The Writers’ Gym Podcast

Rachel Knightley talks to BAFTA-winning writer, director and producer Dan Berlinka

BAFTA-winning writer, director and producer joins Dr Rachel Knightley on the Writers’ Gym. Dan co-created and co-wrote “The A List” for Kindle Entertainment/Lionsgate/CBBC, for which he also directed six episodes, including both season finales. After series one it was picked up and recommissioned by Netflix worldwide, with Dan as an EP over the series. Award-winning online mystery drama “Dixi” ran for four series on CBBC and won a Bafta in 2014. Dan’s 10 x 30’ original children's comedy series “Lagging” debuted on CBBC in 2021 and ran for two more series, the third airing at the end of 2023. Dan was head writer for “Itch”, an adaptation of the Simon Mayo novel he developed for Komixx, now broadcasting on ABC Me, and which has been acquired by CBBC. Dan also developed “Rhyme Time Town”, an animation series for Dreamworks/Netflix which is now streaming on Netflix. Original projects are in development with Carnival, Caligari Films, I-gen and King Bert. Dan also wrote “Inspector Sunshine”, a family movie produced by Perplexia Pictures/Great Point Media. His TV credits include episodes of “Thunderbirds are go” (ITV), “Casualty” (BBC) – for which he recently also directed an episode he wrote, “Get Even” (CBBC / Netflix), BBC iPlayer, “Shaun the Sheep” (Aardman/CBBC), “Hollyoaks” (Lime/C4), amongst many others.
 
 
Find out more about Dan:
 
Dan’s website
https://danberlinka.com/
 
Dan’s IMBb page
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3752043/
 
 
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
 
 
 
 
Writers’ Gym Workout:
 
 
 
“It’s important to have some boundaries around you. I don't think writers necessarily do their best work when they have absolute complete freedom. It's about having the right tension between your desire to write your vision. but a little bit of pushback, little bit of limitation.” Dan Berlinka
 
Warm-up:
 
Set yourself a random even number between 2 and 6.
 
Now write a dialogue between two characters, that lasts no longer than that number of lines.
 
See what you can show yourself/the reader about who they are and what they want, just with what they say.
 
“I work basically a nine to five day… I would say that writing is structured a lot like a day of test cricket: nothing really starts until 11. I've realized that I can't really productively write more than about five or six hours a day.”
 
Think On The Page:
 
What are your most creative hours of the day?
 
How many hours are too many?
 
What’s one step you can take to set yourself (for example) less high word-counts, more often?
 
Or let yourself write less complete passages, knowing your can edit more later?
 
 
“Not waiting for inspiration to strike [is vital]: I used to be very bad at allowing myself the time, sometimes I’d try and force it. So that's the thing: being aware that just going for a walk could actually also count as working. I do my morning exercises… I don't deliberately try and think about the thing I'm working on but on it sometimes it will just pop into my head and a problem will get solved that way.” Dan Berlina
 
Think On the Page:
 
What, for you, are the activities that aren’t technically writing but create mental space for writing?
 
Where is one more place you could give yourself time and space this week?

Rachel Knightley talks to British Fantasy, Shirley Jackson and World Fantasy Award winner Priya Sharma

Priya Sharma's fiction has appeared in  Interzone, Black Static, Nightmare, Weird Tales, and Tor.com (now Reactormag.com). She's been anthologised in many Best of series by editors such as Ellen Datlow and Paula Guran.
 
Priya is the recipient of several British Fantasy Awards and Shirley Jackson Awards, and a World Fantasy Award. She is a Locus Award and a Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire finalist. Her work has been translated into Spanish, French, Italian, Czech, and Polish.
 
She lives in the UK where she works as a medical doctor. More information can be found at www.priyasharmafiction.wordpress.com 
 
In this episode, Priya and Rachel discuss the variety of writerly relationships between life as inspiration and how who we are fuels what we create, though the origins remain our own.
 
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
 
Writers’ Gym Workout:
 
Priya: I get a real kick out of walking around a gallery because there's always a story there that I want to take away. Look as well as read. And photojournalism,
another example of great storytelling… Because they spend as much time not just looking for that moment, for that story, but actually doing what a brilliant writer would do. They're looking at visuals, they're thinking about construction, framing, all of those things.”
 
Warm-up:
 
Close your eyes and picture a gallery, or a museum, or a monument, or a picture that means something to you. Notice what you’re thinking, what you’re feeling, the story you’re telling yourself already. Transcribe that, just thinking on the page.
 
Exercise 1:
Re-read your warm-up piece. What character could you give those thoughts to? Or are the thoughts already about another character you could write?
“Sometimes just going back to why you fell in love with writing… for me, that's reading a book t or rereading something by a writer that I love and just getting in touch with what made me think I wanted to pick up a book and just remembering what it is about what you do that you love.”
Exercise 2
Book an hour – or a day – or ten minutes – out of your work and life. Gift that time to rereading a book you love, just as you’d gift it to someone you were meeting for coffee. Allow yourself to meet those words again for the first time.

Rachel Knightley talks to Tiny Pieces of Skull author and 2016 Lambda winner Roz Kaveney

“I have a long and complicated personal history which I am in the process of turning into a huge memoir; crucial facts are that I was reared Catholic but got over it, was born male but got over it, stopped sleeping with boys about the time I stopped being one and am much happier than I was when I was younger.” Poet, novelist and critic Roz Kaveney’s iography on her Glamorous Rags website is a brilliant beginning for anyone wanting to understand the struggles and celebrations of becoming the writer you are and the person you are. In this episode of The Writers’ Gym podcast, Dr Rachel Knightley talks to Roz about her novel Tiny Pieces of Skull (winner of the Lambda in 2016), her recent novel Revelations and a poetic memoir The Great Good Time. In 2018 she published original versions of the complete poems of the Roman poet Catullus with Sad Press.
self-knowledge of what it is you want your writing and your writing life to be.
 
Find out more about Roz:
https://glamourousrags.dymphna.net
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roz_Kaveney
https://university.open.ac.uk/arts/research/pvcrs/2023/kaveney
 
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 Roz’s interview
 
Warm-up: “I have a long and complicated personal history, which I'm in the process of turning into a memoir. Crucial facts are that I was really Catholic, but got over it was born male but got over it, stopped sleeping with boys about the time I stopped being one, and I'm much happier than I was when I was younger.” Roz Kaveney biog, Glamorous Rags Imagine you’re looking back at your writing and personal growth, not just what’s happened so far but what will have happened. What have you ‘got over’? What have you claimed as part of your newer, truer identity
 
Main Exercise : “Research more than you need, and then throw half your research away.” Roz Kaveney
 
Choose an area of interest you don’t normally get to spend much time with. Go to the British Library website, or Google, and let yourself wander. Keep everything that fascinates you.
 
Choose a scene to create in that world or around that idea. Include what you like. Exclude what doesn’t fit or feel relevant. And know that whatever is still there has had that research support it – even if it doesn’t make the final draft.
 
 
Take a blank sheet of paper and choose one of these questions:
 
Who have I been told I am?
What do I agree is true?
What do I not agree is true?
If I were to take one step towards something truer today:
-what would it be towards?-what would that step be?

Rachel Knightley talks to six-time Bram Stoker award winner Lisa Morton

Six-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award, author of four novels and 200 short stories, and a world-class Halloween and paranormal expert, screenwriter and author Lisa Morton is described by the American Library Association's Reader's Advisory Guide to Horror as consistently dark, unsettling, and frightening. 
 
Lisa also hosts the popular weekly Ghost Report podcast and a newsletter about the paranormal The Whole Haunted World. 
 
She lives in Los Angeles and online at lissamorton.com and we met when we were both in Great British Horror 5 with short stories for that anthology published by Black Shuck Books and Lisa has been part of my annual Green Ink sponsored write for Macmillan Cancer Support ever since. 

Rachel Knightley talks to instant Sunday Times Bestselling author Sarah Brooks

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?
 

Rachel Knightley talks to screenwriter, sci-fi/fantasy novelist and TV/radio dramatist Philip Palmer

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?

Rachel Knightley talks to award winning Nordic Noir crime novelist Alex Dahl

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?

Rachel Knightley talks to award-winning author, journalist and ovarian-cancer-wrangler Jennifer Steil

‘Liminal’ is much more than the name of award-winning author, journalist and Ovarian cancer wrangler Jennifer Steil’s Substack newsletter. In this extended episode, the winner of the Grand Prize in the international Eyelands 2020 Book Awards and Finalist for the 2021 Lambda Literary Lesbian Fiction Award for Exile Music,talks about the kidnap experience and resulting ‘what if’s that inspired her first novel, The Ambassador’s Wife,and how writing has become even more important to mental health during her cancer treatment. Liminal spaces she discusses with Dr Rachel Knightley include ‘home’, and how that truly means wherever her husband and daughter are – whatever country or even hospital room that is today.
 
Discover more about Jennifer by subscribing to Liminal:
https://jennifersteil.substack.com
 
Sponsor this year’s Green Ink Sponsored Write for Macmillan Cancer Support:
https://www.justgiving.com/page/somewhere-thats-green
 
Visit the Writers’ Gym:
https://www.writersgym.com/

Rachel Knightley talks to Macmillan Cancer Support's Andy Gould

Green Ink Sponsored Write brings together published authors and developing writers to raise money for Macmillan Cancer Support. 
Each year's theme reflects Macmillan's mission of quality of life for everyone affected by cancer (with writers are sponsored for their time, not their word-count). This year, our theme is chosen by Rhianna Pratchett:
SOMEWHERE THAT'S GREEN: STORIES ABOUT PARADISES, UTOPIAS AND HAPPY PLACES.
Rachel Knightley talks to Macmillan’s Andy Gould about this year’s event.
 
Sponsor the Writers at  
https://www.justgiving.com/page/somewhere-thats-green
 
Dr Rachel Knightley 
www.RachelKnightley.com

Bookmark Bible

Showing up authentically on the page — and off the page — can feel like a big ask at first. But all it takes is a few simple truths to make the process of connecting with others, in writing and in speaking, come naturally. Dr Rachel Knightley shares this year’s Writers’ Gym bookmark, and how it’s a reminder of everything you need for an authentic, enjoyable audience relationship.