‘No Ordinary Love’: Tomasz Jedrowski on humanising your love interests

After writing Swimming in the Dark, a tender and passionate romance novel about the first love between two young men, author Tomasz Jedrowski is currently interested in exploring love stories that feel less familiar to him. It’s part of the reason he was drawn to the story of a lesbian couple, Aissata and Juno, for the No Ordinary Love anthology. Then, in speaking with the couple, he realised their relationship timeline “eerily” mirrored his own. No Ordinary Love is the second part of an anthology of modern romantic prose, challenging love story tropes and clichéd narratives by celebrating the differing perspectives and unexpected plot twists of real love. It features the stories of five real couples who met on Hinge, written by five fresh literary voices: Hunter Harris, Tomasz Jedrowski, Jen Winston, Upasna Barath and William Rayfet Hunter.

You can read Aissata and Juno’s story now at no-ordinary-love.co. Ahead of the release, we spoke with Jedrowski about humanising your love interests, the difference between a red flag and an opportunity for a second chance, finding community outside of your relationship and other lessons from working with a real Hinge couple throughout this process.

What’s a love story you wish you wrote and why?

Tomasz Jedrowski: Someone recently asked me what book I wish I’d written, and it’s such an interesting way to think about things. My answer was a bit cheeky: ‘The one I’m writing right now – only faster.’ Nothing else comes to mind. Maybe this is deluded, but the love stories I work on always feel like the one I’m supposed to work on. I feel very fulfilled when it comes to stories.

Let’s re-frame it then, is there anything you’d like to write more about then?

Tomasz Jedrowski: Swimming in the Dark was a love story about two young men. I had to write that story; I needed that book to exist. Then the book I’ve been working on for the last few years is actually a lesbian love story. When I read about Aissata and Juno’s love, I thought, ‘This is exactly what I want to work on.’ I want to work on love stories that aren’t one-to-one with me in terms of the gender or sexual identity of the lovers. Obviously, love is universal, but at least for me at the moment, it’s so much more interesting to explore something that isn’t a copy-paste of my love situation.

This isn’t your first time writing about love. Did starting with a real couple change your approach?

Tomasz Jedrowski: It definitely changed the process because I didn’t have to make anything up in terms of their attraction or the way they found each other. It’s more journalistic in a way, interviewing someone and trying to tell a real-life love story. At the same time, I feel a similar responsibility toward the couple that I do toward my fictional characters. I wanted them to recognise themselves in the story, not to distort what is real.

In the story, Aissata’s Hinge profile said, ‘looking for a short-term relationship’, which Juno thought was a red flag. Then, Aissata sleeps through their alarm. How do you tell the difference between a red flag and an opportunity for a second chance?

Tomasz Jedrowski: I guess there actually is no way of knowing the difference. But what really struck me as I was trying to give the story shape and find an angle was that I kept thinking about how they almost missed each other because of this red flag. I thought, ‘When you see something that makes you want to close yourself off, you can think you’re protecting yourself, but actually sometimes you are missing an opportunity.’ I still believe that, but what I also find interesting with their love story is that, in a way, Juno's intuition was quite right – that when the two first matched, it might not have worked between them because they were in different places. But when Aissata wrote to Juno again, months later, both of them had changed somewhat in their outlook and where they were in life. When we humanise people, things become more of an opportunity than an evaluation.

The story showcases two people’s perspectives on the same dating process. How did you get into the heads of both Aissata and Juno?

Tomasz Jedrowski: They were both so lovely, open and vulnerable with me from five minutes into our first interview. They trusted me, and so I really got a good sense of who they were straight away. That may be a generational thing, but they also have this wonderful emotional intelligence and insight into themselves. They know how to speak about themselves in a balanced way. I had long chats with Juno and Aissata, together and by themselves, to get an idea of what kind of person they were and the struggles they’ve gone through before dating, long before they even met each other. I think those little things really form us.

Did your own perspective change at all on Aissata and Juno’s relationship story or timeline throughout the process? If so, how?

Tomasz Jedrowski: It was quite a complicated love situation to understand because both of them moved cross-country throughout their lives. There were definitely moments where I was like, ‘When was this happening?’ You get the first impression of the couple in the beginning, where Juno seems maybe more reserved, and Aissata is the one who feels stronger on the surface, but the more I spoke to them, I realised that was just a superficial first impression and actually each one of them was able to be the anchor for each other at different points of the relationship.

My favourite thing is everything leading up to the first kiss, because that’s the building of tension, and I really love moments of will we, won’t we? Ironically or paradoxically, I also find it very difficult to write those things

Is there a person or situation in the story that resonated with your life or approach to relationships the most, and why?

Tomasz Jedrowski: Oh my god, yes. It was totally eerie because almost all the things that happened to them happened to me. This was about 100 years ago, before people had smartphones, but my husband and I met online on a dating website. We talked once and were meant to meet up, but never did. I was living in Paris, and a month before I was leaving to move back to London, we connected again. He came to mine, just like Juno and Aissata, and then we saw each other all the time and had to make long-distance work pretty soon after that. So, a very similar story.

That is weirdly similar because Aissata and Juno didn’t speak until several months after they matched. To you, what makes a digital connection a compelling starting point for a story?

Tomasz Jedrowski: What I find interesting is whatever the individual might project about the other or potential relationship before they’ve actually met, because that is all just fantasy. And yet, it’s a platform that’s really so useful. I’ve only had two long relationships in my life, and both of them are guys that I met online and otherwise wouldn’t have. So I feel really grateful for that technology! In my first proper relationship, meeting online seemed so casual, and I wasn’t projecting love. I remember thinking about how if I’d seen him in a bar, I would not have necessarily wanted to meet him. But, thankfully, I met them online. 

What’s your favourite thing about writing about love? And your least favourite?

Tomasz Jedrowski: My favourite thing is everything leading up to the first kiss, because that’s the building of tension, and I really love moments of will we, won’t we? Ironically or paradoxically, I also find it very difficult to write those things. Especially when it comes to fiction, when giving each lover their own identity, it can be quite difficult to make the reader understand why each person finds the other attractive. I have one character that is really, sort of, me and I have to ask, ‘Wait, why does the other fancy me/that character?’ Sometimes I try to make it too symmetrical when I don’t think it needs to be. It’s OK if one person is a little more into the other. 

In this story, we learn that Aissata needs to move home, even though she hadn't come out to her family. How did you want to showcase the balance between Aissata and Juno leaning on each other while giving each other space for their own separate journeys?

Tomasz Jedrowski: I don't feel like I necessarily achieved it: they achieved it. I was really impressed with how they talked about knowing that they can lean on one another, but also not become co-dependent by wanting to fix each other’s lives. Aissata actually had another friend at home that they could talk to about this – that’s something that I didn’t put in. They knew that being in love didn’t fulfil all of their needs: both of them said they needed other people and community. That’s how they achieved it, and I just mirrored that.

Did you learn anything new about your approach to relationships while writing Aissata and Juno’s story?

Tomasz Jedrowski: I found it really educational and humbling to be trusted with a non-binary lesbian story. Speaking to them and hearing more about their lives made me want to share about my life, even though that wasn’t necessarily the point. When we were sharing our coming out stories, we all had tears in our eyes. It was heartwarming and wonderful to come together to speak about these things and feel this really sweet connection.