Split Personalities: Chapter 16

How John Wemmick from Great Expectation shaped one of my key characters

Andy Smarick

Jul 02, 2026

OK, fine, I admit it!

I stole the idea from Great Expectations.

But I turned the concept on its head.

Let me explain!

I was on Christopher Scalia’s podcast “Back of the Book” talking about COMMUNITY DAY. Check it out here.

Two for One

In the first draft of COMMUNITY DAY, one of my key characters, Kim, was unemotional and prickly. I thought I had her totally worked out. How she talked, how she dressed, even how she stood. The narrator, who is often over-the-top, was her opposite, so when they were together, it was a nice contrast. I felt like the Kim character was complete.

But after re-reading the draft and getting some feedback, I admitted that she was one-dimensional. There wasn’t much to her. Just curt grouchiness. In fact, she was less of a real person than an author’s creation. See, I had wanted to get across to the reader that Kim shut down emotionally after her husband abandoned her. So everything about her was just a response to that sad happening. But people are more than the effects of an event. I knew I had to show another side to Kim.

So I decided to split Kim’s personality in two. Inside her house, she’d be cranky and terse. But outside of the house, she’d be theatrical.

And this is how ~~I stole from~~ I was inspired by Great Expectations.

BUY COMMUNITY DAY!!!

The Office vs. The Castle

Charles Dickens’ greatest novel has a secondary character named John Wemmick. At work, he is stern, bureaucratic, sarcastic, sometimes even gloomy. I always imagined him alternating between a scowl and a look of boredom. But at home, he is cheerful, funny, and a loving caretaker to his aging father. It’s as though he’s two different people.

I decided to do the same with Kim. But the opposite. At home she’d be priggish, and in the outside world, she’d be melodramatic.

I reveal the theatrical Kim for the first time in Chapter 16.

The narrator and his best friend Pith run into Kim at the Dew Drop Inn. At the beginning of the interaction, the narrator notes her change.

This Dew-Drop Kim was very different than thin-skinned, security-blanket-sweater Kim.

The first time we meet Kim, she’s in her home, and she’s wearing earth tones, a turtleneck, and a cardigan sweater she treats like armor. But at the bar, she’s trying to be the center of attention.

She was wearing a baby-blue tiered ruffle gown with lace and rhinestone opera gloves. She had sunglasses resting on her head where a crown might go. She was surrounded by an adoring group of sleepy female senior citizens and what appeared to be Ritalin-ed theater kids from the community college. Honestly, she looked like a deposed royal who had to rebuild a wardrobe while possessing a limited budget and reassemble an entourage while retaining limited public esteem.

In her home, she speaks in clipped phrases. Only verbs and nouns. Most of her words have just one syllable. But at the bar?

She pointed at Pith and me and said to her table, “Focus my fabulous friends! Our fair community’s finest philistines and their ghastly garb!” Evidently Kim was no longer charged by the word or double-charged for adjectives. In fact, she seemed to be getting a discount for speaking in alliteration. She also pronounced “fabulous” and “ghastly”—fahhbulous, gahhstly—like she was on an English estate not in a disreputable saloon.

In her home, Kim seems to want to fade into the background. Not when she’s out and about.

Kim raised her chin and hand in unison, and the elderly lady on her left with pearls and penciled-in eyebrows filled Kim’s Manhattan glass from a carafe and added two maraschino cherries from a jar in her purse. I was dumbstruck. In this pack, Kim was some kind of abusive alpha diva.

Ultimately, my goal with Kim was to show that tragic events split her personality: To manage her trying situation, she had to become different people. At the novel’s climax, the implication is that if things go right, she will be able to re-integrate her personalities and become a single, full person again.

The Prequel

In the prequel, I’m thinking about doing something along these lines with one of the two main characters. She’s a mid- to late-20s professional working in the state capital (likely for the wife of the governor). Professionally, she’ll be effervescent and strong. But when with her immigrant mom—who just wants her daughter to get married and be taken care of—she’ll be demure. In the workplace, she’ll dress conservatively. But, because her mom wants her to land a man ASAP, when she’s out with her family she’ll wear much more revealing clothing and lots of makeup.

This will get at one of the big themes in the novel—how a complex life can require chameleon-like behavior.