I was a novelist before I was a TV screenwriter. Actually, as a kid, I think I'd always wanted to be a writer, but never thought that I would be one.
Ben RichardsJust because there's a trillion places to put an idea doesn't mean you don't need an idea in the first place
Ben RichardsI wrote about the life of a housing officer in Britain, in a pretty rough area of London. Maybe it was because I'm a big-mouth and an exhibitionist, and I'm slightly egotistical. All those things have to come together for a writer.
Ben RichardsI'm not from a particularly sci-fi background. I'm not anti sci-fi at all, but I've never been known as a sci-fi writer and, suddenly, I was creating a flagship BBC sci-fi show, which is terrifying sometimes.
Ben RichardsI had been reading a lot about pioneers in Australia and the colonization of Australia, and pioneers in Virginia and the early settlers in the United States, and I was fascinated by those communities and how they grew, how their politics developed, and the actual suffering of those people and the tribulations they went through.
Ben Richards