Phoebe McIntosh is an actor and playwright from London. She toured the South East and London with her solo show Dominoes, a tender love story, and thought-provoking examination of the British slave trade and its legacy. Having realised that her characters had more to say, she novelized her original play. Dominoes longlisted in the Bath Novel Award 2021, is newly published by Chatto & Windus and we have five hardback copies to give away. (See below for your chance to win!)
Congratulations on the publication of Dominoes. Tell us about the process of novelizing your play…
I was lucky enough to be part of a small group of playwrights chosen for the first Hachette x Tamasha Creative Writing programme during which we attended a series of masterclasses to help us explore how to transition from writing for the stage to writing a novel. I originally began the programme with one of my other plays in mind to adapt, but something wasn’t working. I put the project to one side for a while and thought novels just weren’t for me.
It wasn’t until I returned from Edinburgh with Dominoes the solo show, with all the audience responses buzzing in my mind – people wanted to see more, they were curious about the other characters and their voices, about where the story might go next – that I knew that this was the novel I was supposed to write.
I fleshed out a synopsis, expanding on the back story and what makes the key players act the way they do. And it really flowed from there. Sometimes I would use each existing scene as a blueprint for a chapter, and other times I would let dialogue lead the way. That tends to be a jumping off point for me. I need to know what’s being said, then I build the rest of a chapter around that.
What was the hardest part?
Thinking about the scale of it. I was going from writing plays of a couple of thousand words to a manuscript of just under 90k. I also found editing a real challenge. It sometimes felt like a lot to hold in my head and I was always conscious of the knock on effect of editing a detail early on and a whole chapter, character or plot point unravelling at the other end because of it.
Describe Dominoes….
Layla McKinnon – mixed-race, on the cusp of thirty, inner city London teacher – is getting married to Andy in the school holidays. They already have the same surname, which she’d always thought of as a cute quirk in their relationship, fate even. Until her best friend Sera hands her some pretty compelling evidence that the reason behind it is that Andy’s ancestors may have once enslaved Layla’s on a Jamaican plantation. As the days count down to her wedding and she tries to keep all her relationships intact, Layla is forced to examine parts of her history and identity, work out who she is and how she moves forward.
How many drafts did you write from first to last and how long did that take?
I think I wrote 5 drafts (with fewer and fewer edits at each stage) to get it ready for submission and then a further 4 drafts with my editor at Chatto. That process took 5-6 months.
How did Dominoes change after finding agent representation and in preparation for going out on submission to publishers?
I really landed on my feet with my agent. She gave me lots of support editorially to get the manuscript in the best shape possible. It changed structurally, I had the story divided into 3 parts initially. A couple of big plot points changed – one of the main characters lines of work, which had a big impact on the original draft felt a bit forced in the end as well as a couple of big changes for the grandfather character. I also added more depth around the characters feelings, dealt with a few consistency catches, and spent more time injecting the story with depth around the journey of Layla’s understanding and making things more nuanced.
How did your manuscript change after accepting your book deal to develop the final, published book?
The main change was related to the pandemic. I’d tried not to become bogged down in the impact of covid on the characters as it was originally a pre-pandemic set story. But, getting into the edit, there was no way to avoid it. I tried to give it a light touch as I didn’t want to detract from the main themes of race, identity, friendship, family and the legacies of slavery.
What was your approach to making a deeper dive into character storylines, adding descriptive passages and introducing sub plots, while maintaining the rising drama of the original play?
I have a habit of writing paragraphs worth of descriptive details within my stage directions in the first couple of drafts. I then slim them down as it’s better to leave space for the director and anyone reading it to dream up their own ideas about what the play could be. So, being able to lean into that tendency and luxuriate over descriptions that would eventually stay in and beef up the world of the story or to be able to knit in new subplots felt like a treat. Having an eye/ear for rising drama is something I’ve been able to hone as an actress and playwright. I like to end scenes (and now chapters) with a bit of a mic drop moment if I can.
We especially love your blend of comedy and seriousness. Any tips on making readers laugh and cry?
I remember going to see a play once which was all about suffering with depression. I left the theatre feeling completely depressed. But I’m sure that wasn’t the intention of the piece! It had missed the mark, failed to present the light and shade in the experience of sufferers. I didn’t want Dominoes to be one-note or easily categorised, because that wouldn’t be true of someone going through what Layla goes through. The litmus test as to whether something has the power to touch people’s emotions, provoke tears or laughter or both, is whether it does that for you. It’s probably also achieved by not censoring yourself (for the first draft at least) or try writing in a voice not too dissimilar to your own. You can always tweak things in the edit, but my initial reactions to something, my early impulses, are usually my most honest and effecting ones.
If you were casting the movie of Dominoes, who would play Andy to your Layla?
Paul Mescal. Just putting that out into the universe!
You were chosen for Penguin’s WriteNow program. What was the most helpful part of that experience?
I made it through the first stages of WriteNow in 2020 but didn’t progress to being one of the ten finalists, but I really benefited from that initial inclusion -it gave me a big confidence and motivational boost. The one-to-one feedback from an Editor at Penguin on the first 5000 words was brilliant. I was paired with Beth Coates who gave me incredibly thoughtful feedback. She encouraged me that there was something there in what I’d written and that I should keep going. So, I did. But in some ways, the most helpful stage was the application. I try to see talent schemes and opportunities to join writers groups which might be competitive to get places on as offering me a deadline and a chance to distill some of my creative aims. It can be frustrating to apply and apply and never feel like you get chosen, but reframing it from the outset helps me to get on with things whether I’m chosen or not.
Describe your ideal writing day.
It would begin with yoga and a cup of tea followed by some Morning Pages (of Julia Cameron fame). I discovered Writers’ Hour run by London Writers’ Salon on Zoom during lockdown, so I try to join that from 8-9am. They use Neil Gaiman’s provocation that you can either use the hour to write or do nothing. It always seems to work-I usually come away with a few hundred words, sometimes new scraps of ideas, sometimes whole scenes. If I have the rest of the morning free, I will head to a cafe with my laptop. I have a couple of local favourites. I always sit in the window as it allows me to daydream or tune into passersby or what’s going on around me among the other customers. I love picking up ideas in the moment and using them straight away if I can.
Sometimes I swap the cafe from a train journey, again, staring through the window helps me to write. It doesn’t really matter where the train is headed, somewhere a couple of hours away with a table and a cup of tea to myself with a bit of music through my headphones and I’m away. If there’s a nice seaside at the end of it, even better. If I have other commitments after that initial morning routine, then I might pick up where I left after 8pm, cross legged on my bedroom floor looking out over the back gardens through the my bedroom window. I tend not to plot or plan, but may have a post-it session where I brain dump any ideas I have about a particular scene and stick them up on the wall, and shuffle them around whenever I pass by.
Tell us about the experience of narrating the audiobook.
It felt like a real moment for me. My acting and writing career meeting in a recording booth and blowing my mind! Audiobook narration is a real skill I appreciate more and more every time I do it. But it definitely felt like, if ever there was a time to deliver my best performance, that was it. I’ve been turning to audio books more and more lately as my preferred way to ingest a book. I try to think abut what I like to listen to and use that to inform my pacing, my accent choices, how distinct I can make each individual character sound, how I can use my voice to bring people along for the ride and lose themselves to their imaginations.
I had a bit of a fail when I arrived for the first day of recording though! The pink shirt I was wearing was made of a stiff cotton that sounded like a freight train when it rustled next to the mic. I ended up having to borrow the sound engineer’s shirt off his back, which he was able to spare because he had a t-shirt on underneath! Needless to say my face turned the same colour as my shirt and I’ve learnt my lesson for future recordings.
What’s next for you and how can people connect with you?
I’m working on my second novel. Something quite different, a new story rather than an adaptation this time. I’m also looking for people to work with on a production of one of my plays called The Soon Life – a two hander about a heavily pregnant woman planning a home birth only for her ex (the baby’s father) to show up in the middle of it and refuse to leave.
I’m on Instagram @_phoebemcintosh_
PHOEBE MCINTOSH is an actor and playwright from London. She wrote and performed in a sell-out run of her first play, The Tea Diaries, at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2013, followed by her solo show, Dominoes, which toured the South East and London in 2018. She has completed the Soho Theatre Writers’ Lab programme, and her most recent full-length play, The Soon Life, was shortlisted and highly commended for the Tony Craze Award as well as being longlisted for the Alfred Fagon Award.
Phoebe won a place on the inaugural Tamasha x Hachette creative writing programme in 2018 and was also selected for the Penguin Random House WriteNow programme in 2020. Dominoes was longlisted for the Bath Novel Award 2021 , published by Chatto & Windus in March 2024 and you can buy your copy here.
