The Writers’ Gym Podcast

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 Queen...

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 a...

‘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 f...

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, UTOP...

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.

Procrastination gets — entirely rightly — a pretty bad press. So how do we differentiate it from warming up and getting into the zone? In this episode, Dr Rachel Knightley celebrates landing patterns and how they can add to our enjoyment of the journey.

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 th...

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...

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.  

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.  

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 e...

‘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 s...

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 Rac...

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...

“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 ima...

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...

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 vi...

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 Otherw...

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 de...

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 hi...

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 influen...

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 writ...

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 s...

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...