Programme Outline
The programmes are set on location in Malorie Blackman's home, at her old school in Lewisham, working with children, and in venues she is using for ideas and research. Over the two episodes, Malorie talks about her own childhood and the importance of family life, and about what influences her writing and how she writes.
Viewers are taken into Malorie's world of work: in her study we see draft ideas for plots, as she works at the computer she narrates her story and the camera cuts to a dramatisation of the same excerpt, and then cuts again to her readers' responses to that particular book. This concise presentation of the stages of writing, publication, dramatisation and audience response effectively demonstrates the significance and power of writing. Malorie's enthusiasm encourages children to have a go at writing themselves!
In this first programme we meet Malorie and see her visit Greenwich with her young daughter Lizzie. She explains how important family is for her and notes that all her books are dedicated to members of her family. The significance of family and relationships is often the central theme to her books, and however unconventional that family may be, her characters struggle to make it work in the best way they know how.
