Please Don't Kill Our Darlings

 

David Suchet as Hercule Poirot, courtesy ITV

I have a confession to make. I have never, not once, watched those 'final episodes' of long running series where the main character dies. I was thinking about this earlier this week when I switched on the TV in the kitchen, as I often do to alleviate the sheer boredom of cooking, only to find that it was showing the Remorseful Day, in which Morse pops his clogs. I've never watched it and I never will.

I feel the same about that appalling episode where Hercule Poirot dies. Not only have I never watched that, but I avoid those episodes where he ages, episodes that I notice tend to be accompanied by doom laden background music. Poirot is the original cosy crime series. Christie herself may have been fed up of being lumbered with her wildly successful creation, but in his David Suchet incarnation at least, I love him. I don't care if he's a perjink little man. I don't care if his denouement speeches might be unbearable in real life. This is patently not real life, and I love him to bits. In my mind, he goes on forever, and I'm never ever going to be persuaded to watch his final moments.

I should perhaps also confess that I've killed off more than enough darlings of my own. And mourned them too, mourned with those who are left behind. But that's different, because I'm not writing cosy crime. Sometimes I'm writing grown up love stories, literary fiction, explorations of real life, whether historical or contemporary. And for the writer, in an odd sort of way, even though you may have killed them off, those characters live on in your internal world. I'm thinking of two novels in particular: Bird of Passage and The Amber Heart. Without going into much detail, in case you haven't read them and want to, some darlings didn't quite make it. But don't worry. They're here, living their best lives in my head and heart. 

That phrase 'killing your darlings' was attributed to William Faulkner, but was used earlier by Arthur Quiller-Couch who wrote of murdering one's darlings. Essentially it means that as a writer, you may well find yourself having to delete the passages that you love best, the parts of a book that don't really advance the story. I used to think they were right. Now, as I'm reading swathes of tremendous classic fiction where people didn't feel the need to edit out all the best bits, I suspect they were probably wrong anyway. Imagine Dickens or Emily Bronte killing their darlings. Well, of course, she did. But just imagine (as I did here in this blog post!) if she had had an editor who told her to make radical changes. 

But I digress. Along with a sizeable chunk of the older female population, I loved Mamma Mia. We didn't get to see the sequel in the cinema so my husband bought the DVD for me. I got only a little way into it to realise that - horrors- they had killed off Donna. (Presumably because Streep didn't want to do it.) 

I donated the video to somebody who wanted it, but I still feel cheated. I wish somebody had warned me beforehand. The songs may have been great but it meant that the whole thing shifted from being a joyful film about wonderful middle aged men and women to focusing yet again upon the young. Not only that, but removing that brilliant central character was like chopping down a mast on a sailing boat. It took a whole lot of rigging with it, and crippled the vessel. 

The point of these ongoing characters is that in our minds, they don't die. They just are. Which is, now that I think about it, very like the way writers feel about their characters, even if we may have killed them off. They don't die. They are still there, popping up from time to time to remind us of their existence.

Can you imagine a grown up William Brown, struggling with mortgage payments and divorce? Can you imagine him ill and lonely? William - whom I love quite as much as Poirot - changed with the changing times, but he never grew old. That wasn't a tragedy. Peter Pan this isn't. Richmal Crompton created a world into which we all, from time to time, need to escape - hilariously funny, wise, wicked, badly behaved (he'd definitely have been hit with an ASBO now) and completely outside time and its sorrows. That's why I still feel the need to read those stories all over again from time to time, and why I still, all these years later, take so much pleasure from them. 

Bird of Passage is available on Kindle at the bargain price of 99p until 31st July.

How Not To Be A Writer - Part Eight: High Hopes

During the late 1970s, and after the death of my first radio drama producer, Gordon Emslie, I was introduced to another fine producer/director: Marilyn Imrie. It would be the start of a long and productive professional relationship and friendship during which we would work on a string of original radio plays, as well as a number of major dramatisations, for the much missed Classic Serial slot. 

Those were wonderful radio days, with a wealth of talent - acting, production, technical. This was talent that the BBC would deliberately throw away some years later, in pursuit of cost cutting at the expense of quality, and by imposing an 'internal market' strategy that successful creative industries were already realising didn't work. To quote just one minor example: when I first wrote for radio, well before digital was a thing, there was a record library for background sound effects, staffed by knowledgeable people. Later, the internal market dictated that the production budget had to cover a significant fee for this service - in effect, the BBC paying itself for a service it was already providing. It was, of course, much cheaper to pop along the road and buy whatever CD you needed, which was what most producers did back then. 

All the same, I would learn so much from so many people, over the following 25 years. 

Much as I loved Finland, I had decided that the work was never going to pay me enough to live on and besides, some of my writing was beginning to be successful. I spent some time at home in Ayrshire with my parents, writing, submitting work here there and everywhere, and wondering what to do next to make some money. 

Several things had happened over that decade that gave me hope that I might be able to forge a successful career as a writer. The radio commissions continued to trickle in and I just loved working on them, loved the whole experience of being in the studio, sometimes rewriting on the hoof, because time was always of the essence, working collaboratively with groups of committed people. 

A meeting with Robert Love of STV led to commissions for three short television plays: Ugly Sisters, the Showground Collection and the Shore Skipper. From this distance in time, I remember nothing about the first two, but I certainly remember the last one, because much later, I used it as the basis, albeit very loosely, for a successful stage play called The Price of a Fish Supper. 

Television - even regional television - was well paid. All the same it struck me that it might not be my favourite medium. In radio, writers are an essential part of the process, expected to attend at least some rehearsals and parts of the production. In television, with one or two glowing exceptions of which more later, I always got the sense that they preferred the writer to hand in a script, shut up and keep away. 

It was also becoming clear that I needed something a little less precarious from a financial point of view. I therefore applied for a position at Wroclaw University, to teach English Conversation to senior students. It was sponsored by the British Council. Poland was still under Soviet rule, although there were cracks appearing in that troubled relationship. 

An induction day in London for those heading beyond the Iron Curtain told us what to expect. I would be paid in zloties in Poland and in sterling back home in the UK - because Polish currency couldn't be exported. I would have to give up my passport while I was there. There would be a KGB informant in every classroom. We must avoid contentious subjects, especially political subjects. Our phones would probably be tapped. (Mine certainly was.) I seem to remember signing the Official Secrets Act. Could that really have happened? Well, maybe. 

With a mixture of trepidation and excitement, I packed my bags and headed for beautiful Wroclaw.