LOUISE CANDLISH – Rejections Happen Even When You’re A Successful Novelist

Louise: When I think about poor Miss Marriott, who was my English teacher, she used to get sort of 12, 15 page stories from me. And you know, and I, I’m never considered for a moment that, you know, it was gonna take her time to, to read them, that she must have seen my little green exercise. Sick and thought, oh no.

Laura: Hello, I’m Laura Shaven, and this is the Offcut Straw, the show that looks inside a writer’s bottom drawer to find the bits of work they never finished, had rejected, or couldn’t quite find a home for. We bring them to life, hear the stories behind them, and learn how these random pieces of creativity pave the way to subsequent success,

my guest for this episode is novelist Louise Candlish. She’s the author of 17 novels including Our House, the Other Passenger, and The Only Suspect With Her 18th. A Neighbor’s Guide to Murder published this month. Her 2018 novel, our House won the British Book Award for Crime and Thriller book of the year in 2019, and was adapted into a four-part ITV drama, which aired in 2022, starring Tuppens Middleton and Martin Compton.

And since then, she has written across genres including domestic suspense, psychological thrillers, and earlier in her career, romantic fiction. Several of her novels have been Sunday Times bestsellers, and her work has been translated into more than 20 languages. Louise, welcome to the Offcut Straw.

Louise: Thank you for having me.

And may I say straight away that I wouldn’t describe any of my books as romantic fiction? Oh my God, I’m the anti-romantic author, if anything. Really? Not even the first one. No. Well that was, it was, you are right. It was, it was marketed as a rom-com. But it was, it was actually a stalking story. It was a sort of, I would just.

Describe it as a sort of stalking comedy. So there were a couple of comedies in the early days, and then there were, there were sort of family dramas. I would describe my sort of middle section.

Mm-hmm.

Louise: Um, and then they segue very, very naturally into darker suspense stories. Because I had never been writing, um, stories of hope and, um,

Laura: nobody could accuse you of being too positive.

Louise: Sadly not. So it was all too easy to get darker and darker and darker. But I think I’ve always retained that, um, that satirical element, you know, that sort of comic element. And I think. That’s the kind of counterpoint to it, because actually if an academic sat down and analyzed my message, they would say that I was extremely pessimistic about society.

To, to, I mean, I kind of do it naturally. I’m making it sound as if it’s all deliberate, but I quite naturally do include some comedy in my, in my tone and my voice to, um, you know, to counteract, you know, that sort of slightly more pragmatic message. Do, do you know why you lean towards bleakness? I dunno. I, I guess I always have, and I think it’s, you know, it, maybe it’s to do with my background.

I mean my, my parents and um, family are Geordie, so, you know, you’ve got that kind of very modern sense of humor that Geordies have, and I think that’s in there. I grew up in the Midlands, which has another kind of, you know, characteristic that has the certain kind of understatement and pessimism. Now I live in South London, so you’ve got this kind of trio of influences, but it’s really hard to know.

I mean, it could be, um, you know, all the books I’ve read and all of the, the TV drama and comedy that I’ve watched over the years, just being Gen X. Yes. You know, I, I feel like I’m very typical of my generation. You know, we are. Um, sarcastic and sardonic and, you know, I think all of that comes through and, you know, we’re very much a sort of bantering generation as well.

You know, all of the things that you are sort of, you know, in inverted commas not allowed to say anymore. Gen X will say when the, you know, when we’re all together. And I think all of that comes through in, um, the voice of my characters.

Laura: Okay, well let’s get started with your first off cut. Can you tell us please, what it’s called, what genre it was written for and when it was written?

Louise: So this is a prologue I wrote in around 2022 for an as yet untitled thriller.

Beth (Actor): We have an excellent view of the scene from up here. Our faces are turned as one to the monstrous Atlantic to the figures gathered on the shore, shrunken by the high tide plen. The search and rescue boat has departed, but Isaac says it’s too dangerous to launch the helicopter.

To be honest, the bad weather is preferable to the grinding heat of previous days, but I do worry about my plane taking off safely into that horrible churning sky. I hope my flight won’t be delayed. I say, I are so egocentric. Isaac says laughing. What about the poor bastard lost out there? I hope his flight won’t be delayed either.

I say. And I flare my eyes at him. Playful. Flirtatious in a different context. We might have hooked up Isaac and me, but I’ve had bigger fish to fry, to catch and kill. First it was a hostile manager, Teo, who tipped us off about the crisis, letting us know one by one as we trooped through reception and we’d scurried up to the roof to watch like good little rubberneckers.

The alarm had been raised an hour ago by some rich Honeymooner at the Pale Hotel whose new husband was missing. No one was too bothered until his board washed ashore, but by then it was surely too late. The wife’s in a right old state. Apparently Isaac said you would be. I said agreeing. He should never have gone out alone.

He’d only had a few lessons apparently. Apparently this, apparently that. This is what happens when you run before you can walk. He added, yeah, you drown before you can swim. You are completely outrageous. Taxi for Viv, someone yells from the stairwell, and that’s me. I call back, I smile at Isaac and the others as I depart a proper goodbye gift of a smile.

I’ll never see them again. I’ll never think of them again. Serves me right that their heads turn back to the action even before my beam fades. Beyond the swell rises and grows. It’s a beautiful place. Spirits a savage place. Strange, but I felt a profound sense of belonging while I’ve been here.

Laura: That’s a very satisfying, apposite way to start a podcast about writing with an offcut called prologue.

I want some extra points for that. So we were just talking about generation X and it seems very much like that character is exactly as you described, a Gen X lady. Where was this story going to go?

Louise: Hmm. Well that was actually, um, the prologue was in fact quite a long way into the story. So it’s one of those structures where you sort of see a catastrophic moment and then you go back and discover how the character, who’s called Viv Uhhuh, um, why she’s in Bears.

And, um, you know, what havoc has she. Wrought there before she makes her a rather blithe departure. I love the, um, the reading of it sounds so clipped in 1930s and it’s actually making me think and making me remember one of the reasons why I didn’t take it on and I did something else instead. And it’s because it was very much a sort of old fashioned kind of vibe.

Ah. And the plotting alone would’ve worked a lot better before mobile phones and, you know, all of the, the various sort of apps and things we have now to track everyone. And so, you know, I was thinking, actually, this is gonna be quite tricky because I, I need to make this historical, I need to set this in the sixties maybe, or the very latest, the eighties.

And so I abandoned it. But yes, she’s quite a typical. Sort of Noirish character of mine. There’ve been a few of these 20 something girls who are on the Make.

Mm-hmm.

Louise: Who, you know, come from nothing and, um, need to find a way to better their circumstances. And this book, which I seem to remember, I was going to call the Sun Trap or something like that.

I had a few titles. This was inspired by Henry James is the Wings of the Dove, where a couple. Target a wealthy sort of res type in the hopes that the male will be able to marry her and she’s ill. And it’s a kind of, um, you know, pre prenup era. So all of these kind of elements did lead me to abandon it, but I actually hit the voice very quickly, loved the character, and also could see how easily it could be structured as well.

So, you know, maybe I’ll go back to it one day, but I think it does need to be set. Pre phones, pre-mobile phones,

Laura: do you not write novels that are set in a different time period to the present? Not

Louise: really. The only one I’ve done is the only suspect, which is partly set in the nineties. And again, that was chosen.

I went back, I kept it as close to the present days, I could, but before mobile phones would’ve had an impact on the plot. Mm. And, and the only suspect has occasionally been described as historical, which really makes me laugh. Because I think of that as extremely recent. So do I, but of course, it was 25, 30 years ago.

1995 was the year that I set part of the action. There was a heat wave that summer. I remember it very clearly and you know, it proved to be a really successful novel and is in fact going to be the next one on the, on the screen. So, Ooh, I know that you can do it. I know it’s okay. But I think the further back you go.

The more research you need and the harder it will be ultimately, if it’s ever adapted for the screen as well, which is, you know, sort of always on my mind, you know, in a hopeful way.

Right.

Louise: Um, so no, I haven’t, but maybe I

Laura: will. How much of it did you actually write? ’cause you said this prologue is not actually at the beginning of the book.

So presumably you didn’t just start in the middle or, or do you do that? Oh

Louise: no, I did. Yeah, I did. I did do that, but I had plotted out loosely what was going to happen. And then I thought, what’s an interesting way to, to enter the story? And I love entering a story at the end or in the middle. And then, you know, seeing, you know, something often fatal, um, but certainly catastrophic in some way.

And then going straight back to show. The character before it all went horribly wrong.

Laura: Have you planned it in advance? Do you plan it and then go, I’m gonna start in the middle and then go back and forward or whatever? Or do you go, I’ll start in the middle. I’m guessing it’s the middle. Who knows? We’ll see.

I dunno what’s happened before. I dunno what’s gonna happen afterwards. ’cause that seems extremely confident.

Louise: Yeah, I think I’m, yeah, I think I’m quite confident I just plunge in. Um, because for me the most important thing by far is voice. Mm-hmm. I even really fundamental important things that other authors will cite as the most important thing, like plot, character and setting.

To me, voice comes before those, obviously, voice and character are very strongly linked and they, I guess they’re the same thing actually. Um, now I’m talking about it. Mm-hmm. And generally I will, I’ll be writing from the point of view of a character or several characters. I won’t be a kind of overarching narrator.

Mm-hmm. I don’t tend to adopt. That puppeteer mode ever. Mm-hmm. So you get straight in the head under the skin of the character. So with this one, I honestly can’t remember. I certainly knew that it was going to start in London and that Viv, the character, was going to work in a department store, and that probably will be the next scene that I would’ve written, but I only ever wrote the prologue, which is after she’s done tremendous harm.

To the other two characters in the Love Triangle, and she’s making her her exit from the hostel where she’s been staying. Sounds intriguing. Do write it. Please, please, please.

Laura: Anyway, time for another off cut Now. So tell us about this one.

Louise: So this was written in 2018 and it’s a deleted scene from my novel, which at the time was called the Victim and later became our house.

Emma (Actor): Allison and I were the last to go to bed, clearing up the party debris, stacking the dishwasher, draining the ends of the Prosecco. At the top of the house. The kids were asleep, or at least resisting in relative peace and quiet. She put on the soundtrack to Betty Blue, and I lost my thoughts to the mournful sacks, the pleasurable mood of doom.

I remember seeing this at the cinema. I said we were well under age. I dunno how we got in. I’d never seen a French film before. Wonder what she looks like now. That actress. Oh, I expect she’s a middle aged crawl like us Allison said, pouring the ends of blood colored drinks down the sink. Canna, just say how well you’ve done this weekend, darling.

It’s been a tough time for you this whole year. It certainly has. I picked it a pat of green icing that had hardened on the floor tile like concrete. A suburban life goes on, doesn’t it? The Trinity Avenue hole is greater than the sum of its parts. Aristotle, she said, though, I don’t think he knew about Trinity Avenue.

The street was a true home. I thought with a gust of sentimentality. I wasn’t prepared for. Weekends like this might begin as an escape from older eyes, but they tended to end as a reinforcement of its gravitational pull, the unalterable correctness of our place at its center. Did you, oh, you made me jump Kirsty.

She stood in the doorway in spotted pajamas. I just remembered. She said the clocks go back tonight. So it’s not one, it’s only midnight. Me’s gone to bed. She says goodnight. One for the road. Alison offered pouring, cursing a drink without waiting for an answer. You know, I’ve always thought that this will be a great time to commit a crime.

When everyone’s confused about the actual hour, it’d mess up a bys. Witnesses had forget whether the time had gone forwards or backwards. An autopsy is pretty accurate regarding time of death. I said, I love how you assume someone’s gonna die. Allison laughed. It was an odd thing because we were only doing what we’d done for years, a nightcap after the Halloween party, the finale of the holiday.

But the scene had an end of an era mood about it, as if tomorrow we had to surrender ourselves for a witness protection program or less. Melodramatically. Allison had announced plans to sell the cottage to next year. I raised my half empty glass, and when Allison looked up, her agreement was too simple, too immediate to be sincere, and I thought with complete clarity, we won’t do this again.

The sense of loss was briefly unbearable.

Laura: So why was this cut?

Louise: Oh my God. Well, I don’t know. I, well, I kind of know and um, I’m now thinking it sounds so familiar to me because deleted scenes are just as familiar as the ones that stay in the book. So I’m now thinking, have I got this wrong? And was that cut? Because it feels like it’s almost. The profound sort of center of the novel.

And for those who’ve read it, they’ll immediately know who all the characters are. I certainly know that I, I had to do some cutting because the book was quite long and, you know, that was very much establishing the mood and the character. So this is from the early part of the book, is it? It’s got, it’s actually from, it’s the middle section, which again is, you know, it’s hard and you know, sometimes.

Can can be thought to drag by editors. So I’d imagine there was that element, you know, let’s move on. Because while they are basically on a mom’s holiday during half term, and they do it every year and it’s Halloween and they have a Halloween party, but while this is happening, something criminals going on in fees.

In London. And so it is a really, really important time. And so maybe I thought that that conversation about a crime being committed when the clocks change, maybe I felt like that was being too obvious about telling us what was happening. The other thing I remember is that, um, and this happens a lot with me, is I’m really bad with timelines.

And this came out in the edit and I remember thinking, oh, no. Again, this is me putting myself into the book because I remember Betty Blue and I remember going to the cinema to see Betty Blue, and then I had to remind myself that I was older than the characters I was writing, and that they would’ve been just far too young to have gone to see Betty Blue.

They would never have got in. They would’ve been under 10. And so, um, so rather than changing the movie, I obviously, um, just deleted the whole scene, but, but to me it’s really special to hear it because the Betty Blue soundtrack was. The music I listened to when I wrote our House. Oh. So, um, you know, it really set the, the mood for the book, which is full of melancholy.

You know, it was, as you mentioned in your intro, won prizes for Thriller of the Year and crime and Thriller book awards. But for me it was a tragedy. It was a love story, gone horribly wrong, wrapped in a, in a crime novel.

Mm.

Laura: Uh, but do you have one particular, like the Betty Blue, uh, music was what you listened through throughout the writing of that book, and maybe you have another piece of music or another selection of music, there’s a mood background to the writing of a particular book, or do you just generally listen to music and it could be jazz one day or classical next day or whatever.

This isn’t the Betty Blue Book.

Louise: No. No, and I, and actually I don’t really listen to music when I’m writing. It’s. More when I’m thinking or in, you know, the off hours with the, the new book, A Neighbor’s Guide to Murder. That’s probably my first book where music isn’t incredibly important. Normally, you know, the kind of music, the characters, like the only suspect, which I mentioned, um, set in the nineties, you know, that’s got a, a playlist.

Mm-hmm.

Louise: That’s very easy to follow. Of the nineties classics and

Laura: But you don’t listen to them yourself as you are writing. They don’t, they don’t inform the mood or they do. Yeah, they

Louise: do. They do. I might do. Yeah. Absolutely. And, um, thinking about Our House, I think that there’s one scene where Bram is listening to Portishead Sour Times, and I would’ve ly listened to that.

And it, it does inform the mood, absolutely. But it’s not every book and it’s, I don’t really have a process that I follow with every book. And as I say, my most. Recent book, I’m not associating with music at all. Mm-hmm. I did have a whole subplot where the narrator Gwen, who’s a 70-year-old retired woman, had a Rod Stewart obsession.

And so, you know, I had a whole scene planned where she goes to the O2 to see him with her 20 something friend Pixie as the book’s about an age gap relationship, an age gap. Friendship. Mm-hmm. Among other things. But in the end, I just thought, well, actually, I think this is for my own amusement. I’m not really sure what that’s going to add to the reader’s understanding of Gwen.

So, you know, it begins a self-indulgence and sometimes it does pervade the whole mood of the book, and sometimes it’s just for me, and then I’ll just, I’ll just ditch it. Interesting. Let’s move on now and what’s your next soft cut? Oh my goodness. So this one is an excerpt from a story I wrote in 1981 when I was at school called Murder in the Alps.

Beth (Actor): Marella smiled happily to herself. She loved life in the Alps. The sky was blue, the snow glistening in the sunlight, and everything seemed perfect. Everything except Livy. That was. Glanced at her sister and felt worried Livy was sitting on a ledge, readymade from the rock looking the picture of misery.

Marella had had enough look, she shouted, making Livy jump. I dunno what’s got into you this week, and frankly I don’t care, but I wish you wouldn’t try and ruin mine. And Dan’s holiday as well as your own. Livy looked up at her with pure hatred. I’m so sorry. She replied sarcastically. Am I upsetting you? I had no idea.

You are jealous, aren’t you? More shouted. You can’t bear me to love Dane and him to love me. You are pathetic. Really pathetic. Livy unkempt her skis from her boots and said defiantly. Well, since I’m so pathetic, you can go on your stupid walk on your own. Morela sighed an exasperation. They were getting nowhere standing on the top of a mountain shouting at each other.

She too sat down and gazed at the snowy slopes below her back to Livy. Livy looked up seething with jealousy. Her sister was only about five meters away, sitting still and silent. Livy knew this was the moment. There would never be another as good as this. She picked up a ski and stood up without making a sound.

This is it. Then, Marella, she thought, gritting her teeth. You’ll never see your darling Dane again. She crept up behind her sister and lifted the ski over her shoulder. Suddenly more turned and gasped with surprise and horror. No, Livy, please know you’re crazy. The ski came down and hit her on the head with a terrific force.

She gave a pathetic groan, then fell slowly into the snow. She was without doubt dead for a moment. Livy felt no emotion. She just stood like a robot, staring at more’s limp, lifeless body. Then she thought of Dane and felt happy. Now she could have Dane and Marella couldn’t again. She looked at the dead body, lying in the snow you’ve had all you deserve.

Dear Marella, she said aloud. Suddenly the sound of an approaching cable car caught her attention quickly. She came to her senses and began kicking snow over Marla’s body. She then attached her skis to her boots and set off down the mountain. She didn’t feel in the least bit guilty. Just terribly pleased and satisfied.

Leah (Actor): Grade a teacher’s comment, very well written, but avoid melodrama.

Laura: Um, do you have a sister by any chance?

Louise: Oh my God, I’m crying with laughter at that. That is absolutely hilarious. Um, I do, yes. My sister Jane and, um, yes, she’s not,

Laura: she’s not your, uh, your muse for this in any way. Your inspiration.

Louise: I dunno. I mean, maybe she was, I don’t think either of us had boyfriends ’cause I was 12 at that age when she’s only 18 months older than me.

But um, yeah, for those who haven’t gathered the motive for this, this grizzly murder is just that one. One sister’s got a boyfriend that the other one wants. Oh my God. That is just hilarious. And also, I should tell you that I’ve got the book in front of me, that exercise book, and it comes with an illustration of You did an illustration.

Yes. Oh my word. I did an illustration of mountains and then there’s a cable car. That runs between these two peaks in my little illustration and the ca, the cable card does, um, come up later in the story when there’s another death.

Laura: Oh my God. That was quite a long story. It was almost self-contained.

You’re telling me It’s sort of

Louise: so it’s a little novella. Oh, that’s, yeah, that’s an excerpt. This was about 10 pages long. I mean, when I think about Poor Miss Marriott, who was my English teacher, she used to get sort of 12, 15 page stories. From me and you know, and I, I never considered for a moment that, you know, it was gonna take her time to, to read them, but she must have seen my little green exercise book and thought, oh no.

Oh, I bet she was thrilled.

Laura: It sounds like you were an amazing child to have in class looking under a novelist there. And then, although I had say my favorite line there, she was without doubt dead. That is, I don’t think I’ve laughed so hard, like in any of the off cuts we’ve ever done.

Louise: It’s just so funny, isn’t it?

And the fact that she’s. She’s only pleased and satisfied. Yes. Not guilty, not ashamed or in any way traumatized. Just immensely pleased and satisfied.

Laura: Yes. Well, I mean, it’s, it’s obviously it is a very simplistic, you know, it’s a 12-year-old view and there are obviously things that are stated that, that are obvious and wouldn’t be stated by you as a novelist, but still it’s very much got the bones of a thriller novel.

Louise: Totally. And what’s really, really funny and fascinating for me is. Seeing the influences because my influences at that time would’ve been Agatha Christi. So you can see the kind of death on the Nile mm-hmm. Type melodrama, yeah. In there. But also, um, you know, the glamor of shows like Dallas and Dynasty.

Right. ’cause yeah, because I lived in North Hampton, which, um, you know, isn’t a terribly glamor. Place, and it may be more glamorous now, but certainly in the early eighties it was a Midlands industrial town and I don’t think we even had any restaurants at that time. I’m sure it’s very different now. And so all of my access to glamor was through books and tv.

And so even their names, there’s no way I would’ve had a more in my school or a, or a Livy. You know, they’re all kind of American sounding names. Ah, yes, yes. So, yeah. And Dane. I mean, there would not have been a Dane that is very American in my circle. Yeah. It’s so for me, I can see, I can really see the, um, the influences and, you know, and also I hadn’t traveled at all.

I don’t think I’d left the country at that point. Mm-hmm. Um, so the Alps would’ve been to me impossibly glamorous. Oh,

Laura: so this isn’t based on any kind of memory of having gone skiing? No.

Louise: It’s not a school trip. No. No. Gosh, no. I mean, I, I don’t ski now. I mean, I have been skiing, but No, not until my twenties.

You know, I had a very, um, small town upbringing where I didn’t really leave the, the area even to, to go to London until I went to university. So, yeah, it’s really fun to imagine 12-year-old me watching Dallas and then, you know, turning to my English homework. Do you know what the prompt was

Laura: for the homework?

Did they give you the title? What I did on my holidays? For example?

Louise: No, no. Any prompt that I was given, I would turn it into a story of murder and melodrama.

Laura: How brilliant were you actually? Did you become a goth or an when you were Oh, a teenager. Oh my god, this

Louise: is so hilarious. No, the um, my aforementioned sister Jane, was the queen goth of Northampton.

She was a goth, but I was a tennis nut, so we used to walk to school together and I would wear tennis. Kit and she would wear a wedding dress dyed black. We were quite a famous pair of sisters.

Laura: Goodness, that sounds like the beginning of a novel in its own right. That’s incredible. So your sister looked like she had the dark side, but you all dressed in tennis whites and bouncing around with no doubt.

Your hair in a ponytail. Yeah. You were the one that was secretly planning murders. Yes. Underneath it all. Isn’t

Louise: that interesting? Because I actually think that that is true. I think I’m a much darker person, but she looked very dark. She, you know, she had all the appearances of being, you know, sort of returned from the dead and you know, was in a big gang of goths.

And I seem to remember her boyfriend, who wasn’t called Dane, had a coffin. He had a coffin in his, in his flat.

Laura: That’s just brilliant. No, that’s very funny. Oh my word. What an interesting family you have. Louise. Oh my goodness. Um, right then. Well, let’s move on. Next off Cut please. What’s this one?

Louise: So this is called the Gurs, and it’s from 2022 and it’s a pilot for a TV drama,

Leah (Actor): Mitchell Flat Day Saturday.

And Mitchell, middle aged, low key, casually dressed. Rings Sarah’s doorbell, tradesman’s van at the curb. He glances about him. Obviously not familiar with the street. The door is opened by Sarah in jeans and a t-shirt. Makeup free

Emma (Actor): Ewen. Hi. Come in.

Marcus (Actor): I’m sorry I’m late. Traffic was horrendous on the ring road.

Emma (Actor): Oh, you should try

Marcus (Actor): not having

Emma (Actor): a

Marcus (Actor): car.

Emma (Actor): The morning bus I sway. You could walk on your hands faster.

Leah (Actor): She wraps on Evie’s door as they pass calls out with classic divorced parent cheer

Emma (Actor): Dad’s here. Sorry. It’s a bit of a mess. We’re still getting sorted.

Leah (Actor): They enter the tiny dim living room and Sarah opens the curtains to reveal a cozy, colorful space.

Only one or two unpacked boxes remaining. She sits but you and stands,

Marcus (Actor): how did she get on

Leah (Actor): this

Marcus (Actor): week? She hasn’t answered my messages

Emma (Actor): really well. Already slaving over the textbooks every night.

Marcus (Actor): Sounds like a laugh a minute.

Emma (Actor): Ah, she’s off to a party tonight though. The cool crowd. Since When’s

Marcus (Actor): Evie been in the cool crowd?

Emma (Actor): Well, this is the whole point of moving to a new town. You can reinvent yourself. Okay, so maybe I know the mum of the cool kids.

Marcus (Actor): There it is. In like Flynn. What’s that supposed to mean? It’s just you’re on a mission, aren’t you? You won’t stop till she’s at Oxford or wherever.

Emma (Actor): I don’t think going to a party gets you into Oxford.

Come on. You know how clever she is. Why shouldn’t she aim high?

Marcus (Actor): Of course she should. I just don’t get why you want this over what you had, what we had.

Leah (Actor): Is that school really worth it? They look accusingly at each other. The civilized veneer has well and truly cracked. Don’t do this ewen. What

Emma (Actor): make out like the school is why we split up.

It’s not fair on Evie and it’s also not true.

Marcus (Actor): Look, if she’s happy, I’m happy

Emma (Actor): she is. You know this other mom, we were friends at school. It’s a bit of a shock seeing her again. What’s she called? Nikki, the American

Marcus (Actor): girl. Isn’t that a bit awkward?

Leah (Actor): Well, I’m hoping it won’t have to be. No. I’d be careful if I are you.

Hi dad. Evie enters and Yuen wraps his arms around her sensing how much his daughter needs this hug. Yuen catches Sarah’s eye, quizzical exterior, more cliff common and interior. Uber night, Saturday as night darkens. The common empty and unsettling a taxi crawls along the west side. Sarah and Evie both dressed up.

Peer out in search of the Walden residence.

Emma (Actor): 35. This is it. Bloody hell. Evie. Look at it. It’s like selling sunset

Leah (Actor): as the cab pulls up a security light flicks on illuminating a grand electric gate to the side of the house. A pair of Gulliver students are tapping at the entry pad.

Beth (Actor): Oh, that’s my entrance.

I’ve got the Cobra. Martha, want me to come in with you?

Emma (Actor): Make sure it works. No, you mad

Leah (Actor): fine.

Emma (Actor): Go Have a great time.

Leah (Actor): Evie scrambles out and Sarah watches her head up the drive before the cat falls away.

Emma (Actor): You too, mom.

Leah (Actor): You too.

Laura: So this is interesting. Tell us about the premise. Is this a thriller as well?

Louise: Um, yes. It’s, it’s a drama. So this was, um, a TV project that I worked on for a long time with a TV company called Red who are No More. Um, and it was inspired by the, everyone’s invited. Sex scandal in the schools that blew up around that time and led to a, you know, extremely shocking Ofsted report.

It was a huge story where it was discovered that boys in quite young boys, but certainly sort of senior school had been. Treating girls in a sexually inappropriate way, sometimes assaulting them, asking for nude pictures, and basically just making the atmosphere extremely uncomfortable and at times criminal.

And so there were a number of investigations in the schools, some of them quite high profile schools. And, um, and the government got involved and like so many other things it, it didn’t really go away because it’s all linked to porn. And, you know, the age at which. Boys start watching it. And the nature of porn now, which is very different from back in the day, uh, much more violent.

Um, and so, you know, I was really shocked. And also just sort of, you know, I, I, I felt unusually interested in a current affairs story. And so when, um, my agent suggested that I built a drama around it, an original drama, it just. Felt completely right. And so I did, and it came together very quickly. All of the characters.

I planned eight parts. I worked very closely with a development executive who was absolutely brilliant because I was so lucky I’d never written a, a script before and I had a kind of one-on-one tutor.

Hmm.

Louise: And it was really, really good fun to do and such a fantastic learning experience. But like so many.

Other TV projects, nothing happened and it hasn’t been made. So, you know, so it’s a, that was a lesson in itself with a, when you are writing a book, you know, when I write a book, I have a contract. I know there is going to be a project at the end of it and, you know, it might be a bestseller or it might not, but the story is shared and it’s there for people to access.

But with a TV project, it’s speculative. You know, I put in easily as much work into the gulls, um, as it was called. As I would’ve done a novel during that period, and yet, you know, there’s nothing. This is all, there is your lovely recording, which is so interesting to, to see which scene you’ve picked from the, the pilot, um, between the two estranged parents rather than the kids.

Part of the issue with selling it was that I had a 50 50 mix between the parents’ lives and the teenager’s lives, which kind of placed it a little bit too much in a gray area. So, you know, some broadcasters would say we love it, but can it be more kids, more like euphoria? Mm-hmm. And then others would say, Ooh, you know, can we minimize the teens and focus on the adults?

Like big little eyes. So it kind of fell between two camps, but I’m still very proud of it and I’m hoping actually to, if, um. We can get past the legalities of it. I’m hoping to be able to take it back and transform it into a novel.

Laura: I was about to say, surely that’s the obvious next step, isn’t it? Yes,

Louise: I think so.

The, but I think that the problem with being inspired by something very current and zeitgeisty, which everyone’s invited, you know, this campaign for, you know, school survivors of peer abuse. That’s old news now. You know, five years old now. And so I think what I would probably do is structure the community.

I’d keep the community in the characters, and I’d probably structure it around a different crime and possibly relegate the peer on peer crime to a subplot. I have to have a think about it, but it does. As someone who could only previously. Written things that had then been published. I’ve never had any novels sort of sitting in a drawer that haven’t been published.

Mm. It’s, it was actually quite hard for me to find off cuts because everything I’ve written has been published. So this is the first time I’ve done a huge project that hasn’t seen the light of day. And so, you know, it was really character building. I was very disappointed. Mm. And, um, you know, and had to sort of try and bounce back from that.

So it’s been, it’s, it’s a good one to include because it’s a re it really does show you that, you know, it doesn’t matter how successful you are, um, you, you get rejections all the time. And also writing this script came very easily and I now think, well, you know, had this been in the hands of an experience, screenwriter, you know, maybe it felt easy because it.

It wasn’t quite good enough. I just don’t know because I think the idea was very sound. Mm-hmm. But it was really lovely to try another format, another form of writing. And I always love writing dialogue and I always believe in, you know, showing through dialogue rather than telling what’s going on. And so, you know, TV is the perfect way of doing that.

Laura: Or you could break yourself in gently and do radio.

Louise: Yes. Yeah. Oh, I’d love to write a, a radio play. I love radio. Dramatizations of novels is one of my favorite forms. Um, I absolutely Could the Gallers be

Laura: a five part or I, I dunno, I dunno what the format are these days.

Louise: Yes. Or

Laura: an afternoon play.

Louise: Yes. Maybe. I mean, I only wrote the, it’s an eight episode.

Um. A series and, and I only wrote the pilot. I only wrote episode one. And you only write the rest if it’s commissioned and it wasn’t commissioned. Yeah. But all of the planning is there, all of the plotting. If this was a novel or anything else, I wouldn’t have to do any relotting. It was. Really interesting compared to my novel process.

My thriller writing process is very much kind of loosely plan it, know what the crime is, who’s done it, all the mechanisms sort of in my head, and then I just get going to find the voice. But with this, every single minute of every single episode was plotted. Well, hopefully, hopefully it’ll be

Laura: resurrected in one or multiple formats going forward.

I hope

Louise: so. I hope so. It’s an important story and you know, it hasn’t yet been told in, you know, any, any depth I don’t think. Well time for another off cut. Now what have we got? So this is a book idea I called the residents and I wrote it in around 2020.

Leah (Actor): The residence is an aspirational collection of Riverside apartments where city meets suburb.

Where domestic bliss has been curated to the last detail where you can’t fail to live your best life, they say nothing when you sign up about the threat of murder in a cafe across the road from a West London coroner’s court, three witnesses share a table. They are linked by their association with the residents, the development that promised dream living, but delivered a nightmare.

Just three months after the first renters moved in, a woman named Marina met her death in one of the apartments, and the police have been asking questions ever since. Lois is the neighbor whose husband’s erratic behavior derailed her hopes for a new start, for their young family, and placed her at the scene of the tragedy.

Bridget is the building manager. A former police victim advocate whose attachment to her work and interest in Marina was starting to blur lines even before the fatal event. And Tom is the accidental player, all his worldly possessions in the bag at his feet. He’d moved into the unit next door to Marina only two weeks before her death, and was the last person to see her alive.

Just hours later, the coroner delivers a verdict of accidental death and the police investigation is closed. Life for the residence resumes, but Bridget won’t let go. It’s her job to pay attention to detail and the details in Marina’s death. Don’t add up. Instinct tells her the answers lie with those fellow witnesses, Lois and Tom.

But no sooner does she try to reconnect with them, then they’re gone. It soon becomes clear that whoever warned them off intends the same disappearing act for her because something’s going on at the residence so monstrous that it makes people like them expendable. It makes murder look like child’s play.

Laura: Ooh, this is a document that book I did. Who is this for? Is this to inspire you or was it as a treatment to sell

Louise: to a publisher? Yeah, this was for me, so I am before all else an ideas person, so you know, I would love to spend my day just generating ideas. And not actually completing the projects. And so I’ve got, over the years, there’ve been lots of these to the extent that when I was looking for them, I’ve thrown lots away.

Some of them it was like I’d never seen them before. I couldn’t remember them. It’s um, I always start a new novel with a blurb and I think it’s the former copywriter in me that I just like to crystallize. The main plot theme, you know, the mood, just how is it gonna be, the elevator pitch, you know, just a couple of paragraphs.

And so I’ll often start that way and then just abandon the idea. And this one is really interesting and the reason I chose it because it’s a classic case of it just being all style and no substance. I didn’t know what the monstrous crime was, um, going on behind the scenes and obviously you dumping.

Yeah. Yeah. Or Cass under ING one of the two. Yes. Yeah. Well,

Laura: it’s called the residence.

Louise: Yeah, it was, it was just an empty shell of an idea and it wasn’t going anywhere. It didn’t ignite that kind of feeling that gets ignited when I know something’s got legs. It just didn’t have legs. But having said that. I did know what it was going to be built around, and it was going to be built around a particular Hitchcockian trick that I had wanted to try for a while, and I didn’t give up on that element.

I actually used that in my novel, the Only Suspect. So I think that this must have been around the time that I was thinking about the only suspect, because I used the trick that I’d planned for the residents and I also. Took the character name of Marina. So it must have been how my mind was working before I decided to write the Only Suspect.

So it’s actually quite, you know, for any writers listening to this or creative writing students it, you know, it just shows you that it’s well worth putting those early ideas down because they lead you to the right idea. And I’ve always found getting it on paper and trying to crystallize it in a blurb or a short synopsis is very helpful.

Even if I then go straight onto something else, somehow it just kind of solidifies the idea a bit. So yeah, I mean, it sounds great, but there was nothing behind it. I think. I love the idea of a kind of Ballard style, you know, sinister apartment block and a way of drawing the characters together, but ultimately it wasn’t going anywhere.

Mm.

Laura: That’s an interesting idea that you write the pitch for it before you actually have the substance. It’s normally the other way around.

Louise: Yes, it is. And it does help you kind of see if it’s a strong enough idea. Mm. Because you know, in publishing and, and tv, the hook is everything. You know, sometimes book order will, will take place on the basis of the hook because not every retail buyer is going to be able to read every book before deciding which ones they’re going to stock.

Mm-hmm. You know, book sellers need to be intrigued and they know as well that. They’re gonna be hand selling books and they need to be able to say in a couple of lines what it’s about. And so that’s how I approach it. And then I sort of build around it. You get the first, yeah. Yeah.

Laura: Property is quite a theme in your books.

I noticed that when I read our holiday. And then the other passenger. Yes. Um, I thought as a middle class, middle-aged woman, I was going, she’s speaking to me. Property prices, property values, people being priced out or not. And then of course, the residents comes up. Property seems to well people’s home. I suppose it makes sense.

But your latest book that is out, I believe any day now, is called A Neighbor’s Guide to Murder. So that also has a kind of property implication there if you’re talking about someone who lives next door to you. Yes, absolutely. Does it have

Louise: a property element too? It does, yes. And in fact, um, how interesting that we’ve, that you’ve just said straight from the residents, because this is an apartment block.

So obviously it was, it’s been sitting there in my mind, but this is a Mansion block in a Neighbor’s Guide to Murder. It’s one of those swanky, you know, Edwardian mansion blocks, um, full of people who care deeply about rules and restrictions and service charges, et cetera. And this is where, where the, with 70-year-old narrator Gwen.

Lives and meets the, um, young girl Pixie who’s renting a room from her neighbor, Alec. So this is, again, it has a property theme and this is the first time I think I’ve tackled the rental crisis. I mean, I’m doing so through the eyes of someone who does own their own property, but Gwen has in her circle, pixie, who falls into an extremely.

Unpleasant rental arrangement with Alec. Mm-hmm. And she also has her son who is in his thirties and he’s boomeranged back. So he’s living with her rent-free and has a right old pain and she doesn’t know when he’s going to leave. She’s also got a daughter who has abandoned her. Sort of former activist instincts to become a trad wife.

So she’s sort of, you know, living off this rich banker boyfriend. And then there’s also in the building, the Nepo baby daughter of Gwen’s friend Dee, to whom everything has come easy through connections. And you know, she’s the only one of the young people featured who doesn’t need to worry about where her rent’s coming from.

Emma (Actor): Right.

Louise: So yeah, this was the first time I wanted to, to think about how it feels to be in your twenties and, you know, ’cause I love, I love generational conflict stories and I love those kind of age gap relationships and friendships. And so regular readers of mine will see some of my pet. Peeves and my pet subjects cropping up, but in I think quite a different tone for me, this book has got a real sort of notes on a scandal vibe to it with this sort of slightly odd narrator who has got some murky stuff in her past that she’s atoning for and you know, her interference in this 20 something neighbors.

Life is, you know, deeply inappropriate. And she, you know, she puts two and two together and makes 25 and scandal erupts in the building. And eventually as the, as the title suggests, a murder takes place. So, yeah. Yeah, there’s a lot of stuff going on in this book, but there you’ve only got one narrator. So, you know, let me just warn readers that, you know, there, there could be other sides to the story that you are not hearing.

Ah.

Laura: Right. Well, we’ve come to your final off cut. Tell us about this one, please.

Louise: So this is another excerpt from a story I wrote at school. It’s called A Long Walk, and was written in 1982

Beth (Actor): when the Ress roughly awakened me. At first, I didn’t remember for my thoughts were in drowsy disorder. Then it dawned upon me today was the day, the last day.

The day when after 19 years and four months, my whole existence would come to a slow, painful, and merciless halt. I felt a strange, calm flood my body as I stretched my filthy limbs clad in the once beautiful white gown, which had now become indecently torn and stained and ugly. Brown. All good things must come to an end.

Mocked the ress, watching me with a crooked grin. My eyes were focusing on that hideously disproportionately large head with its wild eyes, but my thoughts were elsewhere remembering, almost understanding why Celia had done it, but not quite. My face didn’t betray a flicker of the emotion, which the twisted mind of the ress would’ve gleefully, pounced upon, but my mind lost its calm and suddenly became desperate.

Surely, surely Celia would never be able to live with such intense guilt with the knowledge of having murdered one and convicted another. Surely she would never live as a free, happy human being again. The hours passed cruelly slow, and throughout the same thoughts occupied my mind. Celia, standing with a pistol in her gloved hand, her eyes flashing and her face contorted with jealousy as she regarded the glittering ring on my finger.

Then Roderick drawn and white falling to the floor as the blood steeped into his sandy hair. Celia screaming, hurling the pistol into my hands and sobbing an endless stream of tears onto roderick’s lifeless face.

Leah (Actor): Grade A minus. Teacher’s comment. Avoid allowing your style to become as melodramatic as your subject matter.

Laura: Well, this is positively, uh, Barack. I, I feel like I need to know what led up to this imprisonment and why is her dress presumably a, a white wedding dress stained brown, or do I not want to know? I don’t.

Louise: Why use one adjective when you can use two, three, or four? Is, is my takeaway from this. I can’t remember, um, whether it’s a wedding dress or not, but she has been framed for the murder of Roderick

Laura: Roderick.

Great

Louise: name. Yes. Another great, great name and another jealous act. From a sort of pubescent child who had never met a boy, probably let alone had a, had a romantic encounter. Very funny. Her, her rival wasn’t a sister again, was it? No. No, it wasn’t a sister. Just checking. No, but I’m now seeing in this. Um, this is a whole other anecdote, but very briefly, when I was 12, I got in trouble with the police.

I was in this sort of little crime ring. Exciting. Yeah. And my parents found out the, the police came to the house actually to caution me, and I was grounded for a whole summer. And, um, the, you know, the whole school summer holiday, which is six weeks, I wasn’t allowed out except to go to the library with the goth sister.

I don’t think she was a goth yet then, but she had to accompany me and supervise me, right? And so that summer I read the complete works of Aha Christi and. Maybe not the complete works, but certainly at least 40 Barbara Cartland. Oh my word. And so, yeah, so I think that there’s some Barbara Cartland in this one, don’t you?

I’ve

Laura: not read a lot of Barbara Cartland, I’m afraid. I hope my hands up there. No, but I was thinking more Duchess of mouthy, to be honest.

Louise: I probably was studying the Bronte’s. Maybe at school by then I might have been doing Jane ey or something. So there is a sort of gothic feel to it,

Laura: right? I mean, I dunno how violent Barbara Cartland gets.

If she gets violent, then possibly,

Louise: yes. Well, they’re historical romances. So Roderick sounds like a Barbara Cartland sort of name.

Ah.

Louise: To me. And then you’ve got the death on the Nile type influence in there as well. You know, the glittering ring and the gloved hand. And you know, I loved all those sort of costume details.

And as you mentioned, the filthy brown dress

Laura: stained, the stained brown dress st. It was white stained brown. That’s the specificity of that. Maybe my eyebrows hit the top of my head when I read that. And the drowsy

Louise: disorder. And nice phrase, the disproportionately, disproportionately large head.

Oh my God. Was there a

Laura: happy ending? I mean, I dread to ask, but there have been a happy ending for this. Of course. Yes. Because

Louise: again, this is only a small fragment of a 12 page story for Miss Marriot. Mm-hmm. And, um, yes, she’s freed. She has a last minute pardon,

Laura: changes her dress, I hope. Yeah,

Louise: I think they might bring her a, a new dress and say, come, you can take those filthy rags off now.

Laura: Wow. And what I really liked about this, and the other one was the teacher’s note. Yes. Miss Marriott, I presume again, is it? Yes.

Louise: Miss Marriot? Yes.

Laura: Would you say Miss Marriott had any particular influence on your writing style? I mean, she, she feels like she’s a constant throughout this program. If nothing else, she’s my English

Louise: teacher for years and years and, you know, we haven’t been in touch since my writing career began, and I have tried to google her, but it’s very hard with misses because they tend to marry and then change their name.

So I haven’t been able to track her down. For whatever reason, she’s not felt that she’s wanted to contact me. She probably fears I’ll start sending her stories that she asking, asking for an A.

Laura: I’d like to read her notes in the margins. It,

Louise: yeah, I think she was an amazing influence because, not in terms of, you know, I didn’t read any of her work, or she didn’t really, I mean, she tried to reign in the melodrama, but she wasn’t successful.

I continued to, you know, get more and more melodramatic, but she was just. Very encouraging and obviously allowing me to do these ridiculously long stories for when she probably only asked for a couple of pages to get people to use adjectives. And you know, she never said, look, this is too long, or this isn’t what, what I wanted, wanted.

Well, I imagine she

Laura: would’ve been delighted. Delighted to have a child that is that interested and is that imaginative and is that committed to, to creativity? I imagine there weren’t many kids in your class

Louise: doing that. No. Oh, there definitely weren’t. I mean, this is. Just the tip of the iceberg. There’s loads more.

There’s one called The Mirror of the Future, which we, which I, what’s a

Laura: great title?

Louise: Oh, my word. And again, there’s an illustration for the title and the two Rs in mirror are back to back, like ab, like the bees in Abba.

Laura: Very clever. Yeah. It’s all there. Oh yes. 12-year-old Louise. She was a, a bestselling novelist waiting to happen there.

She was. Fantastic. Right. Well, we’ve come to the end of the show. How was it for you?

Louise: Oh, it was so much fun. I mean, I’ve literally cried with laughter, so you know, it doesn’t get better than that. I’ve really enjoyed it. Thank you so much.

Laura: Well, it has been fabulous talking to you, Louise Kish. Thank you for sharing the contents of your Offcut straw with us.

Louise: Thank you for asking me to.

Laura: The Offcut straw was devised and presented by me, Laura Shaven. With special thanks to this week’s guest, Louise Kish. The offcuts were performed by Leah Marks, Emma Clark, Beth Chalmers, and Marcus Hutton. And the music was by me. For more details about this episode, visit offcut straw Do com and please do subscribe, rate and review us.

Thanks, listen.