Look Out For These - Theakstons Old Peculier Crime writing festival special - Number 2: Broadchurch

This is the third of my posts from the Theakstons Old Peculier crime writing festival, after Saturday’s panel about Broadchurch. Guests included Jodie Whittaker and Olivia Coleman who starred in the TV series, Chris Chibnall who wrote the screenplay and Erin Kelly, who has completed the novelisation of Broadchurch.
 

I was fascinating by Chibnall talking about how he developed the screenplay. Chibnall lives in Bridport and it was a long time before he had the inspiration of writing something that was set in his home town rather than some of the places where he’d worked before which he disliked, not just because they were a long way from home, but because they just weren’t nice places. This helped develop the notion of misery in a good place, as a central theme that shapes the story and is one of the key ideas that underpins Broadchurch and the reason it was set where it was. 
 

Listening to Chibnall discussing his approach to writing was a revelation. He started the process on a large 8 foot by 4 foot whiteboard, with a single statement in the middle – body on the beach. The next step was to make a kind of mind map, working out who would be affected by this event, followed by what people would do. Having completed the overview, the next step was to develop the screenplay in detail by working in the opposite direction – starting with the series overview, then detailing what would be in each episode, the acts within each episode, then the “story beats” for each character. It’s a very structured approach that really appealed to me, particularly when Chibnall talked about working into the detail, for example developing the story in each episode and making sure that there were cliffhangers not just at the end of each episode, but at commercial breaks too.
 

I also wondered about how the idea of turning the TV series into a novel came about. Kelly told us that when she was watching the first episode she got a text from her sister asking her whether she was watching ITV because the programme was just the kind of thing Kelly would write. I laughed at that, but even though Kelly really liked Broadchurch, we’ve apparently got someone else to thank for the idea of turning the TV programme into a novel. The day after the final episode Chibnall had just finished an interview on location, when he was recognised by a gaggle of pensioners on an outing. After answering a barrage of questions, one lady asked him when the novel was being published…and as they say, the rest is history! Chibnall acknowledged that he has a lot to thank her for and did wonder whether he actually owes her some money for giving him the idea.
 

Kerry has finished the work on the Broadchurch novel, with publication scheduled for August. Chibnall is genuinely pleased with the results. He says he found the initial chapters that Kerry submitted very moving and admits that he cried more than once when he read the full novel. I’m not going to write any more about  Broadchurch at the moment as Erin Kelly has kindly agreed to an interview on the Crime Warp in early September to talk about her work crafting the TV series into a novel. This will be a special post and really worth watching out for.
 
 Finally, this is my last post live from Harrogate. Over the past three days The Crime Warp team met lots of authors and found some fantastic new novels coming out later this year. We’ll bring you more reviews, interviews and features about what we found at Harrogate over the coming weeks, so please do keep coming back to The Crime Warp – as always, the best is yet to come!  
 
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