GALLEY BEGGAR PRESS SHORT STORY PRIZE 2022/23
An interview with GBP Short Story Prize author Charlotte Turnbull
Congratulations on your GBP Short Story Prize longlisting, Charlotte – ‘Headshot’ is such a great story. Can you get the ball rolling by telling our readers a bit more about it (as well as when the idea first came to you and how you set about writing it)?
During the proliferation of high-profile personality scandals in the past few years – not limited to those affecting the film industry – I have reflected on who might, or might not, be considered complicit, and how. What would complicity look like within a cult-like company ethos? Or a cult-like industry ethos? How might it work? Who might it affect? How would they defend themselves? Are they defensible? How do age and status affect the direction of a moral compass?
The FILM COMPANY that you present is a savage place. Names aren’t remembered, staff (on every rung of the ladder) are routinely abused – it feels like An incredibly real portrayal of the entertainment industry, but is also a portrait that you create through the use of surrealism and hyperrealism. How did you arrive at that?
Bullying often relies on amorphous status imbalances and interpersonal dynamics. In short form it felt more economical and precise to use a strong metaphor that could be quickly understood to balance the idea upon. The real-life physical violence I’ve read about in professional bullying scandals of the past few years seems more surreal than the violence in ‘Headshot’. The violence is hyperreal, but only just. I started with small acts of violence, each time stretching it a little further, trying never to lose the emotional anchor of the protagonist.
One of the great things about ‘Headshot’ is the way that you quietly skewer hierarchies: there’s quite a bit about class, and also generational conflict (i.e., the often vicious way that younger people, just starting out, are treated). 'Headshot' is very nuanced in the way that this isn't static; it's clear that this isn't a level playing field, and there are different rules and challenges for different people. Can you expand on that?
When I have an idea, I try to identify the issue at the heart of it and then work backwards to the issue-behind-the-issue to unearth character complexity. ‘Headshot’’s structure presents something that feels like it should be the central question, alongside the true central question: how can such escalations of poor behaviour even be possible? To properly interrogate an idea, I need to find moral flex and movement to it, the thesis and antithesis, and then possibly even the negation of that.
The dog room in the story – I loved that. Do these places actually exist?
Not as far as I know, but I wouldn’t be surprised.
Let’s move on to your wider writing life. What are you working on at the moment? Do you have a routine? How long have you been writing for?
I’ve written in various forms for over a decade. I’ve been writing a novel for eight years, so I suppose my only routine is keep typing and don’t let the blood weeping from your eyes clog the keyboard.
Other writers! Tell us about some of your favourites.
Mary Webb, Barbara Comyns, Edith Nesbit, Elspeth Barker, Lucia Berlin, Daphne Du Maurier. The restrained desperation in vintage writing makes an interesting counterpoint to current trends towards supra-intimacy. I also love a sixties / seventies pulp gothic, and any wild contemporary genre-bending – from Sophie Mackintosh, Eley Williams, Zoe Gilbert and Karen Russell, to Nathan Ballingrud, Brian Evenson and Paul Tremblay.
Let’s try a different art form, too. How about a good movie you recently watched?
Lamb.
Final question: you’re hosting a fantasy literary dinner. Who would you invite, where would it be, what’s on the menu? (Is there potential for scandal?)
Miss Havisham, Annie Wilkes, Merricat Blackwood, Mrs Danvers, Amy Dunne, Sauron and Dorothy Wordsworth. They’d probably skip dinner and get straight to the poisoning. (The scandal will be that poor Dorothy never saw it coming.)
… have I misunderstood this question?