In this episode, Dr Rachel Knightley is joined by instant Sunday Times Bestselling author Sarah Brooks. Sarah won the Lucy Cavendish Prize in 2019. She works in East Asian Studies at the University of Leeds where she also helps run the Leeds Centre for New Chinese Writing. She has a PhD on monsters in classical Chinese ghost stories. She is also co-editor of Samovar, a bilingual online magazine for translated speculative fiction. Originally from Lancashire, she now lives in Leeds. Her novel The Cautious Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands comes out in June 2024 from Weidenfeld and Nicolson (UK) and Flatiron Books (US). Sarah talks to Dr Rachel Knightley about everything from inspiration and self-confidence to the pros and cons of writing routines – and what’s made her a fan of sessions at the Writers’ Gym.

Find out more about Sarah:

https://us.macmillan.com/author/sarahbrooks

https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/author/B0C8D834ZW#

Join the Writers’ Gym for more writing and creative confidence workouts at www.writersgym.com or sign up to our mailing list at drrachelknightley.substack.com

Get in touch with us at thewritersgym@rachelknightley.com

Writing Workout based on Sarah’s interview

“When I was writing the Cautious Traveller, because it's set on a train and because YouTube has anything you could possibly want, I would listen to these videos that were basically 10 hours’ train ride across Switzerland in the rain or Orient Express ambience. And they were so helpful because they would have the train noise.” Sarah Brooks

Warm-up: Board the imaginary train.

Pick an environment you’re writing about – or one you’ve never written about before. Find a soundscape and press play. Think On The Page for five minutes.

“I didn't feel that I had to write in a certain genre to make somebody want to read it or buy it or whatever so it was very, very freeing. Sometimes the advice that you need to pick a genre and I'm just not sure that necessarily always holds. So it's been really nice that people have seen that it's different genres and some people have felt it's more this or more that but have basically seemed to be fine with the kind of the genre mash-up.” Sarah Brooks

Exercise 1: If you knew it would be absolutely fine, whatever you included and however many genres it overlapped, what would happen in your next story? Think On The Page and either write a scene, or an outline.

“I would love to be somebody who manages to say, okay, this time every day, I'm going to sit down and write, definitely every day. But my brain doesn't work in that kind of way. And I've sort of had to just find what works for me.”

Exercise 3: Draft your ideal writing week. What are the times and places when you write? When does that mean you want to be fully off duty?

Dr Rachel Knightley is joined today by screenwriter, TV and radio dramatist and science fiction/fantasy novelist Philip Palmer. Philip has a background as a script editor and writes extensively for radio as well as television, scripting five seasons of the Radio Four Hungarian crime drama Keeping The Wolf Out. Other radio plays include The King’s Coinerstarring Iain McDiarmid and The Faerie Queene starring Simon Russell Beale. His feature film The Ballad of Billy McCrae, which he wrote and co-produced, was released on more than 20 UK screens in September 2021. Philip’s books include Version 43 and Hell Ship, the horror/crime novel Hell On Earth, Morpho, and the horror novella Murder of the Heart. He also has extensive experience working with new and emerging writers.

Find out more about Philip:

BBC Sounds

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/series/b07ldlnq

Author Page

https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/author/B001IU2P86/about

Feature Film The Ballad of Billy McRae:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/video/detail/B09KG756VM/ref=atv_sr_fle_c_srce7a38_1_1_1?sr=1-1&pageTypeIdSource=ASIN&pageTypeId=B09KGC6FND&qid=1747666407190

Agent Page

https://mbalit.co.uk/client/philip-palmer/

Join the Writers’ Gym for more writing and creative confidence workouts at www.writersgym.com or sign up to our mailing list at drrachelknightley.substack.com

Get in touch with us at thewritersgym@rachelknightley.com

Writing Workout based on Philip’s interview

“Without realizing it… architecture, history, other lives, glimpsed lives…These are all things that are in me and I didn't have to put them there, they were there. I just needed a frame in which to express those ideas.” Philip Palmer

Warm-up:

Pick a place you love. Think on the page about who is in it, what they want, what they fear, what could be changing for them. No criticising your ideas: just notice them and get them down.

Exercise 1:

Read your warm-up like you’ve never seen it before. Whose story does it seem to be? What is it about them that speaks to you?

“I like to explore and experiment. My favourite way of writing, usually I have to plan but my favourite way is improvising, like if I could play piano it would be the equivalent of improvising on the piano. Having the freedom to explore and go in different directions is a joy.

But you have to train the unconscious. A lot of what I've done in my career is working as a script editor and a teacher, working with techniques like writing beat sheets and synopses and scene by scene breakdowns. And you have to do those things because the more you do them, the more you don't need to do them. You rely on them and then suddenly you can catch free. If you begin with a complete blank slate and complete freedom and complete spontaneity, nothing will happen. You have to have those techniques to do upon as well but the aim is to kind of use the ladder and then fly.” Philip Palmer

Exercise 2:

Pretend you have a deadline for a first draft of your idea to hand in to your script editor. What would you pick for:

• A working title?
• A question the story is asking?
• A problem your character has?

Alex Dahl is the author of six psychological thrillers. Her third novel, Playdate, is currently streaming on Disney+ and she’s published by (among others) Penguin Random House USA, Head of Zeus UK, Harper Collins Australia. Her work has been translated into 16 foreign languages and her debut novel, The Boy at the Door, was shortlisted for a CWA dagger award. She’s a half Norwegian, half American author and studied Russian, German and international studies in Oslo and Moscow before pursuing an MA in creative writing at Bath Spa University – at the same time as Dr Rachel Knightley.

Alex talks to Rachel about the importance of doing the writing you want – both in the responsibility of knowing you’re the one who needs to make it happen for you and the self-knowledge of what it is you want your writing and your writing life to be.

Find out more about Alex at

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/2167982/alex-dahl/

Join the Writers’ Gym for more writing and creative confidence workouts at www.writersgym.com or sign up to our mailing list at drrachelknightley.substack.com

Get in touch with us at thewritersgym@rachelknightley.com

Writing Workout based on Alex’s interview

Warm-up: From Motivation to Identity

“I am quite character driven: most of a novel springs from understanding the characters...I have to understand their motivations and what drives them and what do they want? What are they willing to do to get it?” Alex Dahl

Consider the character you’re working on. What do they want? What are they prepared to do to get it? What aren’t they prepared to do that can stop them from getting it?

Main Exercise:

“That's something I always ask myself and it's actually something that I've started to apply to real life. It's like in interactions with people, like characters. It's super enlightening to just bring it back down to what does this person actually want? What is their desired outcome, whether it's a child or a partner or just a random stranger, same as with characters: what is it that drives them in this particular interaction? And that's so useful for me in novel writing, because it really does inform so much of the interpersonal relationships and also how to structure the plot, because you can always bring it back to that and be like, okay, so I'm stuck here. But in this particular moment, what is the pressing point for this character? What do they want?” Alex Dahl

Take a blank sheet of paper and choose one of these questions:

• What do I want for my writing?
• What am I doing to make it happen?
• What am I not doing to make it happen?
• If I knew it would all be okay in the end, what would I do next?