PIERS TORDAY – An Interesting & Unexpected Path To Writing Success

Piers: I was like many people at the time, turning way too much time on Facebook. It was the beginning of the great sort of distractor crisis. But I posted these little things on Facebook and people, I think they were just like, oh God. Piers is obviously having a nervous breakdown. I’ll post some nice comments and maybe he’ll step off the ledge. So I kept on posting them and gradually the comments got less and less. They were like, yeah, we didn’t need to carry on. And a loose narrative kind of formed and I just enjoyed doing them, but they’re completely mad. I dunno what was going through my head.

Laura: Hello, I’m Laura Shavin and this is the Offcut Drawer that 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.

Today’s guest is Piers Torday. After working as a producer and writer in theater and television, he turned to children’s fiction. His debut, the Last Wild, published in 2013 was shortlisted for the Waterstone’s Children’s Book Prize and has been translated into more than a dozen languages. He followed it with the dark wild winner of the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize, the Wild Beyond, and the Prequel the Wild before he also published

There may be a Castle and more recently launched a fantasy geology with midnight treasure being named Children’s Book of the Year by New Statesman among Others, and the Sequel Wolf Crown Due late 2025. Earlier this year, he released letters to a dog, a title published with dyslexia, friendly accessibility in mind.

In 2016, piers completed the death of an owl finishing his late father’s final unfinished novel on stage. He adapted the box of delights for a premier at Wilton’s Music Hall in 2017 with further revivals up through 2023 at the Royal Shakespeare Company. His theater credits also include a Christmas Carol, the Wind in the Willows, a child in the Snow and Plum, a Homage to Happiness, staged earlier this year.

Pi Tour Day. Welcome to the Offcut Straw.

Piers: Thank you very much for having me. I’m excited and nervous and equal measure. Excellent.

Laura: Right. Um, well you’ve written for both stage and page. How does your creative process differ between the two? Do you, do you start with the format in mind or do you have the idea first and then decide what format it best suits?

Piers: Well, I’ve been incredibly lucky in the sense that everything I’ve done for stage has more or less been someone else’s idea. At least initially in the sense I was approached to adapt John Mayfield’s box of Delights by Wilton’s musical. And it very different to writing a book of your own. You’re beginning with someone else’s, uh, story.

Mm. And I’ve, after that, I then suggested books I’d like to adapt. And we’ve, we’ve done them, but it’s so different because you not only have someone else’s story. But you are collaborating with other people from, from the start. And everything I’ve done has begun conversations with the director who’s also read and loved the book, and a producer and a designer, all of who’ve got, uh, sort of ideas and visions and things they want to bring to it.

And. I’ve loved doing them because when you’re writing a novel, you are a total opposite. You’re a complete control freak. Uh, but the, the flip side to that is you get everything you want, but you have to do everything yourself. So you are director, script writer, designer, actor, lighting designer. And it’s lovely, but quite intense.

Laura: Yes.

Piers: And so I’ve, in the last few years, I’ve doing more. Just put work at the moment, but I’ve, I’ve enjoyed that switch between intensely solitary in your head, creativity and then the sort of freedom of collaboration where your job is literally with a, you know, you are telling the story and you’re putting the word, the dialogue down on the page, but so much else is.

Up to other people.

Laura: Right. And you’re not tempted to translate one of your books into a stage production? Is that double the work?

Piers: No, it’s really interesting. L Little Angel Theater did a book of mine called Thou, maybe a Castle. They did it as a musical with puppets, which was joyful. Oh. And I really trusted the people doing it, and it was.

Lovely. And now the National Theater and the Unicorn Theater are doing the, my first book, the Last Wild. And again, a lot of people assume that I’m going to be, uh, uh, adapting. It’s not, it’s being adapted by a wonderful writer called Jude Christian. And the, honestly, the feeling is relief. ’cause I took me four years to write Last Wild, and I angsted and.

Agonized over every word of that book, and I’m really proud of it. But I’ve absolutely stated my need to tell that story. Ah, and I’m now really excited by hopefully someone else, another team of people gonna tell in a different way. And so far I’m loving what they’re doing and I’m sure it’ll be great.

And I’m sure there’ll be things about it that I, choices I wouldn’t have made. But I think you have to sort of. You have to sort of accept that and when you hand something over for ad adaptation. So yeah, I like adapting other people’s stuff. I think adapting on my own is just too inside your head.

Laura: Yeah, too intense.

Yeah. Makes sense. Mm-hmm. Okay, then well let’s kick off 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?

Piers: So, uh, this is from Dead Animals and this is a sick pom pilot. I wrote in 2005,

Actor 1: scene one, exterior Country Church, yard Day, Dartmore rain, a small family funeral.

Actor 2: We have entrusted our brother Harry Thick, and our sister, his wife, Margaret, to God’s mercy, and we now commit their bodies to the ground.

Actor 1: We focus in on Paul and hear his voice over the following scenes. As I watched my parents’ bodies finally going into the ground, I asked myself the question, how did I get here again?

Cut to scene two. Interior classroom day. Close up on Paul reading aloud, there is a book poster behind his head and piles of novels in front of him. I was a writer living

Actor 3: in London. He had never made love in an intensive care unit before it felt wrong and good fucking Bridget in there next to some dying people.

As they both climaxed noisily together. He heard the alarm on a nearby heart monitor Sound. Beep. How ironic he whispered in her ear. Um, that’s, uh, that’s about as far as I’ve got. But you, but you get the idea.

Actor 1: Pull back to reveal that he is in fact reading to a creative writing class of old ladies.

Actor 4: Okay, thanks Paul.

That just about wraps up our brief encounter session everybody next week. I’d like your interpretation of my strangest Christmas ever

Actor 1: cut to scene three, exterior bus stop later. I was from the country, but I hadn’t been home for 10 years. I just loved London. Paul with several large supermarket shopping bags, tries to get on a packed bus, but some kids barge past him outta white gimp.

They push him over to get on and he falls into a puddle. They jeer as the bus recedes. Cut to scene four. Interior vegetarian cafe bar. Later establishing shot the wet lettuce cafe I

Actor 3: had arising and active love life.

Actor 1: Paul struggles into the cafe with shopping bags. A stunning blonde by the bar smiles and then moves past to greet someone else.

She reveals Paul’s blind date ugly in bifocals and a cable knit jersey. Reading how to Talk Yourself Thin. Paul fleas. Cut to scene five, interior apartment block stairway night. I had a room of my own. You could say I had everything I’d ever wanted. Paul struggles up to his door with his shopping as he tries to get his key out.

A fat neighbor comes barreling past,

Actor 3: excuse me.

Actor 1: He sends Paul shopping, tumbling down the stairs, and then tragedy struck. Cut to scene six, interior barn night. My parents both suddenly died in a freak farming accident. Harry and Margaret sick are bending over a bailing machine, poking about, are

Actor(s): you sure this is safe?

Harry, of course is, as long as nobody comes and

Actor 2: suddenly

Actor(s): turns

Actor 2: it

Actor(s): on, you mean I shouldn’t press this switch?

Actor 2: Exactly.

Actor(s): Oh, silly me. I didn’t mean to do that.

Actor 2: Didn’t mean to do what?

Actor 1: There’s a horrific mangling noise. Blackout.

Laura: So did you write the whole thing? Was this a, a whole script or just like a few scenes?

Piers: I, I did, I think write a whole pilot. I mean, yeah, roughly about 30 odd pages, but that was as far as it got. I, I had a look when I was looking in my offcut draw and I think there were maybe some different versions or other episodes, but this was the kind of only fully completed. Episode. Right.

Laura: What was gonna be the premise of this sitcom?

’cause I mean, the title Dead Animals is quite intriguing for a sitcom, but, uh, from those scenes we just heard, I, I don’t think I would be able to understand why it was called that. What, what was No, I’m

Piers: not sure I can remember, understand why it was called Dead Animals. I think it was, I was trying to do that thing of, as you should do when you start writing, is trying to write about what you know and.

I had been working for a TV company a few years previously, and, um, we’d been talking about some various ideas for sort of family. Family television involving animals in the kind of doctor who slot. But it became clear that wasn’t gonna happen and I certainly wouldn’t be the person to write it. But one of my colleagues said, well, look, if you want to write something, you should start.

Don’t try and write something real expensive that no one’s gonna make. Why don’t you try writing something that’s based on your own experience? And I, I did grow up on farms and I did move to London and I was trying to be a writer. I wasn’t, obviously not called Paul. And this. Sitcom was an attempt to sort of, not at all really be truthfully about my family, but take lots of some of the funnier, more extreme anecdotes of my childhood and country life and try and turn it into a sitcom about the difference between.

Country life and the idea of someone with artistic pretensions coming from a very agricultural background and the jumping off point for dead animals, which is alluded to in the script, was the foot and mouth. Virus in 2001, whenever it was. Um, because that was a time when actually the countryside felt pretty dark because certainly in the farm I grew up on, there were sort of Paso animals being burnt, and the army were called in and there was, you know, the first lockdown way before COVID, it was the first lockdown.

So that was the kind of, that was going to be the backdrop,

(music): right,

Piers: uh, to this. To the sitcom ideal subject for sitcom, but in my pandemic, what fun, I can’t imagine why this wasn’t made, but, um, but it was, it was an attempt to try and, and some of that I, I, I, I wince at hearing, but it was an attempt to, to try and sort of at least go back to my own life and experience, which I do think is always a good place.

To begin, even if some of this execution leaves a bit to be desired.

Laura: But in the note that accompanied this, it said that this script inspired the last Wild, which was the first of your wild series of children’s books. That that’s quite a leap. How did, how exactly did that happen?

Piers: It is, it is certainly quite a leap from someone reading out that story that begin withing Jill’s books, but, and do you mind me thinking what on earth.

But in a way, that’s why I chose this, because I think it is so weird and unpredictable how the creative process works. And when I wrote this, I was working for Tiger Aspect TV back then, a TV production company. Did a lot of comedy and stuff and I was. My, my day job was to come up with entertainment formats, so sort of game shows and entertainment shows, but I was, uh, enjoyed it, but I was feeling a bit creatively frustrated, and so I was working on this in the evenings and the weekends, and when I’d written this draft episode, I sent it to a former colleague to say, look, will you, what do you, what do you think of this?

You’re someone who’d worked in sitcoms and stuff and knew about it. And he said, um, well, he said it’s perhaps not quite ready to go, but, uh, one of the things he said was in terms of the farm scenes and that it gets to, and there’s a treatment that takes onto the farm, he was wondering if the animals could talk so the animals could have a voice in this as well.

And I think he was imagining something in along the lines of desperate housewives, you know, where. You hear the, the dead former housewife kind of narrates that series.

Laura: Oh, right.

Piers: Yes. He was imagining could one of these dead animals, a cow or something, actually be a very sardonic narrator for this stick com.

Oh, see? And I was like, see, I

Laura: thought he was picturing animals like in a field talking to each other.

Piers: No, he was thinking much more like a grownup kind of sardonic, a voiceover. Voiceover and I thought it was quite fun, but I didn’t really know how to make it work, but it really got me thinking about talking animals.

And I then had a break from, uh, I, I finished my job at Tri Aspect and I had a, a summer off for the first time since leaving university. Really? And I just felt like a creative kind of recharge. And almost on a whim really, I booked myself onto this creative writing course, an Arvin course in Ted Hughes’s old house in West Yorkshire.

A beautiful place. And they wanted you ideally to bring something and it was, it was general how to start writing fiction. And I was like, oh God, what am I gonna do? I’ve got time. So. And I thought, well, the only thing I’ve got knocking around is this sitcom dead animals. But obviously that’s not right ’cause it’s fiction.

And so I just started writing this thing, thinking about talking animals and something very different to my surprise came out, which was this kind of dystopian children’s book with a young boy in a world without animals who discovers he can talk to the few who’ve survived and became a very different story.

But funnily enough. It’s still in a way about my childhood growing up in a remote can with loads of wildlife and there’s lots of farming scenes in it. There’s a character in the sitcom called Kester who’s a Lord of the Rings obsessive, uh, who becomes ke last wild, who’s not a Lord of the Rings set of the world, but a Lord of the Rings doesn’t exist.

But it’s just curious to me how these things very different, very grown up. Sort of sitcom. Yeah. Becomes this kind of children’s book. But I guess that’s how ideas twist and shape in the mind.

Laura: Yeah, that is very interesting. ’cause no one could have predicted that pathway at all. And nobody directed you.

Nobody said what you should do really is right. A kid’s book or what you should do is make it dystopian. It came completely from you. There was no influence apart from your friend who said maybe have a talking animal in it.

Piers: Yeah. I mean the only, because this was in 2008 that I ended up doing the. Course and the starting the book, and I’d been trying to work on the sitcom, hadn’t been getting very far and was getting a bit frustrated, and the same friend said, well, look, if you can’t get it made as a teller, you could always try writing as a novel.

And again, I just. That sitcom you heard there was no, I tried turning that into a book for about 10 seconds and that was never gonna work. Um, and, but I think part of it is, I think part of the trick with writing is not wanting it too much. And I’d grown up really loving sitcoms. I mean, I dunno, it’s who watches sitcoms now, but I’d, I do really love them.

Uh, I do, I do. But I mean, it, it feel, it was very much a form of the. Definitely of the nineties and the early naughties. It was a really exciting form and so many great writers and I kinda really wanted to do it. And I think I wanted it too much. I didn’t really want to write children’s books. I kind of like, I loved children’s books as a child and obviously some very big children’s books came out at the start of this century.

Uh, and that was, that intrigued me and I read them, but it wasn’t such a sort of deeply held ambition in a way that freed me up just to try and. Understand it and get good at it without writing and constantly second guessing myself and trying too hard to be funny or clever.

Laura: Okay. Time for another off cut.

Now, tell us about this one.

Piers: So this is many questions, which is a treatment, actually I think for a radio format that I wrote in 2003.

Actor 4: Many questions.

Piers: Local problems solved

Actor 1: by famous people.

Actor 4: Monday, 6:30 PM and Sunday, 12:00 PM 30 minutes.

Actor 1: A question and answer show where local communities have their real life dramas solved and advised upon by a panel of celebrities.

We’ll come to your town and advise you on how to get your neighbors to turn down that stereo or what to do if you think your daughter’s staying out too late with the wrong sort. Our panel of comedians, writers, lifestyle commentators and personalities will soon have you seeing the funny side of your domestic problem, whether it be them next door or her upstairs.

Actor 4: The increasing amount of advice columns in the papers, the burgeoning number of message boards on the internet where people exchange tips on anything from DIY to social etiquette, not to mention the ever expanding lifestyle industry shows us however, ever more prepared we are to get the best advice for any problem.

If there’s a dilemma, you can guarantee someone somewhere will have the answer. We don’t claim to have that, but we’ll give you at least four to choose from,

Actor 1: whether it be community based,

Actor 4: who should get the use of the village green on Sundays, the cricket team or the local kids, domestic. What would the panel do if they won the lottery?

I recently won a hundred thousand pounds and don’t know what to do.

Actor 1: Or just one of life’s mysteries.

Actor 4: Where do the socks go? In tumble dryers.

Actor 1: We’ll do our best to help.

Actor 4: Chaired by Mark Radcliffe. Our panel of advisors are here to help if they can, but they’re more likely to make you smile. The panel will typically be made up of a range of personalities,

Actor 1: a lifestyle guru, Trini or Susanna from BBC Two’s, what not to wear, or Mary Killen, the spectator’s social agony aunt or guardian, colonist Mill Millington.

They’ll always carry a profoundly different spin depending on the philosophy and the most likely to offer some genuinely good advice,

Actor 4: a political figure. Perhaps the Bumptious comedy of Boris Johnson or the more seic wit of Tony Banks. Or we might have a political commentator such as Matthew Paris or Polly Toby, and attempt to see the personal in context of the bigger national picture,

Actor 1: a local character.

We’ll find someone from your hometown who’s known outside it and see if they still have the local touch. Did Michael winner go to the local school or did Julie Birch Hill once live around the corner? Either way, this third panelist will be someone local. But whose strong opinions may no longer be welcome?

Actor 4: A comic, a comedian of the more whimsical, kind, perhaps Ross Noble or Daniel Kitson to take a less than prosaic approach to life’s problems.

Actor 1: It’s a bit like home Truths Live, but without the Schmalz, our opinionated, diverse panel will take your queries and problems seriously. But the range of their answers combined with the disputes they’re bound to have with each other over the best solution is guaranteed entertainment.

Actor 4: A traditional and simple radio format given a modern twist.

Piers: Okay. Can’t imagine why that was a odd.

Laura: Well, I mean, it’s, it’s not a terrible idea. It just does sound like quite a lot of things. Uh, particularly radio things,

Piers: other things. Yeah. It sort of sounds, I think that program exists. I think it’s called Question Time, and it’s not so funny.

I mean, it does, it does

Laura: feel very familiar. So it doesn’t feel like a terrible idea, just too similar to stuff that was probably already around at the time, I imagine.

Piers: Mm-hmm. I, I, I chose this because I can’t, I can’t remember exactly who, where this was, so obviously a radio format, so I was, uh, I guess pitching for Radio four, but.

Until I started writing books. This was kind of my bread and butter and, uh, there’s many, many worse ideas I came up with in this one, believe it or not.

Laura: Oh, really? Such as, but I didn’t wanna share

Piers: them ’cause they’re probably owned by, technically owned by huge media giants. Well, so you sold them then. Well, I was paid to come up with them.

So they still technically in them, not that they’re worth anything, but they’re often of this kind of ilk and you know, it’s not great. It is derivative, but actually, you know, writing one of these a day or you know, a few a week, it’s sort of, again, going back to that weird thing about creative process, it was.

Bizarrely. I know it doesn’t sound like it, but it was such good training to, to become a writer because you get given this idea or come up this idea with someone else, I can’t remember the genesis of this one. And you sit down and write it and you just had to do it. And sometimes they, you know, we did actually come up with some really good ideas that got made into programs, but most of the time you came with ideas as all ideas are really, that are sort of not quite, as you say, they’re a bit derivatives, a bit similar to everything else.

Mm. But you don’t really know that until you’ve written it up. And just that sort of discipline of writing up stuff, uh, nonsense and gradually weird as it may sound, learning how to tell a story, like learning how to present an idea. Mm. And tell a story. This was very early and not in any way, particularly anything to be and, and particularly remarkable about it.

And, but it was through writing stuff like this that I sort of found my way to writing. Fiction or does it maybe the

Laura: discipline prepared you and the pressure. Yeah. Yeah. Um, well, I have to say that the thing I did enjoy most, as I’m sure, uh, probably the listener will, uh, the elements of historical interest, the many questions suggested guests, Boris Johnson and his Bumptious comedy,

Piers: no, God, I really hate my former self.

Laura: That was

Piers: Oh, that, that’s one for the archives. Definitely don’t blame me, but I mean, reality, you know. The idea of a panel of that included Michael, winner and Poly Toby. I mean, it’s just, and Ross Noble, it’s just not gonna happen. I mean, and also I love the fact I suggested Ross Noble, Daniel Kitson, who are famously iconoclastic and really quite reluctant to do stuff that’s not, yes, Daniel kids would

Laura: never.

Go on this show like this, this never

Piers: in a million years, never wouldn’t touch it with a barge

Laura: pole. And Ross no Will. Well, if you put him on, he would probably, who knows what show would be the result of it. Yeah, yeah. Quite, quite. But, uh, Trinny and Susanna. Wow. Oh, I to love that show. I can’t remember who

Piers: Tony Banks is either.

Laura: Oh, he was the, he I know who I’ve met him. Oh, he’s off the close show. Was your coach? No, no, no. Tony Banks was the mp. He was an MP for, I think he was the culture secretary at Point. Oh, that’s it. Yeah. Cultural sport. He was very charming. Sort of smiley eyed, kind of. Uh, no. He died about 20 years ago. But no, he was a very fairy char.

I remember being overwhelmed by his charm in real life. I had no idea who he was at the time. But you know, some people have larger than life kind of charisma. Yeah, he was one of them. So I’ve never forgotten Tony Banks. No. He died about 15, 20 years ago.

Piers: Killing, killing people off through, uh, putting them in formats while they may.

Laura: Yes. There’s not many of them that are alive or certainly their careers aren’t so alive. But anyway, that’s not, that’s not

Piers: for us to say. And, and I think it’s an interesting, I mean, it’s not a great idea, but it’s also one of those funny things where actually you’ve probably added one more ingredient that was original.

It might be. It’s just that it, it’s, there’s not enough to it.

Laura: Yeah. Okay. Moving on now let’s have your next off cut.

Piers: Um, this is a one page treatment for a romantic comedy novel. I started writing in 2007, called the year everyone else Got Married.

Actor 1: Hi, I’m Josh, and this is my story.

Actor 4: Excuse me. I think you’ll find it’s mine as well.

I’m Myra, by the way, and he never introduces me properly. Another one of the many things which

Actor 1: brought us closer together over the last year and what a year it’s been. Josh Haynes is now friends with Myra Duke. They hooked up at New Year and it was fucking freezing. You see, this was the year everyone else decided to get married.

Everyone else I know. Anyway, I didn’t even know half of them. That’s because we just met, and not everyone literally, but I think 12 weddings in one year is about as close as you’re ever going to get. That’s right. 12. One wedding a month.

Actor 4: Every month for a whole year. That is two stag dues, 10 weddings. One of them is mothers, one of them gay, and one of them literally at the bad end of a shotgun, an engagement party, and a divorce celebration, whatever that is.

Actor 2: Status update. Josh Haynes is deciding that he really hates weddings, especially other peoples in foreign countries. Status update. Myra Duke is having an amazing year. So many beautiful weddings, and now she’s off to one in Italy.

Actor 1: I’m not kidding. I really hate weddings. We’ve got 12 to get through just so long as it doesn’t give her any ideas,

Actor 4: just so long as it doesn’t put him off.

Actor 2: Relationship. Josh Haynes and Myra Duke changed the relationship status to, huh?

Laura: Now that weird ending there is because the text you sent ended mid-sentence with a question mark, so it does, we didn’t know it does. How to

Piers: actually vocalize that question mark. I think that’s a great vocalization. Oh, brilliant.

I have no idea. There was much discussion, let me tell you. Okay,

Laura: so you only wrote this is a one page treatment?

Piers: Yeah, I mean, maybe this is the thing I sent, maybe there are bits of, but I never really got off the ground. I mean, it was. It was definitely a point I think so many people have in their lives that I was kind of in my, uh, early thirties and going through that experience of summers being, oh my God, we’re doing this weekend.

It’s another wedding. And they’re lovely and they’re go, they’re gorgeous and, uh, some are better than others. And some of them are in London, which is brilliant where I live and others are miles away, which is lovely, but also really expensive And, yeah. Sometimes you’re invited and you don’t know people very well, but you go, ’cause you really should sometimes, you know, literally everyone.

And there’s so much gossip and drama swirling around. Other times the speech just make you want the floor to swallow you up. Mm-hmm. And so on and so on. And I felt there was a lot of mileage in it. But I also think, and I think, I think there is, I think there is an idea, and I’ve talked to other people who’ve had this idea, who’ve had a similar experience.

But I think I was in that phase of writing TV formats where one day you’re asked to write a sort of, you know, a game show about winning loads of money. The next day you’re asked to write a really sensitive treatment for a documentary about treating, you know, some refugees who’ve ended up somewhere, or the next day you’re asked to write a kind of current affairs type format.

So you slightly kid yourself that you are a sort of, you know, master of all trades. Mm-hmm. And. I think interestingly, this was me a year before I started writing books properly. This was me edging towards writing books, but still with that very TV kind of commercial sort of mindset.

(music): Yeah.

Piers: And there is a book here to be written.

If I was a kind of. Brilliant romantic comedy novelist or someone who writes those brilliant beach, we, you know, if I someone like Jenny Corgan or if I someone like Emma Henry or there’s so, so many people who could write a brilliant version of this story. I’m not sure I’m that person, but it was an interesting exercise in, it was like a transition from tv.

It’s sort of very commercial and. But it’s not really grounded in enough real characters or set up to to work. But you know, it was a step.

Laura: Well, in the same year, 2007, your dad, Paul Toay, wrote salmon fishing in the Yemen, um, and became a successful writer. Did that in any way make you think, ah, actually that’s something I’d like to do as well.

Piers: Huge. Hugely. Yeah. He showed me how to do a good romantic comedy. Um. And I think because I, it focused my mind because I just, as you may be guessing, by all these half started things in the job I was doing, I had a lot of unfocused, creative energy mm-hmm. That I was making living from doing it for other pe for other people.

Laura: Yeah.

Piers: But the thing about developing ideas is it, it, I worked with some brilliant people and learned so much, but ultimately it’s. You get a bit frustrated because brilliant ideas are misunderstood and don’t get made. Terrible ideas do get made, brilliant ideas get made terribly, and so on and so on, and you don’t have any control over that, and you don’t quite get the follow through, uh, of least learning.

You don’t learn. Because you just write the proposal and it’s on to the next one. So I was slightly flaming around thinking, coming up with things like this, thinking I’ve got to try and do something else, but I just didn’t really know what was I gonna write sitcoms? Was I gonna write romantic beach reads?

And then my dad out of the blue who’d, I mean, he loved reading, he read English University and he’d got me into reading and it was a big part of his life. And I’d discovered once. In my parents’ house in a shoebox, an unfinished novel. Um, but that’s not unusual. A lot of people have unfinished novels in shoe boxes.

Um, but it was a total surprise when really he’d more or less was stepping back from work. He was in his, he was back to 10 60 and he took me out for dinner and said, I’ve got some to tell you something. It’s a secret and a surprise. And I was like, oh my God. Like my dad didn’t do surprises. Like he was a very.

Quiet, quietly spoken, modest. He just didn’t, I was like, this is bad. It’s like, oh God, you know what, what? What terrible news are you gonna tell me? And it was like, he said, I’ve written a novel called Salmon Fishing in Yemen. And I was like, it’s called the Whaty What? And uh. And then it was just this amazing thing where he, he hadn’t told any of his family.

He’d written three books and thrown three away, but this one he’d written half of, got an agent interested, who then said, please write the rest. And then it sold for, you know, I mean, especially now where publishing is now a huge amount of money and was lined up for film adaptations, all the rest of it.

And it was just so thrilling because it made him so happy in a way that I hadn’t seen him Oh, in a particular way. I’d seen him happy before, but in a very particular way and, and I was very proud and I didn’t want to do what the kind of stuff he was writing. That would’ve been a bit close, but it made me think, well, look, I spent my life reacting against my parents as you do.

’cause he was in business. And I was thought, I don’t want to go into business. I’m really creative. I want to go and be an artist in London. And then I was like, oh my God, now my dad’s an artist. I should have been a lawyer. Everything’s gone wrong. Uh, so I should have, I was like, what do I do? I can either.

Like, go and, uh, go to law school, don’t wanna do that. So I was like, well, maybe, you know, uh, I don’t, I’m not sure these things inherited, but I was like, look, your dad’s writing books. That is one of the things you thought about doing. So that kind of informed the creator writing course. I was like, well, let’s take this seriously and see if there’s anything in that.

(music): Right.

Piers: And it really helped because he. I was writing kids books, he was writing out books, so very different. But he was, he knew the publishing world before I did and gave me lots of advice. Um, so it was lovely and totally unexpected in the way these, the, the nicest things. Often now.

Laura: Oh. So the opposite of, uh, my father.

I, I felt I had to beat him, sort of the EPU situation, you know,

Piers: it, it wasn’t because he hadn’t been, I, I, you know, I’d got all outta my system with like, you know, you are a businessman doing engineering, and I’m working with cool comedy people in London. Um, and so I’d called that and he was totally, of course.

Completely unimpressed and wasn’t remotely interested in any of that.

(music): Yeah.

Piers: Didn’t understand any of it. It was like, what are you doing with your life? Um, so then when I started writing books, at least kind of got what that those were. Yeah. ’cause he was writing them. So it was nice. It brought us together.

Laura: Oh, that’s lovely. Right. Well, let’s have another off cut,

Piers: please. What’s this one? So, um, this is a social media status update. Uh, several, uh, that I wrote from 2013, uh, called Alfonso the

Actor 3: Weevil. I. As I mentioned in my status update this morning, there’s a small, dusty, great beetle, ought to be more precise, a weevil called Alfonso, who lives on my desk.

He’s a fan of early Tom Hanks movies, and some of you have come across him before. I believe he’s often too busy with his own projects to stop and talk. But this morning I saw him perching on the corner of my porridge bowl eyeing me suspiciously. What are you looking at, Alfonso? I said, unable to ignore him any longer.

What do you think I’m looking at? He said, I looked around behind me, but there wasn’t anything there. Just some books on a shelf and a pile of unopened post. Am I being thick? I asked him. Alfonso climbed down off the bowl and onto the strip between the edge of my keyboard and the screen, which he finds a very convivial temperature.

I’m looking at you. He said, why are you always on Facebook? I’m not always on Facebook. I said, yes, you are. I am not stupid. You know. Prove it. He got out a small weevil sized notebook and flicked through the pages and began to read off a list of times 9:30 AM 9:45 AM 10:00 AM 10:14 AM 10:16 AM 10:58 AM 11 or 4:00 AM I thought that you were meant to be writing a book.

It’s not that simple. I counted beginning to feel a little uneasy. What do you know about it? Anyway, you are only a weevil. Precisely. He replied triumphantly and I could tell he was giving a rather smug grin. Precisely nothing. You are not even on Facebook. And as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I saw that I’d fallen into his trap.

No, he said in that way of his, which always makes my blood boil. I am not on Facebook. And what have I accomplished this morning? Would you like to know? I pretended I hadn’t heard and visited myself with an urgent email demanding my attention about an extra cheap Cialis clearance sale in somewhere called Ano.

Now, do you know where, um, Botano is? Alfonso? I asked him, but he was not to be diverted. And first he began. I walked all the way across your desk and that is quite somewhere, you know, and then I walked all the way back. I climbed all over your books. I crawled up the wall a bit. I found some toast, crumbs to eat, and a piece of lint.

What have you done? It’s different. You are only a stupid weevil. I’ve got, you know, invitations to reply to groups to join people to spy on. It’s a whole new dimension to my social life. Whatever you say. He said smirking and he lent against the bottom of my screen with some of his legs crossed and filing some nails with the others.

Now, if you don’t mind, I said flicking him off, so he bounced with a crack against the window sill. I really am trying to write a book. Yes, came a weak little voice streaming up from the floor, and I really am trying to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, so I squashed him, dear Rita, but don’t worry, he’ll be back tomorrow.

Laura: It’s quite extraordinary. A a, a social media update. How, how many of these did you write and, and where?

Piers: I did loads. I did loads on Facebook. I was writing. This, you know, I was, well, 2013, I guess. Uh, maybe they get back even before then, but I was, I think that’s when I decided to collate them into a Word document.

Ah. ‘

Laura: cause the last world was published in 2013, wasn’t it?

Piers: Yeah. And I’d, yeah. And I started writing them when I was trying to, basically, when I was trying to write my book and couldn’t, and I think it was a way, I’m always saying, I, I coach. In my other obvious of day job where I coach writers, and one thing I’m always saying to ’em is like, don’t forget to be like playful.

Don’t, it’s quite intense writing a book. Yeah. And you can get a bit lost in your head and a bit stressed about it and, and you forget the writing is just should be fun as well. Mm-hmm. And these are just the silly I ideas, I mean. In the last while, there is a cockroach who’s a major character called the General who in who starts the story sitting on the rim of someone’s bowl.

So maybe there is some connection there. I’m not sure. Um, I can’t remember the sequence and I’d always liked, and there was a little weevil on my computer that kept. Distract or in my study or somewhere, dunno where it’d come from. It was distracting me and I was So you’re saying this is based

Laura: on a true story?

Piers: Oh this is definitely based on a true story. It’s gonna be a major picture and um, and I was like many people at the time turning way too much time on Facebook.

Piers: And it was the beginning of the great sort of distractor crisis. And, but I posted these little things on Facebook and people, I think they were just like, oh God, Piers is obviously having a nervous breakdown.

I’ll say, I’ll post some nice comments and maybe he’ll step off the ledge. Uh, so, so I was, I was, I, I kept on posting them and gradually the comments got less and less. They were like, yeah, we didn’t really to, we didn’t need to carry on. But I, I enjoyed doing them and they were a really nice sort of outlet.

Laura: Yeah,

Piers: just to like, I think partly also publishing takes so long and, you know, for books to be written and read and edited and, and so, and all that. So I just, I was itching to. Be out there and I was just kind of stretching my, they were just little kind of ex doodles. Really. Yeah. Exercises. But I enjoyed, and they, a loose narrative kind of formed and I just, I en enjoyed doing them, but they’re completely mad.

I dunno what was going through my head, but, um,

Laura: well, staying on the animal theme, your book this year, that letters to a dog, um, and it’s geared towards those who find reading and writing more challenging. Where did, where did that idea for that come from?

Piers: The, uh, Barrington State, this wonderful publisher who pub published books, um, for, uh, children with dyslexia and other challenges they may encounter learning to read their books are all quite short, so they’re all between about seven and a half thousand words and about 10,000 words long, and their printed on this special yellow paper, which makes it easier for dyslexic children to the, the letters jump around less on the page.

But Anthony McGann wrote a book for Barton Stoke, um, called Lark, the one, the Carnegie Medal for Children’s Book. So those restrictions are no. Barrier to the quality or the ambition, right. Of the books. Um, and this book isn’t like that, but it’s, I wanted to write them a long, long time. And actually I was asked to write for them in, in lockdown the first winter of lockdown.

They got in touch. Um, and I was like, most people at that point, the novelty of lockdown had worn off when we went to the winter phase. And ev we definitely was going not mad in the same way as writing about Alfonso the weevil, but slightly kind of like, am I ever gonna work again? Um, you know, his life stopped forever.

Uh, you know, because I’d been planning a play that’d been canceled. My book talk, my book had been postponed event. I mean, I look given what people endured in that time, it’s really, this is like the tiniest viol in the world. But it, it was. In my tiny world, it was like these, these were my preoccupations.

(music): Sure.

Piers: And, uh, I was living in the house with my husband and our dog, so I was probably spending an unhealthy amount of time as you weren’t allowed to see other people. Um, having sort of a magic conversations with, uh, my dog and Barrington Stoke got in touch and I just had had this idea about, you know, obviously dogs don’t talk back, and I’ve written about.

Lots of talking animals, but I wanted to do a kind of realistic story about communicating with animals, and this ideas came to my head about this little boy who is perhaps in hospital. I think that came from us all feeling slightly confined and cooped up, and he’s. Before he goes to hospital, he spotted this dog in a dog home and he really wants it.

And he doesn’t know how to tell his dad. ’cause they’re having, they’re not speaking for various reasons. And this very kind nurse says, well, why didn’t you try writing to the dog? And to his and her surprise, the dog starts writing back to him in hospital. Right. And it’s about the relationship that that develops.

And, um, spoiler, the dog hasn’t actually written back to him, but I’m not gonna say what. Oh no,

Piers: And it was really hard to write. It took me for such a short book. It took me far longer than I meant to, ’cause it was so different to stuff I’ve written before. I’ve written these big adventures and it’s like really short, uh, chapters and telling it basically a long, short story.

But I loved, absolutely loved, absolutely loved doing it, and it’s always, I think what I enjoy most the more I do this is being given new ways to write. Like, you’ve got to do it like this this time. I love the focus and constraints of, of that rather than trying to do it all yourself.

Laura: And talking of big adventures, we’ve now come to your final offcut.

So tell us about this

Piers: one. Uh, this is from last year, 2024, and is a treatment for moderate the damned, the first book in an adult fantasy series.

Actor 2: In Ancient Britain, a land of mists giants and wizards lives moderate the handsome, but arrogant, ambitious, and duplicitous nephew of King Arthur. He’s a knight of the round table at Camelot, who is sent on a quest with his mentor, sir Lancelot.

To investigate a valley terrorized by a strange beast, they find a mystical lion, which they pursue into Carlo’s forest. The lion attacks Lancelot, but moderate slays it, earning Lance Lott’s gratitude for life, returning to Camelot, bathed in glory. They come across a. Priest praying by a chapel. The monk reveals that Mordred is in fact, Arthur’s son, who will one day kill his father and do more damage to the kingdom of Britain than any other man.

The only thing that might redeem him is finding the holy grail, but that will never happen as he’s so treacherous, corrupt, and weak. Incensed and humiliated. Mordred kills the priest in a fit of. Peak Lancelot is appalled by his protege’s crime and drawing. His sword warns him. He must now face justice At Arthur’s court they fight and Lancelot injures Mordred, who flees back to the forest where the dead lions vengeful mate corners him.

Mordred jumps into the lake to escape the animal, but he does not realize it has been cursed by the Enchant Morgan La fey when he emerges. Not only has the lion vanished, but so has Cartloises Forest. Mordrid finds himself climbing out of London’s Docklands in 1984. He must make sense of this new world where the only giants are the dying ones of industry.

The mist is on the nightclub dance floor, and the wizards are all behind computer terminals in the city. He learns that his temporal exile must be a punishment from Arthur’s court in some way. Perhaps he will find his way back and claim Arthur’s throne by finding the holy Grail as the monk claimed to moderate surprise, his ruthless and treacherous nature allows him to thrive in Thatcher’s Britain.

He charms his way into a job as a trainee estate agent, which allows him to keep searching for the Holy Grail under the guise of sourcing and showing properties. Soon he becomes an investor and property developer of his own, and before long. Has attracted the attention of the conservative party who ask him to stand as an mp.

All the while he schemes, plots, lies, seduces members of both sexes, thieves, and murders to get his way, keeping the faith that he’s getting closer to the grail and a return to Camelot.

Laura: Dun, dun dun, dun dun. That’s very exciting. Sammy. I love the evil of the thatcherite years. The government, the ultimate arch villain.

He’s an estate agent. That’s the hilarious, um, yeah. Presuming you’re not a big fan of, of the thatcherite years, et cetera.

Piers: Not a, not a huge fan, but I wanted to kind of ex explore it. Through the ideas of someone you might see as from a heroic set of tales and where that, how that all intersects.

Laura: Would he have been a, an estate agent but a hero, or would he have been an estate agent and a villain?

Piers: I, I’ve always loved reading about kind of an antiheroes, like one of my favorite literary characters is, as you called John Self, but the MOUs hero of Marty Amos’s money. Yes. I like people who in books who are kind of awful and repulsive in every way, but you’re somehow still annoyingly drawn to them and kind of despite their horror show.

And so I thought the eighties was a good setting for that and a sort of good. Twist on a, on a very British kind of myth. And, and, and also I guess maybe looking at the idea that certain kind of ideas of Britishness perished during the Thatcher years and different ones were born. I dunno, I’m getting far too ahead of myself, but, um, it was just a proposal.

It

Laura: struck me that it would make a great TV series. Sorry to drag you back away from novel. Yeah. And back into television, the evil television. But, uh, it did remind me of things like Lucifer and Buffy the Vampire sl, and it, it seems to be a very popular format, particularly if the hero is a handsome, late teen female or male.

Yeah. That, um, I don’t want to drag you away from the, a novelist. No,

Piers: I, maybe you’re right. I, I’ve always been good at the high concept ideas unless, I mean, it’s really interesting. I, I was asked to do this. There was a. The Hawdon Foundation run a beautiful six week writing retreat in a beautiful Italian villa Oh, by the shores of Lake Como.

And you get invited to apply, which I was very lucky to be done with. The Society of Authors nominated me last year to apply for it, along with a hasten who had about 700 writers from across the world. It wasn’t, uh, so the competition was pretty stiff, and I. I, I was at a stage in my writing career back then where I was finishing various things and feeling very playful and very kind of like, I dunno what to do next.

And always toying with the idea of writing something for adults. And I had to do this quite quickly and it definitely has, to me, that feeling of something that’s, it’s sort of. It’s quite a nice headline concept, but it needs a lot more thought. And as you say, it does. I often think novels actually, it’s quite detailed and I actually think the best books often have just a much simpler idea at their heart, whereas this feels, as you say, it does feel a bit more like a sort of treatment for a, a almost a TV show or a movie rather than something that the kind of question you explore in a book, which is often a bit more.

A particularly a grownup book. And it also shows that thing where I’m still very much got one foot in children’s fantasy, even though I’m sort of literally, why don’t I take a thing children read about and put it in a grownup world? That’s how watch a grownup book. That’s just an interesting first

Laura: move.

Well, the ugly, the television series that always appear to be, uh, of the sort of Netflix charts. Yeah,

Piers: and I’d also read. Fabulous Fantasy series by Lev Grossman called The Magicians, which became a TV series. And that’s sort of about some grownup Americans doing Narnia, but they’re grownups, so they’re sex and violence.

(music): It’s very clever

Piers: and funny, uh, and that that always, that’s always appealed to me. So Netflix, if you’re listening Mordred The Damned is very much available.

Laura: Well, maybe if you put some casting suggestions in there, perhaps.

Piers: Yeah. How about that? Might Tony Banks or Boris Johnson.

Laura: Okay. Right. Well, we have on to the end of the show. How was it for you?

Piers: It was lovely. Thank you. It’s been really interesting and strange to go back to, well, not, not this, I wrote it last year, but everything else, which is from quite a long time ago now and feels like a different, definitely a different me, but also me, if that makes sense.

Which is quite odd, but nice to have that little kind of conversation in my head with, uh, former writing selves and I’ve, yeah, I’ve, I’ve really enjoyed considering the journey.

Laura: Did anything there surprise you at all?

Piers: The sitcom really surprised me because I started reading it. I mean, it’s not great, but like there are some gags in there and I was like, in my head, I’d completely written it off as totally.

Totally, totally terrible. And like in that way you do. And that’s also the first mistake. You mistake when you make, when you start writing is you immediately, when something doesn’t get made, you write the whole thing off as a complete catastrophe. It’s like, no, it’s just like, it just needs work.

Laura: Yeah. Are you someone who might go back into an old project and bring it back to life?

Or do you sort of done it now you’re moving on?

Piers: I a little bit always never say never, but I sort of think there is a weird thing certainly with, I think with stories that. There’s a moment when they’re really alive in your head and you are kind of tuned into them and you’re just kind of living them and excited by them in ways that require to explain.

And then what I found looking back at all of these is I can, I can view them quite intellectually and with detachment, but I don’t have that little spark of. That spark of the possible that makes you really want to sit down and write something. Ah, so we possibly won’t see dead animals then unless, I mean, as I said, if you know Netflix, apple tv, I feel this might be the breakthrough hit you’re after.

Uh, and I stand ready to find that spark of, uh, possibility for the right amount of money. But, uh, I suspect not.

Laura: Well, Piers Torday, it’s been fabulous talking to you. Thank you for sharing the contents of your offcuts drawer with us.

Thanks very much for having me.

The Offcuts Drawer was devised and presented by me, Laura Shavin with special thanks to this week’s. Guest, Piers Torday. The offcuts were performed by Kenny Blyth, Helen Goldwyn, David Monteath and David Lane Pusey, and the music was by me. For more details about this episode, visit offcutsdrawer.com and please do subscribe, rate, and review us.

Thanks for listening.