The Writers’ Gym Podcast
Build creative confidence and beat the inspiration addiction with Dr Rachel Knightley. Every episode, we’ll discuss key writing topics while exploring the goals, exercises, tools and techniques to discover what you really want from your writing — and what your writing really needs from you.
Episodes
‘Say the Thing’ is one of our most transformational pieces of writing advice Dr Rachel Knightley ever had. That editor wasn’t just showing her a masterkey to clarity and confidence on the page, but off it too. This episode of the podcasts explores how communicating what we love and what we fear deepens our characterisation, links character and plot, and our connection with the reader through the specificity of detail that gives wri...
What’s the difference between procrastination and a gentle ‘landing pattern’ on your way down to where the words are? If your bookshelves are noticeably neater when a deadline’s looming, it’s possible your rituals are becoming an end in themselves (procrastination) rather than a landing pattern: moving you towards your inner world. One of the best things to get the joy back? Stealthwriting. Dr Rachel Knightley — with a little help ...
If you’re listening to a podcast about writing, there’s a good chance you’ve experienced how a book you love has added to your life: how valuable that relationship with the words of a stranger, that tour of a world created by a mind other than your own, can be. Yet when it’s time to pay it forward, we can be blocked by questions like ‘What if it’s too weird?’ or ‘What if it’s too boring?’ In this episode, Rachel Knightley invites y...
“But don’t you HAVE to wait for inspiration?”
Every writing voice is unique — but how we stand in our way can be a lot less so. Inspired (see what we did there?) by a question Dr Rachel Knightley was asked in two workshops and one pub in the same week, this episode at the Writers’ Gym explores how to blend inspiration and perspiration to build healthy writing habits. We go back to Rachel’s key image of the writer’s artist palette: ...
Multi-award-winning author, journalist, film critic and fiction writer Kim Newman joins Dr Rachel Knightley at the Writers’ Gym for the final episode in our current series. Kim and Rachel talk about what a healthy and happy writing life can look like, the important relationship between freedom and structure, and how memory and imagination combine to build on our interests as authors into new works withi...
Gabrielle Kent talks to Dr Rachel Knightley about the magic of the stories we inherit as well as those we create. Afull-time children's author who began her career as a graphic artist for video games and lecturer in games development. Gabrielle’s work includes Alfie Bloom - a series about a boy who inherits a castle and a whole load of magical problems, Knights and Bikes - a series based on the video ga...
Dr Rachel Knightley speaks to her Great British Horror 5 co-contributor, award-winning author of ovels, short stories and articles (“Usually strange ones”) Aliya Whiteley. is the author of seven books of speculative fiction, including the Arthur C. Clarke Award shortlisted Skyward Inn and The Loosening Skin, and also The Beauty, which was shortlisted for both a Shirley Jackson award and the Otherwise Aw...
Award-winning poet, long and short fiction author, performer and vocalist with the March Violets, Rosie Garland talks to Dr Rachel Knightley about curiosity, creative confidence – and taking on the world eyebrows first! She is the author of The Palace of Curiosities (which won the Mslexia Novel Competition and was longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize), Vixen and The Night Brother, which was describe...
This week at the Writers’ Gym, Dr Rachel Knightley is joined by New York Times and international bestselling thriller writer JD Barker. His work has been broadly described as suspense thrillers, often incorporating elements of horror, crime, mystery, science fiction and the supernatural. He is a frequent collaborator with James Patterson. JD shares the creative exercises and habits that support his writing life and how valuing ever...
Today’s episode and writing workout feature the art and life of Prano Bailey-Bond. Prano is an award-winning filmmaker and screenwriter who grew up on a diet of Twin Peaks in the depths of a strange Welsh community. Her work invokes imaginative worlds, fusing a dark vocabulary with eerie allure, revealing how beauty resides in strange places. Prano shares with Dr Rachel Knightley her early influences, c...
Episode 2: Adrian Tchaikovsky
Today at the Writers’ Gym, Dr Rachel Knightley is joined by multi-award-winning science fiction and fantasy author Adrian Tchaikovsky. Find out how early experience running Tabletop roleplaying games combine with Adrian’s childhood inspiration (mainly insectoid) and adult inspiration (including coffee) to create his career as an author and what a healthy, happy writing life means to him.
Adrian Tch...
The Writers’ Gym is not just a podcast: it’s a membership platform, supporting writers (and writers-to-be) in buildingcreative confidence, growing their writing life and beating the inspiration addiction. Membership of the Writers’ Gym puts you in charge of your writing. It means creative confidence for life, work and art. It also means being part of a writing community with group and one-to-one sessions and personal support availa...
In this final episode of season 3, Dr Rachel Knightley and Emily Inkpen chat about memory and flashback and the ways in which authors can use them to add colour, realism and plot twists to their work. Harking back to our episode about unreliable narrators, we look at the ways in which our memory can play tricks upon us and we examine memory-loss as a plot device. As always we end with a writing exercise from Rachel.
Rachel, E...
Whether it be ensuring the correct amount of nourishment for your body, exercise, a good sleep or combinations of aspiration and fear, writers tend to need to look after themselves in order to produce their best work. In this episode Dr Rachel Knightley and Emily Inkpen look at fuel for writing. And coffee...lots of coffee.
Join the Writers’ Gym and book your next writing workout at https://www.rachelknightley.com/the-writers-gym...
In this episode Dr Rachel Knightley and Emily Inkpen discuss prologues and epilogues and how writers can use them to create intriguing openings and satisfying endings for their fiction. As usual we range from novels to TV, film, and audio drama looking at good and not-so-good examples.
Join the Writers’ Gym and book your next writing workout at https://www.rachelknightley.com/the-writers-gym/
The Writers Gym Podcast is an Alter...
In this episode we look at the role of narrators in fiction and discuss when, how and whether to deploy them. As usual Dr Rachel Knightley and Emily Inkpen bring examples from their own writing and from the wider worlds of literature and drama.
Rachel would like to point out that it was Arthur Dent's upper arm that was bruised and not his elbow.
Join the Writers’ Gym and book your next writing workout at https://www.rachelkni...
In this episode we look at reading and how it can help to fire creativity and inspire imagination for authors. As usual, Emily and Rachel bring plenty of stories and anecdotes about ways in which books have inspired them. We end with a look at books about writing.
Books mentioned in this podcast include
Ursula Le Guin: Steering the Craft and Conversations on Writing
St...
In this episode we explore viewpoint and perspective in fiction. Rachel Knightley and Emily Inkpen discuss the different types of perspective and the ways in which a writers' instinct might dictate the best approach to telling their particular story.
In the discussion Rachel references “Point of View: the thing that makes all other things more doable” which you can find on YouTube here
In this episode Rachel Knightley and Emily Inkpen talk about scriptwriting and offer advice to writers wishing to get started in writing for stage, screen or audio drama.
You can listen to Rachel Knightley's audio drama "Winter Spring" here https://open.spotify.com/episode/2gBu6Bqmc7CiC8zwXTYIPZ?si=b2c423862aaf4438
Emily's drama serial "The Dex Legacy" can be heard here https://open.spotify.com/show/1aphgDiefw4FdO8EN5LJxy?si...
In this episode Rachel Knightley and Emily Inkpen discuss pace and structure in fiction. They ask whether pace comes from structure or can be added at the editing stage and ponder examples of well structured stories on page and screen.
Join the Writers’ Gym and book your next writing workout at https://www.rachelknightley.com/the-writers-gym/
The Writers Gym Podcast is an Alternative Stories production for The Writers' Gym.
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