Output details

Habits of the House

Head of Zeus is a novel based on an imagined screenplay. Research practice relied on abandoning meta-fiction, which I had taken as far as it would go in Kehua! and writing a novel without the interfering overview of the writer. I went back to the method I had used early on as a TV writer – relying on actors and using juxtapositions of plot without comment to make my points, with my model the TV series Upstairs Downstairs, of which I’d written the pilot episode in 1972. As I wrote without the input a script editor or a cast who demanded to be “lovable”, I was able to examine the realities of a period instead of skimming the surface. I tried to keep the concept of BBC costume drama alive in detailed descriptions of Edwardian fashions, hats, jewels and elaborate menus – while seeing them more from the viewpoint of the seamstress, milliner, miner and cook, than TV allows. I headed each section (rather than chapter) with a place and time, the equivalent of the TV ‘cut’. Research practices drew on Google Images and Wikipedia as well as more orthodox sources of knowledge. The experiment worked as a hybrid between novel and screenplay, a form of its own.