fathers

Ages ago, I went on a fab filmmakers lab organised by (the now liquidated) Moonstone. One of the tutors - the tiny Ms Joan Darling conducted a fascinating workshop on 'working with actors' - all about pushing emotional buttons. She started by telling us that when she was a young girl her father died and she felt pleased because when she went to school, she could now tell her friends she was a 'half-orphan'. I guffawed loudly only to see Ms Darling pointing a knotty finger at me. "You're laughing because this rings true for you too." Loss. Indeed when I was five years old my mother left my father in West Africa and we travelled all the way to Liverpool in a ship. I didn't see my father again for 20 years (and grew up thinking fathers were irrelevant or at least fairly disposable.)

Anyhow, as I mentioned once, a father or a father figure keeps returning as a key figure in my stories - often as an emotional conduit. I daresay there's a lot could be analysed from this. I've written about a four-times-married father trying to relate to his various offspring and about two girls who refuse to accept their mother's new boyfriend as a father figure. Then also a father who has to expiate his son's violent death and a blind father who shapes his son's vision.

The current script - dealing with a fight between two women - was the first where a father doesn’t really figure - or so I thought. But ahem - the re-write is forcing me to acknowledge (yet again) that a father is pivotal to playing off the conflict.

So what about you - is there someone or a character that keeps coming back in different forms? Or does your father figure in your writing?