The Writers’ Gym Podcast

Shooting the Should Fairies

Anxiety is not a documentary. It’s creative writing at its most natural and automatic. Yet we so often hear our own projected worst case scenarios more loudly than our own interest in our writing. In this episode, Dr Rachel Knightley invites you to grab a water-pistol and give the ‘should fairies’ the response they deserve. Step beyond your ‘shoulds’ into curiosity, confidence and creativity at the Writers’ Gym.

Our Characters in Space and Time

Being in your character’s body as well as their mind isn’t always first-draft territory. For many writers, it’s easier to begin in an internal monologue, lost in thoughts and feelings which can then be frustrating to pin down to their causes: the triggers in the physical world for each thought, each feeling. The good news? It looks scary from the outside but, inside, that’s where the greatest fun is. Dr Rachel Knightley celebrates natural time and taking space in our own narratives.

Part Two: How to Trust Your Reader

Trusting your reader is one of the most famous phrases in creative writing teaching. But how do we do that? And what might be stopping us? Dr Rachel Knightley explores the temptations of ‘telling’ versus the greater rewards of showing (not explaining) the reactions, feelings and thoughts that illustrate who a character is and why they show up in their world the way they do.
 

Part One: How to Trust Your Reader

Trusting your reader is one of the most famous phrases in creative writing teaching. But how do we do that? And what might be stopping us? Dr Rachel Knightley explores the temptations of ‘telling’ versus the greater rewards of showing (not explaining) the reactions, feelings and thoughts that illustrate who a character is and why they show up in their world the way they do.
 

Why Point of View is Everything

Dr Rachel Knightley’s Sherlock Holmes Snoopy lamp is something of a co-presenter this week. What object do you love, that connects you with your past or passions, that someone else might not see the magic in? Through showing the specifics of what characters love, we get so much more: a sense of their values and personality. When they talk to different people, we get different angles on that same essential truth. So jump in and start fictionalising the people and things that make your heart sing — or scream!

Vulnerability is Strength

‘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 writing its magic; that only comes when you’re truly exploring yourself and your world.

Stealthwriting

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 from the incomparable David Lynch reminding us to ‘go where the fish are’ — gets us back in touch with the importance of building space and time where the ideas can discover us.

Perfect Was Never On the Menu: Two Creative Writing Exercises

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 you to play Excuses Bingo, an original and favourite Writers’ Gym exercise, so you can move through fear and aim to be interested instead of interesting. The result? Paying it forward as a writer to your own readers.
 

Think On The Page

“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: how our unique imagination, memory, observations and questions blend to even more unique results, when we create for ourselves (and with a little help from our writing workouts) the permission to use them.
 
Join our mailing list at drrachelknightley.substack.com or get in touch at thewritersgym@rachelknightley.com
 

Why Normal Jobs Need Not Apply - Kim Newman

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 within the genres we love.  
 
For a writing workout based on Kim’s interview with Rachel, scroll down or visit WritersGym.com to download every Writing Workout in the series.
 
Find out more about Gabrielle at https://johnnyalucard.com/biography/
 
Join our mailing list at drrachelknightley.substack.com or get in touch at thewritersgym@rachelknightley.com
 
 
Kim Newman’s Recipe For a Healthy Writing Life
 
Learn how to pace yourself.
 
 Learn how to meet deadlines.
 
learn how to get stuff done.
 
Get stuff out of your head onto the page.
 
You have to engage people these days on the first page, that is absolutely true. But that's not the same as starting with a plane crash. But you have to have something there.
 
And work on the prose. I know it can be kind of tedious, but look at the shape of sentences. Don't repeat words too often.
 
Think hard about stuff like character names. It's difficult. Most people in their life have like one or two children they have to name. Authors have to name thousands of people over a career. So give some thought to that.
 
If you're writing historical fiction, learn what names were actually invented recently and you'll look an idiot if you put them in your medieval character called Vanessa or Pamela. Don't!
 
But also work out what names were popular in the 1940s if you're writing then. That's relatively easy to find out because now there are lists of what names were popular. But also think about your character's parents and whether they would pick a popular name. Maybe they wouldn't if they're strange or unconventional people or if they're in one of those families that likes to pass down embarrassing names to their children. think about where your characters come from, what shapes them before you get to the story, the adventure they're involved in.
 
Remember that other people have different obsessions to you or different habits to you. It's not so common now, but you used to be able to tell if an author was a smoker by the fact that all their characters puffed all the time. And I know that there are probably things that... In fact, as a non-driver, I know that I very rarely describe driving. But sometimes you sort of have to and I suspect there are howlers in that because it's not an experience I have.
 
That's the other thing, entertain yourself. If you don't do that nobody else is going to enjoy it either.