Sophie Stern: 'It’s important to always dig deeper and ask what’s driving your characters'
BY Maya Fernandes
10th Mar 2026
In this interview Sophie Stern, author of the debut novel What Is Left For Us, shares her advice for writing complex characters and maintaining narrative balance.
'I don’t think any characters are inherently ‘good’ or ‘bad’ – each of us is flawed, and we need to be comfortable with showing both ugliness and compassion on the page.'
We caught up with Sophie to discuss her time studying with us, the inspiration behind her debut novel and the books that have influenced her.
What Is Left For Us centres on two sisters navigating long-buried tensions, shared grief and the complicated inheritance of their grandmother’s clifftop home. How did you go about shaping this family dynamic, and what advice would you give writers who want readers to root for characters who are both incredibly flawed and deeply human?
There’s a reason why readers and writers are drawn to stories about sisters – it’s a relationship that has tension, conflict and love built into it. Rebecca, the older sister in What Is Left For Us, came to me relatively fully formed, and so I built the story around her. Hannah is in many ways Rebecca’s opposite: the actress versus the lawyer, the mother versus childfree. But the sisters are also mirrors of one another, sharing history, memories, resentments. In many ways, each wants what the other has, although neither of them would ever admit that. Playing with that duality was central to shaping their dynamic.
While I was drafting, I had a note pinned above my desk that asked ‘What is beneath that? What is beneath that? What is beneath that?’ I think it’s important when writing characters to always dig deeper and ask yourself what’s driving them beyond the superficial or immediate. When you get to that place, it’s more honest and surprising. I also don’t think any characters are inherently ‘good’ or ‘bad’ – each of us is flawed, and we need to be comfortable with showing both ugliness and compassion on the page.
The clifftop house in Bondi feels almost like a character in its own right. In what ways did the setting influence the novel’s central themes? Did the house exist in your imagination before the sisters’ relationship fully took shape, or did place and character evolve together as you were writing?
The setting came first. I really wanted to capture a distinctly Australian setting in this novel, but not the Australia that’s postcard perfect – it’s an Australia under threat, from rising seas and coastal erosion and the La Nina rains. This undercurrent of climate anxiety adds pressure to the sisters’ decision about what to do with the house.
The house was important as it provided a container around the sisters’ relationship and compressed it into a specific time and space. The physical deterioration of the house mirrors the sisters’ relationship – the erosion over time, the cracks and the decay.
I used inheritance as the catalyst of the story as it’s a process that has such contrasts: on the one hand it’s a time of grief and memory and reunion, but on the other hand it is this awkward division of assets that essentially forces people together, even if they don’t want to.
As loyalties shift and tensions simmer between Rebecca and Hannah, how did you maintain narrative balance? What was your approach to navigating those pivotal moments without losing the integrity of a character’s perspective?
The structure of the novel was something I put a huge amount of work into. Each of the pivotal moments needed to work within the overall arc of the book, as well as in each character’s journeys. Moving between past and present added yet another layer of complexity. I came to think of these pivotal moments as like a trapdoor, destabilising the reader and dropping them into a deeper level of the story.
The first draft was really to find the story and characters; the subsequent drafts were about getting deliberate with pace and tension. I think I used every possible method to try to get a birds eye view of the structure – big poster boards, spreadsheets, index cards! Working with multiple points of view and timelines is a bit like braiding a plait together – each piece needs to stand alone but also come seamlessly together.
Are there any family-centred novels that influenced you whilst writing What Is Left For Us, or that you found yourself returning to for inspiration?
I love Tessa Hadley and how she turns such a sharp eye to domestic and interior lives. The Past and Late in the Day are favourites. Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere is a masterclass in writing with pace, tension and deep interiority. Charlotte Wood’s The Weekend uses a house as a mechanism to draw a group of friends back together. And while not necessarily family-centred, George Saunders is always an inspiration for writing with wit, originality and warmth.
You studied with us on our online Writing Your Novel – Six Months course, as well as a couple of short courses. How did your time with us shape your approach to writing?
The course was the first time I took myself seriously as a writer. The idea of ‘writing a novel’ felt so huge and insurmountable, so I loved how the course broke it down into weekly classes and made each stage feel manageable. I got so much out of the discipline of submitting work and learning how to read with a writer’s eye. And of course, being in a group with so many other talented writers spurs you to become better as well!
Many of our students find lifelong writing friends on our courses. Are you still in touch with anyone you met on the course?
Most of the cohort for my course was based in the UK, but I was lucky to find one other writer in Sydney – Camille Booker, who published the gorgeous gothic novel The Woman in the Waves last year (and we’ve since had another UK-based writer move here!). There are a few others I’m in touch with, but our broader WhatsApp group has sadly quietened as people are in different stages of their lives and writing careers, but that doesn’t diminish how important that group was. We all became writers together, and I think we’ll always be connected in that way.
And finally, what’s next for your writing journey?
I’m working on my second novel, a coming-of-age story set at the turn of the millennium. I thought it would be easier the second time around, but there are still all the same challenges of facing the blank page and overcoming self-doubt! It is reassuring to know that I have done it once and I keep reminding myself that the mess is part of the process. I’ve loved getting back to writing regularly – as exciting as the publishing process is, the real love is making up stories and getting words onto the page.
Get your hands on a copy of What Is Left For Us, out now with Penguin Books Australia.
Sophie was a student on our Starting to Write Your Novel, Write to the End of Your Novel and online Writing Your Novel – Six Months courses in 2022.
The books linked in this blog can be found on our Bookshop.org shop front. Curtis Brown Creative receive 10% whenever someone buys from our bookshop.org page.