Novel writing, Doctor Who and Rounded Characters - Interview with Eliza Morton

Eliza Morton discusses her new book, family, Doctor Who and more!

If you know me, you’ll know that I adore a bit of time travel. I’ve spent most of my life dedicated to traversing the past and future with Doctor Who, visiting history through books, or reliving what came before me with a good old period drama or film. My latest dip into the past comes through The Orphans from Liverpool Lane, the new saga novel from Eliza Morton.

Eliza is an actress, screenwriter, novelist and the wife of Fifth Doctor Peter Davison - what a pairing! She says that writing her novels is her own form of time travel. While her husband and son-in-law (David Tennant) are out flying about time and space as incarnations of the Doctor, Eliza has been writing saga books that feel like warm, cosy blankets, transporting us through a wormhole to a different time.

Her latest novel tells the tale of two sisters who are declared ‘orphans of the living’, exploring the impact of the devastating Second World War on their family. I spoke to Eliza about her writing process, the impact of Who and family on her writing, and the importance of telling stories from the past.

So, where does one begin with writing a novel such as Orphans? The Liverpool backdrop is an ever-present portrait that draws you into the story, like stepping into an old photograph. The characters are relatable, fun, devastating and flawed all at once. With each turn of a page, I feel like I've walked right into an episode of Doctor Who or Call the Midwife. For Eliza, It all begins with an anecdote or a story.

Eliza’s mother was three when her father went off to war, returning much later to a house full of only women. “My mum tells this story about how she came in from school one day during the war, and she saw her mother kneeling down, crying, and this strange man sitting in the chair,” she explains. “She was confused. Her mother was overwhelmed by the return of her husband, but my mother just saw a man making a woman cry. So then I thought, what must it be like to have a stranger walk into this female household, to suddenly bring this stranger in and how would you cope with that?” This idea is central to the novel, and the main backbone of the plot.

“My books often start with stories that somebody has told me, ‘oh this happened to me’ - these stories stay with people. So that is where I begin.”

What of the actual writing process? “I quite like to get a first draft of about 65,000 words so that there’s plenty of room for manoeuvre, that is my arc, my vision, my feel for it.”

Eliza has a family full of creatives, which must be helpful and inspiring, I ask. “I will (rarely) give Peter (Davison) things to read, but it is very useful to have someone to talk to if you hit a roadblock. Because Peter has done so much drama, we can always have a nice brainstorm. He is great as someone to bounce ideas off, for the ‘plotty’ stuff.” After that, the draft goes to Eliza’s editor and agent, to start the process of, in her words, “how do we make this better?”

Sending myself back in time with Orphans helped me thread an invisible string from myself to my Aunt, who passed away in 2015. Born in 1927, she came of age during the Second World War, at almost the same time as the girls in the book. I’ll always regret not asking her more about what it was like for her growing up, especially during such a huge moment in history. Uncovering a story set during this period and how it impacted women specifically made me feel that bit closer to her. What does Eliza hope that other readers take from her novel?

“I hope it will shed light into a corner that is perhaps in danger of being forgotten about a little. We sort of need to keep telling those stories I think.”

There’s also a sense of hope in looking backwards. “Even if it (the book) just adds a sense of perspective, because even in my lifetime, things have changed. That awful sense of shame that we had growing up because we were so controlled by the church (much more so than the state). That sense of looking at how far we’ve come.”

Our conversation turned to telling stories of women, and the importance of telling those stories from the past. Keeping on the theme of ‘how far we’ve come’, Eliza laughs; “I could never have foreseen while growing up that we would be living in a world where it’s absolutely fine to even live with your boyfriend! It seems incredible that there was a time when I was 15/16, and if you got pregnant before you were married - women my age were giving away their children because it was shameful. How insane!”

I mention that this wasn’t even that long ago, and that as a young person, I could still relate to some of the feelings of shame or aspects of what the women experience in her novel. We agree that it is important to see flaws in female characters. “That is the nature of a saga, it is a female-led genre and the characters are much more interesting to write about. We’re all flawed. It’s important to see yourself or your failings in someone else!”

Always linking back to Doctor Who, (because who wouldn’t if your family had such a closeness to it?) Eliza added, “I always think, which also relates to Doctor Who and the stories that it tells, that when we feel sometimes that we’re in a mess, which inevitably one does, or the mess of the world, sometimes it is good to have perspective and think, you know, that there is hope.

I think that writing sagas, because they are commercial and accessible, is a way of reminding us that not everyone recovered from things that have happened (in the past). But just writing these stories based on real-life experiences, does in a way give hope I think.”

We finish by circling back to female stories in Doctor Who, such as the 2017 introduction of the show’s first female Doctor, Jodie Whittaker. “The Doctor is always an outsider” Eliza ponders. “Women in sagas are too, always generally on the outside. The definition of a saga is usually about a heroine overcoming societal challenges at some point in the past.” We laugh about how much Who and Saga novels indirectly have in common. Hope, shining a light on the past and strong characters that we can all relate to.

Everybody wants to see themselves reflected, and the more that happens, the more hope we have. I think that’s the main way I would describe how I felt reading Orphans, or when I’m watching Doctor Who.

This is an extract from a recent interview with Eliza, the majority of which happened alongside Peter Davison - more will be revealed soon! But, for now, I’ll leave you with a link to Orphans and one of my favourite quotes from my conversation with Eliza:

“We’re all mad and bad and dangerous in moments, aren’t we? We’re all rounded characters!”

The Orphans from Liverpool Lane is available to buy now.

Read more from this conversation, where Peter and Eliza reveal scrapped plans for another Five(ish) Doctors Reboot