Prototype

A new post looking at the origins of 'Severe Discomfort' - spoiler-free if you haven't read the book yet.


A year ago, I was in the final stages of self-publishing my first novel, Severe Discomfort.

I'd started the first draft about a year before - while suffering benefits advice withdrawal symptoms after taking voluntary redundancy from the CAB - but the idea of writing a story about the reality of life 'on benefits' had been kicking about in my head for some time.  There were two main reasons.  Firstly, while there had been endless variations on the police procedural drama and a plethora of films and novels with lawyers as the central characters, I could think of no book, play or film with a benefits appeal at the core of the story.


The second reason followed from the first - because benefits appeals never found there way into popular culture, most people were blissfully unaware of what could be involved.  In fact all they were ever exposed to concerning Social Security law were 'benefit cheat' stories in the local and national press and TV programmes like Saints and Scroungers.  In these, there was never any hint that the 'cheat' might have made a genuine mistake, or learned to tolerate a level of pain when walking that previously kept them off their feet.  I'd seen people prosecuted in just those circumstances. 


The concept was to write a radio play with a characters similar to the book, but with some key differences.  Here's the original cast

 

The Walker Family

• Jack – early-retired former mechanic, aged 58, disabled by industrial accident. Missing some fingers from his left hand and with restricted mobility from a spinal injury
• Lynn – Jack’s wife, age 54; has rheumatoid arthritis. She also has limited walking ability and can be confined to bed for days at a time, though her condition has been better controlled recently
• Diane – Jack and Lynn’s daughter – works as a teaching assistant
• Dave – Jack and Lynn’s son. Works as a train driver
• Lorraine – Dave’s wife; age about 30. Not currently in work as struggling to cope after the death of their daughter Lucy.
• Katie – Dave and Lorraine’s daughter, aged 8
• Ryan – Dave and Lorraine’s son, aged 6.

Their “legal team”

• Charity Okube – volunteer adviser/asylum seeker, aged 30
• Dan Harris – benefits adviser, aged about 27
• Hilary O’Casey – benefits team manger; aged 64
• Mike Cooper – benefits adviser, age about 50
• Laura Morrison – solicitor
• Luke Schofield – barrister

The working title was still 'Severe Discomfort' and there were similarities in the plot - to the extent that it concerned a DLA fraud investigation, appeal and Court case.  But little dialogue actually got written, mainly because the 'Legal Team' didn't seem to work.  'Dan Harris' - originally the central character at the advice project - was both awkward and fiercely left-wing, but somewhat immature - so it was no surprise perhaps that he morphed into two separate younger characters in the form of Martin Connolly and Sally Archer.  'Mike Cooper', who was fairly dull and earnest, dropped a couple of decades and all notions of political correctness to become cheeky Toby Novak, while 'Hilary O'Casey' developed such a split personality that she too became two characters - erudite Vaughan James and the inimitable Hilary Carrington.  It was Hilary C's invention that turned the prototype play into a book - by making her and Lyn the same age, I could explore the part that good health, education and 'luck' play in shaping someone's life.  It also struck a chord after a real encounter mentioned briefly in the preface.

Poor 'Charity' had to go - she was born out of a wish to make 'Jack' (who was older and more bitter than Terry) confront his prejudices, but soon she was carrying too much political baggage to have any personality and the intended shy romance between her and 'Dan Harris' felt doomed.  The points about prejudice could be better addressed through inventing Lorraine Arthur and, for a different perspective, Parveen Kalia, hopefully without doing so heavy-handedly in either case.


The principal romantic subplot that made it into the novels owes its existence to a real couple glimpsed holding hands across a cream tea and sharing significant smiles in the restaurant of a National Trust property a long way from any of the castles on the south coast.  They may not have been up to anything particularly racy in the shrubbery, but I could suddenly think of a couple of characters who might have been!


I'm genuinely happy with the final version - tempting though it is to do a 'directors cut' with a few scenes cut for length and pace slipped back in - but it's funny to think that somewhere in a parallel universe, 'Severe Discomfort 1.0'  could be this afternoon's Radio 4 drama presentation.!