Episode 31: Elizabeth Baines (Used To Be; Astral Travel)

08-02-2021 • 31 mins

Charlie and Elizabeth Baines (Used To Be; Astral Travel) discuss writing for radio, short stories - the relative importance of their first lines and differences to novels - writing a book about trying to tell a story, and the difficulties in labelling someone complicit or a victim in the context of past societal values.

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Question Index

00:38 Can you tell us about your screenplay work?
01:13 How did the vampire play come about?
01:48 Do your plays influence your prose or is it the other way around?
02:23 Do you have a preference between these three modes of writing?
09:39 All these stories were in other publications - how long in coming was the collection itself?
11:13 Tell us about the splitting of these stories into two categories
13:00 How important is the first line of a short story compared to a novel?
13:46 Did the short story 'Clarrie and You' inspire Astral Travel?
19:01 Astral Travel is a difficult read. How long did it take to write - was it difficult to write?
22:55 How far into the various drafts did the written structure (white space; chapter headings) come in?
23:55 Where is the father 'from'; what were the influences in creating him?
24:23 Is the mother complicit or a victim?
26:43 [Within and without the context of Josephine's boyfriend's family] do you think that Josephine would continue on her journey of healing?
27:50 Was the revelation about the father always in your mind?
28:30 Where on the scale between empathy and upset do you think the reader is, or should be, by the end?
29:13 What's your favourite Bronte novel?
29:50 What's next?