CREATOR CHAT

PeterO'Donnell

Peter O'Donnell

One of the most iconic female fictional characters ever created, Modesty Blaise is the brainchild of best-selling author Peter O'Donnell. Based loosely on a feral child O'Donnell had encountered in a refugee camp during World War Two, Modesty is the ultimate spy and adventurer. With right-hand man Willie Garvin by her side, Modesty's stories began in the London Evening Standard in 1963 -- beautifully illustrated by Jim Holdaway -- and continued until 1986, as well as through 13 novels spanning 1963 to 1996.

Peter O'Donnell kindly agreed to give his insight on the character and the series.

1. When you first started the Modesty Blaise newspaper strip, when you were generating ideas, did you think it would be successful?

No. I mean, I thought I'd got a good character; I thought I'd got two good characters -- you know, [Modesty Blaise and Willie Garvin] are part of each other -- but you never know what's going to happen with these things. I certainly never expected it to have the success it did have. I mean, within a year a film agent had contacted me about an option, and once that was known I had a number of publishers that wanted it. I had publishers contacting me, wanting me to sell them the book rights and then they would get a 'real' writer to do it. Marvellous, isn't it? I mean, the strip is much tougher than the books to write.

2. A 'real' writer? So were comic strips looked down upon by people in those days? And are they still now, do you think?

I think they must be -- in this country, not in France. There they are considered a very valid art form, but you see in other countries the word 'comic' doesn't have the same childish connotation as it does in this one. Yes, I think it would be fair to say that they would have regarded someone who wrote a strip cartoon as an inferior writer. But little do they know. For one thing, you're telling a story in a hundred bits, with roughly 24 hours between each bit. That's not easy -- to maintain the interest of your reader you've got to keep recapping, without it getting boring for people who have followed it anyway and don't want to go over it again. So there is a great deal to think of.

And we were very limited on words. About 60 words is getting on for tops, I would have thought, with most three-frame strips. In that sense you have to work very hard at it. You've got to have your action, you've got to have your characterisation, and you've got to have your exposition; you know, what's going on, who are the villains, what are they doing. So yes, I think it is the hardest form to write for. I've written for television, I've written for film, and of course I've done strip and book and strip is the hardest to do.

3. You mentioned there were 24 hours between each strip. Is that the way you produced them, one a day, or did you do a number in advance?

I used to do a week's strips at a time. I think that was just a habit I got into when in '53, 10 years earlier, I took over Garth for the Daily Mirror, and that was a six-day-a-week paper so I got used to doing that. That seemed to work for me.

4. What do you think it is about Modesty that people have responded to?

This is a bit difficult for me because I don't tend to analyse what I do. I'm a bit wary of that. I think she is honourable, she is the truest of friends, a couple of other things like that. I have to think hard about it before I can put it into words because I don't like to do that -- as soon as you say that she is, for example, vulnerable, you think, "I mustn't forget to make her vulnerable in the next story."

5. Is that how you create the strips too, not dwelling on them too much before you write them?

I work to my gut feeling. I'm wary of working to a formula. When I settle down to do the story, I just settle down to do the story. There are all sorts of formulaic things these days -- I mean, to write television, probably because of the adverts, you think in terms of three acts; if you're going to write a drama, you think, "OK, three acts." I don't think of a story like that. I think of a story coming along and then, bang -- the climax. That's the way it comes to me, in fact.

6. Do you come up with the whole story at the beginning, or does it come to you in parts?

I start from the beginning and set up the situation. I don't know how I'm going to resolve it at that stage. It's the same with the novels -- I mean, you are talking about the strip now mainly, but with the novels I'm quite incapable of working out a plot. I get the characters and I set up a situation that I can do, and I don't know where I'll go from there, but I write the first chapter and see what's happened at the end of it. And from then on that is what I do because it works best for me. And also I think if I don't know what's going to happen next, the reader isn't going to be able to second guess me on it.

7. Writers often say that strong characters often take the author places they weren't expecting to go in the first place.

Oh yes, they do that. I mean, they talk in my head. I've really lived with them for 40 years now, and they do tend to take over. I've said before, I think they invented me rather than I invented them.

8. To what extent is Modesty based on you, either consciously or subconsciously?

I'm no hero! I suppose that her reactions to things must be coloured by what my reactions would be, except that she is a lot braver than I am. I don't try to preach sermons or anything like that in the books, I just tell it the way it is.