Overview

SafeHouse, unlike Human Nature, was outlined a few times before I settled on this draft. This was the result of another Task Assessment as part of my Creative Writing Course with the Open University. This was a lot harder to write because I had a quote logged inside of my head at that time and at first, I based it around that as a starting point.

The quote came from Eastender's characters Pat Butcher and Janine Mitchell. I can't remember when it was screened but I do remember them sitting in Pat's kitchen with her, reminiscing about her childhood. The quote was this;

'I used to worry about you when you was a little girl. Running in front of cars and staring into space.' Pat Butcher.

I did chuckle at myself as I wrote that down in my notebook. If you watch the soap then you can imagine the image this creates with Janine. Hardly the nasty piece of work as she is now! From then on, I had that statement starting every line in every draft I created. But there was never a draft that came to life so I got rid of it completely and kept it as a guideline only.

I remember completing an exercise that was set by our tutor, which was to write a five hundred word character development in an unordinary situation. Once again, I let my imagination rule the roost and soon, before I knew it I had my starting couple of paragraphs. Of course, I'd have to change them so that they weren't identical to the ones I'd already submitted but compared to having no idea whatsoever it was a piece of cake.

This piece wasn't sent around as much as Human Nature. I asked people who I trusted to give me honest feedback and then decided what to do with the feedback. Surprisingly, it turned out positive which i was really happy about.