BRONTË scriptwriter Sally Wainwright spoke about her entire career at a special event at the University of Huddersfield.

She spoke about writing TV dramas like Coronation Street, Happy Valley, Last Tango In Halifax and At Home With The Braithwaites.

This was in addition to giving her audience an insight into scripting the upcoming BBC drama about the Brontë family’s life in Haworth, To Walk Invisible.

In conversation with university’s creative writing leader writing Dr Michael Stewart, she said dysfunctional families frequently featured in her storylines.

To Walk Invisible, based on research into the intense relationship between the Brontë sisters, highlights what Sally calls “the ultimate dysfunctional family”.

The film, due to be screened next month, simply echoes the modern-day relationships she has created in fictional dramas.

Dr Stewart explained how Sally began her career with scripts for radio soap The Archers and then Coronation Street.

He explored the ways in which the damaged back stories of characters play a role in Sally Wainwright’s dramas, first apparent with the character of Ruth, freed from jail after 15 years in Unforgiven.

Sally said: “I realised that there is a great strength in your narrative if it’s not just about now or the future, but it goes back a long way as well.

“Everything that Ruth does in the present is hugely informed by this terrible incident in her past.

“When I came to write Last Tango, everything is informed by something that happened 60 years ago."

The event also explored the panoply of strong female characters in Wainwright-scripted dramas.

Sally said: “I am lucky – and rare – in that I consciously want to write about women.

“The things that get commissioned are the things you are passionate about and I love writing about women. I think they are very heroic. But most people want to write about men.”