Novelist Jem Calder reads from I Want You to Be Happy in this passage episode of Character Study, a scene about a hundred pages in, as his two characters go on early dates and feel each other out across a pub table by the river.

Jem and Freya talk about writing romance that feels real without being neat, the transactional and inexplicable pulls that draw two mismatched people together, and why a "situationship" can carry the weight of a love story even when you know it won't last. They get into the small, specific power of complimenting a stranger who's dressed a little braver than usual, and then into the harder subject underneath the whole book: attention. Jem and Freya make the case for stepping back from social media to protect your writing: the compounding minutes, the shrinking attention span, the excuse that posting is somehow part of the work.

📚 Further reading mentioned in this episode:

– Liadan Ní Chuinn, Every One Still Here (short story collection)

– Zadie Smith on living without a phone

🎥 WATCH the full episode here

📘 Buy Jem Calder's I Want You to Be Happy and Reward System, plus Freya's novel: A Real Piece of Work

💛 Follow @freybromley on Instagram for updates and to ask your questions

📚 Join Freya's newsletter at freyabromley.substack.com for behind the scenes thoughts

🎙️ And hit subscribe wherever you get your podcasts

00:00:00 Introduction — and last night's karaoke reading

00:00:56 Jem reads from I Want You to Be Happy

00:02:12 The power of complimenting a stranger

00:02:53 Writing an unironic love story

00:05:02 Being reverent about the relationships that don't last

00:06:33 The intimacy of two people who really listen

00:08:19 Sharing your writing with a partner

00:09:50 Sensitivity as a superpower

00:11:28 Why he gave himself a pass to write about writers

00:12:43 Bring back emailing someone a poem

00:13:34 The decision to quit social media

00:15:14 "You'll get your attention back" — advice for writers

00:16:20 Liadan Ní Chuinn and the myth that you need a platform

00:18:54 Zadie Smith on living without a phone

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Poet Will Harris reads Speakee Stonehenge, an exclusive sneak peek into the collection of poems he is currently working on, Speakee.

It's a piece that keeps circling back on itself, returning to the same small moment in a room full of people, and each time it comes back it has picked something up: a piece of research, an overheard shout, a memory of a stranger's grief. Nothing is explained, and by the end a single ordinary word has quietly turned inside out. It's about who gets to belong somewhere, and how language decides that for us before we've noticed.

Will and Freya talk about writing people as names and voices rather than fully fleshed-out characters, why the most poignant moments are when someone stutters or says the wrong thing, and the danger of editing: that in smoothing out the clunky words, you can flatten everything interesting about a sentence. Plus, whether the internet and MFA culture have quietly made all our sentences sound the same.

00:00:00 Introduction

00:00:11 Speakee — the book Will is working on

00:00:32 Will reads Speakee Stonehenge

00:03:11 "Is it a poem? I don't know"

00:03:56 Writing people as names and voices

00:05:28 Why the poignant moments are the stutters

00:05:43 The exercise of transcribing overheard speech

00:07:15 Repetition, word choice and editing

00:07:58 The danger of smoothing out the difficulty

00:08:24 Has the internet made all our sentences the same?

🎥 WATCH the full episode

📘 Buy Brother Poem, RENDANG and Mixed-Race Superman by Will Harris and Freya's novel: A Real Piece of Work

💛 Follow @freybromley on Instagram for updates and to ask your questions

📚 Join Freya's newsletter at freyabromley.substack.com for behind the scenes thoughts

🎙️ And hit subscribe wherever you get your podcasts

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.