someone just waiting for someone like me to lose it?”

Charlie knew the words before they left her mouth. She’d rehearsed them in her head, just like she had a hundred times before. But they still came out frantic, urgent, as if she were warning her mother of a fire only she could see.

Her mum stood in the kitchen doorway, one hand wrapped around a chipped mug of tea, the other rubbing at a spot on her forehead that had become her go-to pause button.

She didn’t sigh. Not out loud. But Charlie felt it anyway. In the tightening of her jaw. The slight tilt of her head like she was bracing for another wave. The kind eyes that were now tired, worn thin by years of panic she couldn’t reason with.

“Charlie,” her mum said gently, not unkindly. “You’re safe. You’re here. Nothing’s happening right now.”

Charlie nodded, but her throat burned. Because it was happening. Every day, inside her chest.

And that’s when she saw it—not anger, not frustration, but grief in her mother’s eyes.

Grief for the daughter who had once laughed at dumb jokes and dreamed out loud. Grief for the years eaten by fear. For the people who no longer called. For the silence that had replaced everything.

Charlie didn’t cry then. She waited until her mum turned away, then she went to her room, opened her laptop, and pulled up the ad again.

She hovered over the “Apply Now” button, her hand trembling—not with fear this time, but with something quieter. Resignation, maybe. Or peace.

She pressed send.

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