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Award winning author Patrick Ness was a surprise choice for writer for the BBC’s new Doctor Who spin-off, Class – at least for anyone who wasn’t previously aware of his excellent stories told in the YA genre. With Class now halfway through the release of its first season on BBC Three, and the movie of his story A Monster Calls hitting cinemas early next year, he chatted with Paul Simpson about bringing those sensibilities to the Doctor Who universe…

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Did you have the idea for the whole eight episode arc of Class, or just the setup?

[The Doctor Who producers] approached me and asked if I’d think about writing for Doctor Who. I said it was a fantastic opportunity but right at that moment I had just finished a bunch of work for other people – I’d done some adaptations – and I said I was really itching to do something that was entirely my own… so please come back to me, because it’s a great opportunity. And they said, “We’re also thinking about possibly a spin-off around Coal Hill.”

It did that thing you always want ideas to do, which they don’t do very often: you always know an idea is a good one when it starts to suggest other ideas. I immediately had a bunch of ideas – I knew how I would begin this, I knew who the students would be and why. I immediately saw how it would work.

With these particular eight episodes, I have a bit of a writing quirk for my novels in that I don’t write them until I know what the last line is. It’s not necessarily the climax; I call it the exit feeling – it’s how you leave your reader – and I got that for episode 8 right away.

When that happens with an idea, my deepest philosophy is the most important thing I can do as a writer is not be a snob. If an idea is a good one, you run after it, you go for it. I mean that in terms of not being a snob about age group to write for, not being a snob about medium, not being a snob about drama. A good idea is a good idea and they are precious as honey when you get one.

How steeped are you in the Doctor Who universe?

It’s a bit of a bind because I’m American – I was raised in America; I moved to England in 1999 – and in the early days of Who there just wasn’t that much international transfer. There were fewer cable outlets. I’d heard of it of course but in America we all watched Star Trek – I know quite a lot about Star Trek! – but I started watching it immediately on the reboot because I like Russell T Davies. Of course I’d heard about Doctor Who and knew what it was and thought this could be really good. I’ve seen everything since 2005.

I wrote a short story for the 50th anniversary for a collection that Penguin did [Tip of the Tongue] and I got the 5th Doctor. I went back and watched a ton of 5th Doctor stuff – they sent me a load of DVDs, it’s fantastic.

So, as much as possible for a person who lived in America.

Has it been restricting being within that universe for Class, or have the restrictions given you challenges that have been interesting to work around?

By far the latter. Anything you do is going to have limitations to it. Some of them are going to be arbitrary – the form, the length – so setting it in an established universe is just another one. I find those really exciting because a limitation is a huge spur to creativity. How do I get around those limitations? How do I honour them? How do I engage with them?

I find the challenge really exciting as a writer – I genuinely do. Often when I write short stories I will give myself a completely arbitrary limitation just to see if I can then still tell the story I want to tell with that limitation. I love that kind of thing: [tell me] “You have to do all these things” and I go, “Great, let’s see if I can still make it work.”

Were there any major changes you had to make to your original concept as a result of what has already been set up in Doctor Who?

Not really, because I started with the characters, who were always going to be the characters. That was the first really fresh feeling that I had: these are people I’d like to get to know more, like to follow. And then I went back and looked at all the Coal Hill stuff to make sure the set-up was right.

I knew from the start what I would have to be part of.

Were you still writing as you were shooting, or had you got the eight episodes pretty much sorted?

Oh no, I was still writing when we were shooting. They do that in the movies too. When I did A Monster Calls, I was still writing to the last day of shooting: things come up, you get good ideas, actors make really interesting choices and you go, “ooh let’s do something with that”. There’s a saying in television that you never finish, you merely broadcast. They have to pry it out of your hands.

It’s all about keeping yourself open. Again, it’s one of the great things when I worked on A Monster Calls: the director [Juan Antonio Bayona] was really strong on the idea that ideas themselves don’t have ego. They are good or bad, and they can come from anywhere or everywhere, and to keep yourself open to that feeling gives you a chance to find unexpected stuff in really wonderful places sometimes.

Had you completed the screenplay on A Monster Calls before working on Class?

Yes. I’d written a couple of screenplays, but A Monster Calls was the first one in production. That was done shooting before Class began.

Were there things that you learned from A Monster Calls that you applied to Class – obviously one’s original, one’s an adaptation…

Yes. It’s one of the reasons I wanted to do it as well: for me, complacency in a writer is death. I never want to be too comfortable. I always want to be nervous. I want to try fresh muscles and I want to try telling a story in a different way.

They’re completely different, books and screenplays – length for one. A television episode is at most a long short story. How do you tell everything you want in a short space of time? But what you get in return, of course, is everything that the visuals give you back…

So there’s lots of learning about how to keep the story moving, how to tell it with as little dialogue as possible, how to find a really good silent moment, but also to find the places to stop and talk and say really fun things. I did learn a lot and hopefully it will keep on.

Did elements that came out of the performances from the Class actors feed into the later episodes?

Definitely their personalities, and the choices they were making. We spent a lot of time on casting just to make sure we got it absolutely right. I am absolutely delighted by who we cast and how they came together as a group.

It was probably more of them as a group: the way they act to one another, the way they tease another, the way they have a lot of fun together. That kind of playfulness, the way that an unexpected mixture of four or five people spar and joke. It shows you what is possible and what is real and truthful. It’s really nice and it really helps the show, the chemistry of the five of them.

Also Jordan is quite tall, so I got to do some tall jokes.

What’s been the most surprising reaction?

The reaction has been a genuine pleasure. There is so much nervousness about putting any sort of work into the world. This is my first TV series so there’s nervousness that it’s my first big show; it’s quite a big show, especially for the BBC; and add on to that, it’s coming in as part of a 53 year old long established universe. I like a challenge like that. I’m not afraid of a challenge like that, but it is a challenge, and the nerves were pretty high, but you only live once, you might as well try.

The reaction has been really lovely. The people that I was hoping… young people are really responding to it. It’s the paradox of YA: you can’t cheat, you can’t pretend it’s for teenagers and then consciously make it for everybody. The paradox is that it has to be for teenagers first, and that’s when everybody else can see themselves in it and really respond to it.

The response of young viewers has been really heartening: they really love the characters, they really love the cast, and that has rippled out. I get responses from the tweets and social media – “I’m 74 and I really love this”. That’s been a genuine pleasure.

All you can do in a situation like that is make the best thing that you can and put the rest of it aside. I’m pleased and relieved.

My daughter has commented on the characters’ reactions, pleased that they’re not falling into the cliché traps. How steeped are you in shows like Buffy and Twilight etc.?

Very much. Number one, it’s my job, but I’ve been writing in YA for about nine years now. Even in that nine years, YA has changed. The way that it stretches its wings, the depth and breadth it gives. I always say that rather than being a warrior for YA, I try to be a missionary for YA – “come out, join us, you might really like it”. People usually do.

I read all kinds of things but I definitely keep myself aware of the current YA universe because it’s where I tell my stories. It’s a place that has really given me a chance.

But if the right story came to you walking down the street that was for adults rather than for YA, would you tell it for adults or try to find a way to tell it for YA?

Oh no, I’d tell it for adults. The story is what the story is.

I’ve just turned in my tenth book: seven have been for YA, three have been for adults. The scripts that I’ve done have been a mixture of both. It’s not wanting to be a snob in either direction, and always being available to what the story needs. It’s the only way that I’ve ever been able to tell a story that anybody ever wants to look at.

One thing I found when doing my research – you wrote a comedy radio series about vampires? What is it and where can we find it?

It was a one-off. It was an Afternoon Play for Radio 4 – a long time ago. It was called Tainted Love, and it was about how do you marry a vampire if you’re not a vampire? I don’t know how you can find it, but it does exist.

Nobody ever asks me about it. It’s a funny little thing from a long time ago. [The play was broadcast on September 21, 2004.]

What’s the future for Class – when are you likely to know if you will go again? I’m assuming it’s set up so that you can…

I would love the chance to do a second series. Fingers really really crossed. Just got to get people to watch, and they are. I hope so: I’m optimistic but not certain.

Was there any sort of feedback over having the family friendly figure of the Doctor involved in the show – there’s that publicity shot of Ram covered in Rachel’s blood standing behind Capaldi, which is not the usual Doctor Who picture…

No, he was always going to be there. I said that from the start. For me it was like the Star Trek handoff – somebody [from an earlier series] would always be there. It’s kind of an imprimatur: we are officially in this universe so we are acknowledging our connection to it.

But it was more a thematic thing. The cool thing about the universe of Doctor Who is that it’s unbounded – it’s literally all of space and time. The excitement of these various spin-offs has always been looking at the universe through a different set of eyes, a different set of experiences. [The] Sarah Jane [Adventures] was younger; Torchwood was its own really interesting thing – I really enjoyed it.

I’ve been resisting the idea that Sarah Jane is for children, Torchwood is for adults, and Class is somewhere in the middle because I don’t think the continuum is that easy. That’s why I avoid the word “adult” for Torchwood.

The whole theme of Class is what do you do when the Doctor leaves, and you know that your universe is much bigger than you thought it was. He can’t be everywhere so how do you deal with this new knowledge and these new experiences? He had to be there so we could see the traditional Doctor episode, and then when he leaves, what would really happen to the people? How would you accommodate it in your life? To me that’s interesting drama.

And something you tackled with your novel The Rest of Us Just Live Here as well..,.

A little bit, yes.

Would you call the group in Class the indies, or are they the rest of us?

(laughs) The whole MO of every teenager is to feel like the one left out. Every single teenager feels that. That’s why Chosen One narratives are so appealing and powerful and that’s why narratives who are left out of the Chosen One are also appealing and powerful.

That’s what it feels like to be a teenager – it’s the first time, literally the first time, you have stepped away from your family and said “I am not this thing, I am something else.” That journey that you go on when you first step away and fully declare yourself an individual and find out what that means, that’s why YA is so interesting. We’ve all been through it. A lot of us try to pretend we haven’t but we have all been through – and what a rich field to tell stories in!

New episodes of Class are released every Saturday on BBC 3; the show will be coming to BBC America next year.

Thanks to Harriet Wilson for her help in arranging this interview