The Real Writing Process of Mark Stay
Tom Pepperdine interviews author, screenwriter, and award-winning podcaster, Mark Stay, about his writing process. Mark talks about having a central dramatic argument to each story, how he develops realistic characters, and going through the five stages of grief when receiving feedback.
Mark's books can be found here: https://markstaywrites.com/books/
His latest podcast, can be found here: https://markstaywrites.com/the-creative-differences-podcast/
His support for writers can be found here: https://markstaywrites.com/writer-services/
The Craig Mazin and John August podcast that's referenced in the episode can be found here: https://johnaugust.com/scriptnotes
And you can find more information about this podcast and previous episodes on the following links:
https://bsky.app/profile/realwritingpro.bsky.social
https://www.threads.net/@realwritingpro
https://www.instagram.com/realwritingpro
Transcript
Hello and welcome to the Real Writing Process, the show that finds out
Speaker:how authors do exactly what they do.
Speaker:I'm your host, Tom Pepperdine, and this month we have a novelist,
Speaker:screenwriter and award-winning podcaster.
Speaker:I'm not bitter.
Speaker:The wonderful Mark Stay.
Speaker:I feel a lot of regular listeners are already aware of Mark's
Speaker:excellent podcast, The Bestseller Experiment, over 500 interviews of
Speaker:bestselling authors in eight years.
Speaker:It's a bit excessive, isn't it?
Speaker:And there are two of them.
Speaker:I'm not bitter.
Speaker:Anyway, he's also written some books and a couple of films, and they're
Speaker:very good books and very fun films.
Speaker:And he's an excellent guest who was very generous with his time and his advice.
Speaker:And I think, honestly, this is one of my favorite interviews
Speaker:for inspiring you to write.
Speaker:His enthusiasm is infectious, and I hope it makes you as keen to seek out
Speaker:his work as it does to get you writing.
Speaker:It is a slightly longer episode this time because there's just
Speaker:so much goddamn good stuff in it.
Speaker:Anyway, enough Waffle.
Speaker:Jingle interview.
Speaker:Go.
Speaker:And this month I'm here with Mark Stay.
Speaker:Mark.
Speaker:Hello,
Speaker:Hello tom, how are you?
Speaker:I'm very well, thank you.
Speaker:Thank you for being on the show.
Speaker:Oh, my pleasure.
Speaker:Thank you for having me on.
Speaker:I'm, I'm honored.
Speaker:Great.
Speaker:Well, my first question as always, what are we drinking?
Speaker:Yorkshire Gold Tea.
Speaker:Um, Bit of tea.
Speaker:Bit of a brew.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:My, my daughter got me some for Christmas and, um, Yorkshire Gold.
Speaker:Bit pricey, but worth it.
Speaker:Good stuff.
Speaker:Good stuff to get you up.
Speaker:Get up and going in the morning.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker:That's it.
Speaker:It's, it's a good time to have it.
Speaker:And so is this now your writing drink?
Speaker:Is this your writer's fuel?
Speaker:Uh, yeah, that and chocolate Hob Nobs.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:It's, it's a weakness.
Speaker:I've tried getting sponsorship from McVitty's, but my, uh, emails
Speaker:have gone unanswered, sadly.
Speaker:Well, well hopefully, you know, someone's listening so someone get in touch.
Speaker:Someone in Big Biscuit is listening, hopefully.
Speaker:Big biscuit.
Speaker:Yes, absolutely.
Speaker:And, um, where I'm chatting to you now, is this your, your writing desk?
Speaker:Is this your office?
Speaker:Yeah, I've, uh, I've got two desks.
Speaker:Oh, two.
Speaker:This is Mark "two desks" Stay.
Speaker:So yeah, I've got a, my writing, my main writing desk is that one there by the
Speaker:window, which is very distracting because it's springtime when we're recording this
Speaker:and things are happening in the garden.
Speaker:My wife's an amazing gardener and there are Blue Tits going in and out the box.
Speaker:So in terms of procrastination, that chair there has given me hours of pleasure.
Speaker:And then this one is where I, I mean, we'll talk about
Speaker:process, title of the podcast.
Speaker:I, I have a different desk here, which I generally use for
Speaker:podcasting and, and stuff like that.
Speaker:'cause this is the iMac, it's the slightly more powerful machine
Speaker:with a bigger memory kind of thing.
Speaker:Um, so yeah, but this is the room where it happens, the, the magic happens.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And it's just, um, it's, I'm very much in that Stephen King thing of
Speaker:the closed door, you know, it's such a privilege just my commute now is
Speaker:down the stairs and to this chair.
Speaker:Two desks, but only one chair I don't wanna clutter.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:And, uh, you know, this is where I can do things in a bit peace and quiet.
Speaker:Very nice.
Speaker:And when coming up with your ideas, is there a sort of trigger that you go, oh,
Speaker:that actually might make a good story.
Speaker:And are you someone who comes up with scenarios first or is it a character or
Speaker:is it kind of a world you want to explore?
Speaker:How do your stories tend to develop?
Speaker:It tends to be a, a combination of things.
Speaker:The big thing that really helps me get a my head around it is, is having a good
Speaker:central dramatic argument that is having a theme that can be posed as a question.
Speaker:So I'll have, oh, that's an interesting situation.
Speaker:That's an interesting idea, that's an interesting concept.
Speaker:But they all exist in kind of isolation.
Speaker:And I try to think of who, you know, in terms of character, who's the
Speaker:worst person to put in that situation?
Speaker:Who is the least capable?
Speaker:'cause that's always good story fuel.
Speaker:But it tends to come into place when I when I, develop a central dramatic
Speaker:argument, which is a question, which is essentially what the thing is about.
Speaker:And my, my writing life has changed a few years ago by a podcast by Craig Mazin
Speaker:on the, uh, Script Notes podcast, which is a brilliant screenwriting podcast.
Speaker:It's John August and Craig Mazin.
Speaker:Craig Mazin writes the last of us and did Chernobyl, actually did some terrible
Speaker:comedy films in the early two thousands and nineties and stuff like that.
Speaker:But, you know, worked with Harvey Weinstein and has the scars to prove it
Speaker:and has done everything in Hollywood.
Speaker:And now he's become this incredible writer.
Speaker:But he, he did a 45 minute thing which is on YouTube for free on script notes.
Speaker:It's called How to Write a Movie, and he talks about central dramatic argument.
Speaker:It uses Finding Nemo as an example because it is structurally just
Speaker:perfect and thematically perfect.
Speaker:And I saw that, I thought that's the missing part of the puzzle for
Speaker:all these years because I've, I've always struggled with that kind of
Speaker:thematic unity in, in storytelling.
Speaker:So, uh, once a character, like I said, characters don't exist in isolation.
Speaker:You can think of an interesting character, but until you put them in the
Speaker:room with someone or the, the classic advice, if, if you're stuck with the
Speaker:characters, how would they react if they drop their mobile phone you know, in a
Speaker:puddle or if they, stub their toe, how do they react to different situations?
Speaker:Everyone will react slightly differently.
Speaker:Um, but for me it's how do they react to the thematic question?
Speaker:How are they gonna address that through the story?
Speaker:How and how are they gonna change?
Speaker:And once they've got that story of change, particularly if you are writing
Speaker:a one-off or screenwriting or whatever, by the time you get to the end of the
Speaker:story, they've essentially got me the opposite what they were at the beginning.
Speaker:That often gives the most satisfying story for a reader.
Speaker:So it's once I've got those kind of elements that is, you
Speaker:know, a character, an idea.
Speaker:But for me, the thematic question is, is the really important one.
Speaker:And it doesn't have to be mind blowingly original or anything like that.
Speaker:It just has to be a question that you can debate that can give you story fuel.
Speaker:So whenever, I hit, hit a wall.
Speaker:And I don't, I don't get writer's block anymore.
Speaker:I might hit a wall and think, okay, that's a sticky problem.
Speaker:How do I figure that out?
Speaker:I go back to theme and I write it.
Speaker:You know, I have all these notebooks, separate notebook for each project.
Speaker:I write it on the page there, or I'll pop it on a post-it note and I will go,
Speaker:okay, that's the theme we come back to that how do we make it about that rather
Speaker:than just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And it brings it all back into focus.
Speaker:And it's, like I said, changed, changed the way I write.
Speaker:And I think all of my writing has improved greatly since I, I sort of got into that.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I do wanna talk to you about character.
Speaker:'cause I find your characters really believable.
Speaker:Oh, thank you.
Speaker:And, uh, flawed.
Speaker:And like, like you say, they, they go through real arcs.
Speaker:Um, but how do you flesh out that character?
Speaker:Is it something that, you write a little fake bio for them?
Speaker:You do like a kind of an interview with them in your head?
Speaker:Or are they based on people you know?
Speaker:Um, how, how do you make them fully three-dimensional?
Speaker:I just start writing little scenes with them.
Speaker:And, uh, I, I've never got the bio thing that, again, it's just a
Speaker:character doesn't exist in isolation.
Speaker:You've got to get them in a room with someone.
Speaker:And I hand write everything to start with and so I will be going,
Speaker:okay, how are they reactors?
Speaker:How do they adjust the team?
Speaker:How are they gonna change?
Speaker:I mean, I'm going through this process at the moment with a character.
Speaker:And I think the key is not to rush it.
Speaker:It's just to allow yourself, the room to breathe and just think how are
Speaker:they gonna change over the course of this then, if that's the case,
Speaker:I need them to be like this at the beginning and blah, blah, blah.
Speaker:So I will essentially write little sketches.
Speaker:Little conversations, uh, just to see, again, that, that thing of, if they stub
Speaker:their toe, how are they gonna react?
Speaker:But if they meet this other character that I'm thinking of,
Speaker:how are these two gonna get along?
Speaker:How are they gonna, you know, I, I tend to just jump in with both feet and just
Speaker:start writing and getting it wrong.
Speaker:I think it sort of comes, I, I started out wanting to be an actor.
Speaker:I did a lot of acting.
Speaker:I run a little theater company for a while.
Speaker:And there's always a thing of just Getting the actors up on their feet and
Speaker:improvising and blocking out a scene.
Speaker:And just, uh, figuring out who's who.
Speaker:And also what their role is in the story, uh, as a kind of an archetype, you know.
Speaker:If it's, if it's your protagonist, then they're going
Speaker:through that story of change.
Speaker:If they're an antagonist, they're kind of the dark mirror of that.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:So you start asking yourselves those questions, well, how can these be the
Speaker:worst people to interact with each other?
Speaker:'cause that's what's gonna give us that, that grist, that kind of story grist.
Speaker:And, um, I, I love language.
Speaker:I love overhearing people's conversations and literally stealing from them
Speaker:and jotting things down and just, you know, that's a lovely line.
Speaker:And, yeah, I mean, no one is safe around a writer, frankly.
Speaker:We're, we're magpies are always looking for those, those quirky little things
Speaker:that, that, you know, it's humanity.
Speaker:These, you know, these, these stories are all about humanity and the little quirks
Speaker:and, and things that make us who we are.
Speaker:So..
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And, um, you've got your little notepad there and you mentioned
Speaker:how you tend to just leap into sort of vert things at the start.
Speaker:Um, is buying the new notebook a, you know, a core part of the process?
Speaker:Do you, do you pick different ones or is it just a stack of bog standard,
Speaker:you know, sort of same brand?
Speaker:No, no, no.
Speaker:They're all, they're all different.
Speaker:The thing I worry about, I do worry about writers who ritualize things.
Speaker:Like, I remember reading about George Lucas would only write on a yellow legal
Speaker:pad with a particular kind of pencil.
Speaker:And it, you know.
Speaker:We all saw the prequels.
Speaker:We know that didn't work out for the second time, you know?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:You can't, you can't fetishize this stuff.
Speaker:And, uh, I hear people go, oh, notebooks.
Speaker:Oh, I, I'm scared of getting them, you know?
Speaker:Scared of mucking them up.
Speaker:It's like, look, just look at this.
Speaker:This is just full of scribbles, things scribbled out, and none
Speaker:of these notebooks are the same.
Speaker:They're all a bit different.
Speaker:People have sussed that I like notebooks and my kids get 'em for
Speaker:me for birthdays and Christmas.
Speaker:I've had a couple of readers send me notebooks as well.
Speaker:You know, this, this one, the Astro Boy one was sent by a reader, which is great,
Speaker:and I'm working on something on that.
Speaker:Um, so, uh, no, I'm not fussy.
Speaker:I don't fetishize it because you, that it's kind of a trap because you
Speaker:think, oh, I have to write with this sort of pen, or I have to do this
Speaker:kind of thing, blah, and then it, then it becomes an excuse not to work.
Speaker:Well, I can't write because I haven't got my moleskin notebook,
Speaker:blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So, I've got a very eclectic collection of old notebooks on the shelves there.
Speaker:So yeah, and, and it helps to have a separate notebook for
Speaker:each project, because I can just pick it up where I left off.
Speaker:I have a general notebook, which is this one here, which I just, you know,
Speaker:again, I just use for, if we are having a conversation here, I've written down.
Speaker:Real writing process podcast, Tom, so I don't forget your name, even
Speaker:though it's on the same thing.
Speaker:And if anything occurs to me as we're chatting, I'm gonna jot that down.
Speaker:But I've also got, you know, notes on a new idea here as well, which hasn't
Speaker:quite earned its own notebook yet.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:I haven't reached that point where I'm thinking, yeah, this is a thing.
Speaker:It'll get to a point where I think I know what the central dramatic argument is.
Speaker:I know what the character is, let's get a notebook going.
Speaker:'cause the, the other mistake I've made is I started it too soon and you get three
Speaker:pages into a notebook and you think, ah, no, this isn't, this isn't gonna work.
Speaker:This isn't a thing.
Speaker:So, um, so yeah, it's, you, you, this is, this will answer your question.
Speaker:When it's notebook worthy, that's when I know I'm onto something.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It's like going from the generals of like, no, this, this needs its own notebook now.
Speaker:Nice.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And, and you're not particularly about pens either, it's just whatever
Speaker:writing implement you have to hand?
Speaker:Well that said, the Parker Jotter.
Speaker:The 'cause I'm left-handed and, and I'm cack handed and I write upside
Speaker:down, so I can't do fountain pens.
Speaker:I had a very kindly neighbor who tried to teach me calligraphy, um, to sort of
Speaker:correct my, you know, cack handedness.
Speaker:And all it did was get loads of Indian ink on my, on my hands.
Speaker:So the Parker Jotter, oh, it's smooth baby.
Speaker:This is the one I found my pen.
Speaker:It's cheap.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It's replaceable.
Speaker:If it's, if I lose one, I'll just pop to Smiths and get a,
Speaker:you know, three more or whatever.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:and it's, it's easy to hold.
Speaker:It's nice and light.
Speaker:Again, if Parker are listening, I am open to sponsorship offers.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Uh, but again, I, I can use anything, but, you know, not too fussy.
Speaker:Yeah, that's, that's good to know.
Speaker:And I think it's refreshing as well.
Speaker:'cause yes, there are people who kind of fetishize what they use and it's
Speaker:just like you say, it's a barrier.
Speaker:Are you someone that when you are out and about, you always need
Speaker:to have a pen and paper with you?
Speaker:Or do you use phone apps?
Speaker:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker:I mean, I, I, I take the general notebook with me everywhere I go.
Speaker:Because generally, you know, I met with a friend who's an author the
Speaker:other day and we were having a chat and he said, oh, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker:There's this thing coming up and I just, you know, put it in the
Speaker:notebook just as a general record.
Speaker:Uh, I, you know, I use the notes apps and things like that and email.
Speaker:I generally email my myself stuff because then I come back and it's there on the
Speaker:email and I can put it in a calendar or whatever I, I need to do with it.
Speaker:Um, but uh, yeah, generally the notebook is where is where it all goes.
Speaker:Because there, there is this direct line between my brain and the pen, that
Speaker:seems to be faster than anything else.
Speaker:Certainly on the keyboard of that, that sort of tyranny of the
Speaker:blank page and the winking cursor.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Uh, can be a real block.
Speaker:So I tend to, and I, you know, when I start writing in the morning, it is
Speaker:kind of, okay, what are we gonna write?
Speaker:I will literally write, our characters are here, what are they gonna do next?
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:They've, they've done this and blah, blah.
Speaker:So a lot of my notebooks are full of that kind of gibberish where I'm
Speaker:essentially having a conversation with myself, but it gets the pen moving,
Speaker:gets my mind working, and then after a couple of lines, I'm actually writing
Speaker:something that might be usable.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Usually.
Speaker:And are you someone who draws maps for their locations?
Speaker:So they, like, everything has an internal logic.
Speaker:Uh, do you do little sketches of characters?
Speaker:Do you get an idea of what they look like?
Speaker:Nah, I did have, I did have a brilliant author and artist and know, called Kit
Speaker:Cox did a map for me for the end of Magic, which was in those first editions.
Speaker:I've got rid of it 'cause I need to move bits of it around.
Speaker:I need to move certain things closer.
Speaker:So it's, uh, yeah.
Speaker:Uh, um, and for the witches of Woodville, the Village of Woodville is essentially
Speaker:a greatest hits of Kent Villages.
Speaker:So there, there is a particular kind of church, there's a particular kind of
Speaker:pub, there are various shops and things.
Speaker:There's, you know, war Memorial and there's a wood.
Speaker:But I sort of know what it looks like in my head and there is a kind of logic to
Speaker:it, but I don't get into too much detail.
Speaker:I, I don't wanna, I mean, Terry PRT famously resisted this for a long time
Speaker:until someone else did it for him.
Speaker:So I'm very happy to wait until I'm as successful enough as Terry for someone
Speaker:else to come along and do it for me.
Speaker:Because I think you need the breathing room in order to say,
Speaker:well, yeah, you didn't know there was a garage down the road here.
Speaker:But there is now.
Speaker:Uh, I mean, it's interesting.
Speaker:I've, I've doing the Corn Bride, which is the fifth, and for the moment final
Speaker:of the Woodville books, I've gone back and revisited some of those locations.
Speaker:So it's sort of come back on itself and it has its own kind of logic.
Speaker:But for those first sort of two or three books, I was going,
Speaker:oh yeah, I need a garage.
Speaker:Oh, I need a railway bridge.
Speaker:Oh, I need a, you know.
Speaker:And it's like, yeah, I'll just chuck that in.
Speaker:You know?
Speaker:And I think if you do it the kind of swagger and confidence, if
Speaker:just say, well, it was there all the time, you just didn't see it.
Speaker:People don't mind, you know?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Don't let geography get in the way of narrative.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker:Totally.
Speaker:And are you someone who likes to have a real world base on anything
Speaker:and will do a bit of research?
Speaker:Or do you just like to make it up and, you know, have your own logic?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Well with, um, the Witches of Woodville, I did a lot of research.
Speaker:I mean the, the that series was sort of simmering away for about 12 years
Speaker:before it became what it became.
Speaker:I, I, I'd wanted to, talk about where ideas come from, I'd wanted
Speaker:to write a story about a town where strange things happen.
Speaker:And it was originally set in the here and now.
Speaker:'cause I love reading the Fortean Times and they'll go and this
Speaker:village in so-and-so, you know, the, some, someone disappeared and
Speaker:then turned up three days later.
Speaker:Or you got a, a village where things roll up a hill.
Speaker:And I love all that.
Speaker:And I, I wanted to do something set in the here and now.
Speaker:A kind of a British buffy the vampire slayer with a kind of, you know, with some
Speaker:hell mouth and I couldn't get it to click.
Speaker:It didn't quite work.
Speaker:And then it was, uh, my agent who said, why don't you set it during the war.
Speaker:'cause he knew I had a bit of a fascination with that period
Speaker:and he felt it might help sell.
Speaker:And we just moved to North Kent where, you know, there's
Speaker:a spitfire museum up the road.
Speaker:There are pill boxes in fields.
Speaker:About a week ago, they blew up an unexploded bomb from the war
Speaker:in a farm field just around, literally around the corner from us.
Speaker:I missed it.
Speaker:I was gutted.
Speaker:Um, and my, my wife got some footage of the explosion.
Speaker:Oh wow.
Speaker:Um, so, you know, that stuff is still around us here.
Speaker:And I thought, okay, the war.
Speaker:And actually setting it at that, time period allowed
Speaker:me to heighten it all a bit.
Speaker:'cause I pitched this series as dad's army meets bed knobs and broomsticks, you know.
Speaker:So you got, magic and witches and witches versus Nazis and all that good stuff.
Speaker:And it allowed me to heighten it a bit and then everything is like, oh, it works now.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:That's interesting.
Speaker:So, um, but I wanted to ground it in the real world because years ago I used
Speaker:to work for Headline Publishing, and back then they did a solid line of saga
Speaker:fiction, what they used to call clogs and shuls, you know, that kind of stuff.
Speaker:And as a rep, I used to get samples of everything we did.
Speaker:And these books sold by the bucket load and did really, really well.
Speaker:And I used to give my samples to a friend of mine, Doreen, and she'd give them
Speaker:to all her friends and they love them.
Speaker:And I said to her, what is it about these books that you love?
Speaker:And she said, it's not necessarily the story she said, it's the little
Speaker:things like knowing that the number 10 bus at Clapham went to so-and-so,
Speaker:and, and she said, that stuff is what takes you back to that period.
Speaker:That makes a difference.
Speaker:And I thought, that's what I need to do with Woodville.
Speaker:I need to take the little things and help ground those stories in reality.
Speaker:So, and I, I was very, very lucky in that we had the mass
Speaker:observation project going on.
Speaker:So books like this, let me find it.
Speaker:You know, books like Nella Lasts War.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So she was part of, she's a, in September, 1939, housewife and
Speaker:Mother Le Nella last began a regular diary that lasted for 30 years.
Speaker:So it's, it's all her, you know, diaries in here and it's
Speaker:all that day-to-day stuff.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:The rationing, the, the, the worker day stuff and it's just brilliant.
Speaker:And what I did.
Speaker:I mean, you'll see I've got lots of little notes here and blah, blah, blah.
Speaker:That tends to not be that helpful.
Speaker:But what I do now is I get these on ebook.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:'cause the eBooks are search searchable.
Speaker:So for the Holly King, for example, I wanted to know how
Speaker:people celebrated Christmas.
Speaker:And there's a whole bunch of these called mass observation diaries books.
Speaker:So I bought a bunch of those and you just start searching for Christmas
Speaker:and you discover how people make Christmas cake while rationing was
Speaker:happening, and little things like that.
Speaker:And you don't overdo it, but you just pepper in enough of it just to make people
Speaker:go, oh yeah, my dad used to do that.
Speaker:Or, this feels real if they don't have that lived experience,
Speaker:just to make it grounded.
Speaker:And then, then when the magic comes and the witchcraft comes, they're
Speaker:much more likely to believe and, and go along with that as well.
Speaker:Um, so, and I go to, you know.
Speaker:I've got a demigod in the Holly King, you know, in the wood
Speaker:woves and stuff like that.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So, uh, you, you, your, your characters are very much grounded in
Speaker:that real historical world, but then you're opening a door into kind of
Speaker:magical stuff and I think people are much more likely to, to go with it
Speaker:and, uh, yeah, it's worked so far.
Speaker:No, absolutely.
Speaker:I think, um, uh, nostalgia is large currency, in fiction.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:But what I'd like to do is subvert that nostalgia.
Speaker:Uh, I'm, I'm very wary of nostalgia as a, um, particularly when you're writing about
Speaker:the war, it can get really jingoistic.
Speaker:especially in Kent, he whispered, leaning closer to the microphone.
Speaker:You know, I'm near Thanit.
Speaker:This is the lot that voted for Brexit.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Um, so, so for example, with, um, the ghost of Ivy Barn.
Speaker:I was scratching that Battle of Britain Spitfire hurricane itch.
Speaker:It's got dog fights in there, it's got a witch on a bicycle, having
Speaker:dog fights with the, the luftwaffe.
Speaker:But also the, the ghost in question is a Polish hurricane pilot.
Speaker:And, I start researching into that and you discover there was
Speaker:squadrons of Polish hurricane pilots.
Speaker:We couldn't have won the Battle of Britain without them,
Speaker:even though we let them down.
Speaker:We promised them spit fires and hurricanes and we never gave them.
Speaker:Churchill said, don't give them to them because they're basically screwed.
Speaker:We need them to defend Britain in the battle of Britain.
Speaker:So all that resentment that he had, you know, was, was part of his character.
Speaker:Um, so, the, the nostalgia might be what draws people in, but I just
Speaker:wanna, and I don't hammer people over the head with it like I am now.
Speaker:I would just, you know, bring up the reality of it, that this is
Speaker:how a lot of this stuff played out.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And I think that realism, comes through and how the sort of
Speaker:characters interact with each other.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:You know, sort of feels, um, very believable.
Speaker:'cause Yeah.
Speaker:The, you know, sort of, they're very believable characters.
Speaker:Well that's, I mean, that, like I said, I think that comes from
Speaker:a, a theater acting background.
Speaker:I, I always enjoyed people like Mike Leigh or
Speaker:David Mamet where, or John
Speaker:Sullivan with Fools and Horses, where there's a lot of snappy dialogue, a lot
Speaker:of overlapping dialogue, a lot of back and forth, all riddled with subtext, you
Speaker:know, where people aren't quite saying what they wanna say and then eventually
Speaker:they do say what they wanna say and you know, that stuff makes a big difference.
Speaker:I remember watching, uh, Mike Leigh's Life is Sweet, with Alison Steadman
Speaker:and Jane Horrocks, and they're arguing about, did you use my cotton wool balls?
Speaker:And I remember calling my mom and sister down 'cause I was still at home.
Speaker:They said, the mom, mom, they talk like us.
Speaker:They, they argued like you two, you know, it was amazing.
Speaker:Whereas shows like East Enders, nobody swore, you know?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Can never get on board with that.
Speaker:whereas, you know, something like Mike Leigh and because those characters,
Speaker:those actors inhabit those characters for months before they actually start filming.
Speaker:It just has a, a reality to it.
Speaker:So I always wanted to, particularly when writing fantasy, you know, the
Speaker:End of Magic trilogy, which I'm hoping to finish soon, uh, the characters
Speaker:that they don't speak, like, you know, the, and there's nothing wrong
Speaker:with that kind of high fantasy speak that is in fantasy, but I wanted
Speaker:them to feel like real human beings.
Speaker:Especially as I'm gonna do terrible, terrible things to them.
Speaker:And then you, you read someone like Joe Abercrombie and Scott Lynch, where,
Speaker:you know, the characters they do feel real, they, they have a vulnerability
Speaker:to them as well as the strength.
Speaker:And that was a big inspiration for me thinking, oh, we can have
Speaker:fantasy that feels like that.
Speaker:Okay, great.
Speaker:Let's go for it.
Speaker:Yeah, there's, I feel, there's almost two tiers of fantasy where you have
Speaker:like the courtly kingdom aristocracy and then you have the grunts.
Speaker:And it's, it's the, it's the lower cast and it's actually having a balance between
Speaker:the two where not a middle class, but just sort of, um, regular people exist.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I'm always, it's funny you say that I'm working on something at the moment that is
Speaker:a kind of fantasy lower decks if you like.
Speaker:Where we don't see the prince or the princess or the queen or,
Speaker:or any of it goes on over there.
Speaker:And then you've got the people have to come along and clean up the mess.
Speaker:And that's a little way off.
Speaker:Now that's not quite notebook worthy, but I'm working on it, so.
Speaker:Nice.
Speaker:Well, it's a good concept.
Speaker:I, I'm, keen and intrigued, so hopefully, hopefully it comes notebook worthy soon.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Um, on the other part of planning um, plotting.
Speaker:With your stories.
Speaker:You have your central argument, you have these characters and who
Speaker:they'll come into conflict with.
Speaker:The actual narrative plot, are you someone who will, you know, 'cause you said
Speaker:earlier here how you just sort of jump in.
Speaker:Do you have an ending point in mind when you start?
Speaker:Or is it just like, here's where it begins and I'll start writing
Speaker:and we'll find out where it ends?
Speaker:Or do you need it to be actually quite structured?
Speaker:Here are all the beats, I need to have a structure before I start.
Speaker:No, I don't.
Speaker:I used to be, and the difference is, you know, the end of magic.
Speaker:I outlined that quite thoroughly before I, I finished that and, um, I mean, I did
Speaker:this podcast, the bestseller experiment where we, I was co-writing Back To
Speaker:Reality with another writer, and, and we were, our outline got to 50,000 words
Speaker:we had Ben Arronovich on as a guest.
Speaker:And that episode became known as the Ben Aaronovitch bollocking, uh,
Speaker:because he was like 50,000 words I've written and published stuff
Speaker:that's, you know, short than that!
Speaker:But that was 'cause we were two of us and we wanted to be singing from the
Speaker:same hymn sheet and also screenwriting.
Speaker:You have to outline.
Speaker:But when I'm doing my own stuff now, what's important, central dramatic
Speaker:argument and knowing where the character ends emotionally, if you like.
Speaker:I don't necessarily even have the scene, but if they start out as, you know, A
Speaker:then they've gotta be Z by the end of it.
Speaker:You know, they've gotta be a different person.
Speaker:It's me figuring out who they are by the end of that.
Speaker:Then I just jump in and I just go, okay, what's the worst
Speaker:thing that can happen to them?
Speaker:That, that's, that's generally how I go from chapter to chapter to chapter.
Speaker:Okay, what terrible thing can I inflict on them now?
Speaker:How can I punish them?
Speaker:How can I punish them?
Speaker:But as I punish them, they dust themselves off, they get a bit
Speaker:stronger, or they fall by the wayside, or they decide they're gonna
Speaker:sacrifice themselves to do something.
Speaker:And by the end of it, they're so bruised and battered, they have changed.
Speaker:And they've usually got to where I wanted them to end up emotionally, which is the
Speaker:opposite where they were at the beginning.
Speaker:And that's lots of fun.
Speaker:And I can, I can do that with my own stuff because I can take my time with it.
Speaker:And stop and explore and have those little moments where I'm going, okay,
Speaker:where, where are we now in their journey?
Speaker:Where are we now?
Speaker:'cause you can't just, you can't just constantly be battering them.
Speaker:They have to have those positive moments where they learn something
Speaker:and, and move on and, and evolve.
Speaker:So that's quite an indulgent process, but it leads to a pretty strong first draft.
Speaker:Whereas when I'm screenwriting, we do outline a lot.
Speaker:Um, because there's two of us or three of us working on something.
Speaker:I was gonna ask the difference between your screenwriting and novel writing.
Speaker:Do the ideas sort of germinate in the same way?
Speaker:Or is it more things are pitched with others when it comes to screenplays?
Speaker:Well, I mean, the, just to go back to novels for a minute, the big
Speaker:difference is the, the internal voice that you have with novels.
Speaker:Uh, whereas I'm getting inside the character's head and I can
Speaker:have them sort of going, oh my God, what's happened to me now?
Speaker:How do I get beyond this?
Speaker:Uh, but yeah, screenwriting.
Speaker:I'm very much working in service of the production.
Speaker:So most of the stuff I've worked on has been with Jon Wright, who directed
Speaker:Robot Overlords and Unwelcome, but we've also written tons of stuff
Speaker:together that's never got made such as the nature of screenwriting.
Speaker:And it's usually Jon who will have the idea I've sort of given up trying to
Speaker:foist ideas upon him, um, because he's the one who has to stand on set and
Speaker:you know, directing is such hard work.
Speaker:It really is hard work.
Speaker:It gobbles up a year of your life, at least.
Speaker:You're constantly bombarded with questions.
Speaker:It's so much pressure.
Speaker:So it has to be something that he loves.
Speaker:And, uh, so that's why usually the idea comes from him.
Speaker:But luckily Jon doesn't enjoy the writing process, whereas I love it.
Speaker:So he'll come to me and say, I've got this idea.
Speaker:Here are some things I wanna see in the story.
Speaker:Here's what I think it's about.
Speaker:And we'll have conversations we'll have lots of back and forth.
Speaker:I'll be taking notes and it sort of develops out of that.
Speaker:And then we will generally do a short outline, or put together a
Speaker:pitch document if we're trying to get someone to pay us to do it.
Speaker:So that's how it sort of works with Jon.
Speaker:More recently, I've been working with the author Rowan Coleman.
Speaker:During lockdown, Rowan came to me and she said, I always
Speaker:wanted to write a screenplay.
Speaker:Do you wanna work on something?
Speaker:And we found one of her short stories that was just perfect to become
Speaker:this kind of big screen romcom.
Speaker:So we started working on that together.
Speaker:And um, the short story is essentially a scene from the movie.
Speaker:It was like the meet cute of a romcom.
Speaker:I said, this is like already written itself and we just need
Speaker:to find out what happened before and, and where she goes after this.
Speaker:And so we, you know, we were spitballing ideas a around that.
Speaker:And that evolved and that's, that's got producers attached.
Speaker:We're searching for a director for that at the moment.
Speaker:Um, but I've also co-written a novel with Rowan.
Speaker:She sent me a a one page outline.
Speaker:And then the pair of us built that to like a five page outline
Speaker:and then we started writing it.
Speaker:And what happened there was this, it's first person present tense as
Speaker:a male character/ female character.
Speaker:She wrote the female character.
Speaker:I wrote the male.
Speaker:And what we would do, we'd have a Zoom meet 'cause she's up
Speaker:in Scarborough, I'm down here.
Speaker:We'd have a Zoom chat like this.
Speaker:We'd record it, we'd say, this is what we want to happen in the
Speaker:next chapter, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker:Uh, that that'll be fine.
Speaker:Yes, yes, yes.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Go.
Speaker:And we'd record it.
Speaker:Download the recording, make notes from that, write the
Speaker:chapter, then send it to whoever.
Speaker:You know, I'd send my chapter to her and she'd go, you know,
Speaker:oh, change that, change that.
Speaker:But otherwise, great.
Speaker:And vice versa.
Speaker:And that was, that was interesting working like that.
Speaker:So I'm, I'm always, I never write a novel the same way twice.
Speaker:And I'm always keen to collaborate with people.
Speaker:'cause you always learn so much.
Speaker:I mean, having done the bestseller Experiment podcast
Speaker:in 450 episodes or whatever.
Speaker:It becomes very, very clear, and you'll know this yourself,
Speaker:Tom, from talking to authors.
Speaker:There's no one way of doing this.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:You, you develop your own way of doing things.
Speaker:Whatever works for you, but you should also allow it to
Speaker:change and grow and evolve.
Speaker:This is what I was talking about, that fetishization of the process.
Speaker:You know, having a certain pen, having a certain, so I think you need to
Speaker:shake things up as, as much as you can.
Speaker:So each book I've written, a different way each time and
Speaker:it's, it's evolved and there are different challenges with each book.
Speaker:And you, you just have to, mm-hmm.
Speaker:Figure, well, I, I can't fix it the way I did with the previous book.
Speaker:How am I gonna overcome it this time?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And so once you've done your initial plotting and, and things and you're
Speaker:sitting down and actually, doing the writing, the nuts and bolts of it.
Speaker:Uh, what's a typical writing session look like for you?
Speaker:Do you have like, set hours during a day?
Speaker:Do you keep it quite structured?
Speaker:Yeah, I'm generally down here at 7:30 and I will write to about 9, 9 30 on
Speaker:Project A. That'll be my main thing.
Speaker:So at the moment, that's the End Of God's, the end of this trilogy
Speaker:and I'm making notes for that and or writing a chapter or whatever.
Speaker:And that will be doors closed phone on, I have this little app where I
Speaker:mean, I'm saying don't fetishize things, but I do, I got, I got an app
Speaker:called Forest, which is a focus app.
Speaker:And it's, I can grow little trees with that.
Speaker:And I've got a little forest.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:And it's my little reward to myself.
Speaker:But it's, it is good 'cause it tells me how long I focus for today.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:and I can keep a track of that.
Speaker:And I move the phone as far away from me as possible.
Speaker:'cause the, the, you know, just have big, oh, just let me
Speaker:just look up how airships work.
Speaker:Uh, and before you know it, you're on bloody Facebook again.
Speaker:Um, so yeah, I, I will sit over there and just I mean, this
Speaker:morning I worked for an hour.
Speaker:I stopped after an hour because I solved a particular problem.
Speaker:I thought, well done, Markie, that's your lot done for the day.
Speaker:And it, I've left it at a point where I can pick it up tomorrow.
Speaker:Just left myself a note saying, you know, this is what you're gonna do.
Speaker:My process.
Speaker:If it's anything, it's like, uh, Gromit in The Wrong Trousers.
Speaker:You know, he is on the train laying out the train track in front of
Speaker:him?
Speaker:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker:That, that's me.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:That's me with, uh, with story.
Speaker:I'm, I'm kind of going, okay, so what's gonna happen tomorrow?
Speaker:Maybe you could try this.
Speaker:And I might do three lines so when I sit down tomorrow, I go, alright,
Speaker:that's what I'm doing today.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Let's, let's see if we can make that work.
Speaker:And start jotting down ideas.It's.
Speaker:You know, I might write a chapter a week like that.
Speaker:So I, I'll come in on the Monday 'cause I've stopped writing weekends 'cause I'm
Speaker:doing comic cons and things like that now.
Speaker:I tend not to write much at weekends.
Speaker:So I'll sit down and, and go, okay, I'm gonna write a chapter this week.
Speaker:So it will start with, what's the worst thing that can happen?
Speaker:Who are we with, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker:And then I'll do a very rough, handwritten outline and then I start typing it up.
Speaker:And then by the time I've typed it up, it's in pretty good shape.
Speaker:It's almost, you know, first draft ready kind of thing.
Speaker:And you know, then move on to the next thing.
Speaker:So, um, yeah, it's fun.
Speaker:It's my most fun part of the day.
Speaker:And then I will get up and move around and get the blood flowing and put
Speaker:the washing on or the dishwasher or vacuuming or something like that.
Speaker:And then I come around about mid-morning, usually mid-morning
Speaker:I have a Zoom call with someone like Rowan or Jon or whatever.
Speaker:Little story meeting or something.
Speaker:Then I'll break for lunch, and then in the afternoon I'll probably make
Speaker:notes from that Zoom meeting or, or whatever about screen project
Speaker:B. You know, so there'll be a be a screenplay or something I'm working on.
Speaker:And then by the end of the afternoon it's usually admin and social
Speaker:media or something like that.
Speaker:That's how it should be on paper.
Speaker:It doesn't always work like that, you know, it's, um, yeah,
Speaker:it's usually a bit of chaos.
Speaker:But that's my perfect day, my perfect writing day, Tom.
Speaker:Oh, that's fine, Mark.
Speaker:Well, it's interesting that the chapter a week rather than, you know, having a word
Speaker:count or, so any kinda like daily targets.
Speaker:Just like you've got a two hour block that you may fully use or you may not, but
Speaker:it's just that, fulfill this challenge.
Speaker:You know, this is what I've got to do today.
Speaker:And once that's done.
Speaker:I'm done.
Speaker:is I think quite a nice for the dopamine reward is just like,
Speaker:if I can get this done quickly..
Speaker:Chocolate hobnob time.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker:That's it.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I mean knowing when to stop is quite a key component of this gig.
Speaker:You know, you don't want to keep going beyond your prime.
Speaker:Um, I'm not just talking about career, just, you know, in your
Speaker:daily, daily word, count or whatever.
Speaker:Uh, you know, if you think, actually this is, this is cooking, this is really good.
Speaker:I might stop now.
Speaker:Because I know that when I pick it up in the morning, it'll still be cooking.
Speaker:And it'll, I'll keep that momentum going.
Speaker:I've heard you talk to people about stopping mid-sentence.
Speaker:I, You know, I, I don't necessarily stop mid-sentence, but I,
Speaker:I might stop mid-scene just thinking this is really good.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And it's gonna be good tomorrow.
Speaker:Tomorrow Me will thank me for leaving this, you know, with the momentum going.
Speaker:Rather than just keeping going, keep it going and then eventually
Speaker:collapsing and thinking, no, I, I should have stopped half an hour ago.
Speaker:Because, uh.
Speaker:It's, it's some, you know, little sprints.
Speaker:You can write little sprints.
Speaker:Very often, you know, I, I will find myself with, we are in the middle of
Speaker:nowhere here, so everyone needs a lift.
Speaker:I'm constantly taxi dad, so my son will be going to doing a shift at
Speaker:work or whatever, so I will know I've got 40 minutes to do, so I shut the
Speaker:door, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker:And those can be really productive.
Speaker:Really, really productive.
Speaker:Where you, um, you basically set yourself a, a time limit.
Speaker:And you get more done those 40 minutes you might in a, in a whole day otherwise.
Speaker:Well, you, yeah.
Speaker:As you mentioned earlier, Ben Aaronovich does very short writing
Speaker:days 'cause it's less to edit.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Uh, you know, it's just,
Speaker:Well, I, I dunno if his days are short.
Speaker:I know that his word count isn't great.
Speaker:I think he, he, he works very hard to make the words that he writes count.
Speaker:And they're usually the, the words that you see in the final draft,
Speaker:he's quite meticulous about that.
Speaker:So he might have only written 800, whatever it was, or
Speaker:200 whatever words a day.
Speaker:But they usually end up in the final draft of the novel.
Speaker:But you know, like I say, everyone has their own way of doing it, so.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Is there any, you said you don't have writer's block, but are there
Speaker:any points where you completely lose faith in the project?
Speaker:Like you have a severe imposter syndrome of, I'm done.
Speaker:This is the one where I get found out.
Speaker:Uh, I'm a terrible writer.
Speaker:It's usually when you read other people's stuff.
Speaker:You know, if I read Mike Carey or you know, Ben Aaronovitch or,
Speaker:or anyone where it's finished and you think, oh God, this so good.
Speaker:What am I doing?
Speaker:But then you just have to remind yourself that they probably had crummy first
Speaker:drafts and they had to rewrite them.
Speaker:and then, you know, stuff gets finessed.
Speaker:So, I will hit walls.
Speaker:There will be stuff that I think, oh God, what happens next?
Speaker:But I will, I just, it's a problem.
Speaker:It's a problem.
Speaker:Writing is problem solving and failing a little less each time.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:You know, and you've got to enjoy that process.
Speaker:And some people will take days off and walk away from it and whatever.
Speaker:And for me, I tend to work on something different.
Speaker:So if I'm, if I'm like, oh God, the novel's a bit, you know, I'm
Speaker:a bit, you know, stuck on this and I'll work on a screenplay instead.
Speaker:And by the time I've finished the screenplay, I, I've come back to
Speaker:the thing, oh, you know, that works.
Speaker:But nine times outta 10, getting your ass in the chair and
Speaker:scribbling solves the problem.
Speaker:And because I use a pen, I'm not typing on into a document on a screen.
Speaker:I will write, how the hell do I get out of this one?
Speaker:What's wrong with this?
Speaker:Why is this not worth?
Speaker:I literally write those words and then answer my own question.
Speaker:And like I say, it's like the ravings of a madman.
Speaker:If anyone was to pick these up.
Speaker:But that's just me.
Speaker:If I try and do it in my own head, I will be distracted.
Speaker:I, you know, I'll be sitting here looking at the daffodils and Claire's
Speaker:little fairy garden and the blue tits going out of the box and it's like, you
Speaker:know, Homer Simpson with the monkey.
Speaker:You know, tapping the thing together.
Speaker:Whereas if I'm hunched over my notebook with bad posture, scribbling away.
Speaker:Going, how the bloody hell am I gonna get out of this one?
Speaker:That works!
Speaker:It's, I'm just addressing the problem and I tend to fix it, nine times outta 10.
Speaker:Sometimes I'll, it might take some time.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So it's just, you know.
Speaker:I, I remember talking to screenwriters, Mark Huckabee and Nick
Speaker:Osler, who work a lot in kids tv.
Speaker:Uh, they did The Moomins and things like that where you
Speaker:are up against the deadline.
Speaker:You're in a writer's room, you can't afford to go, oh, I need
Speaker:a couple of days for this.
Speaker:They got their producers on the balls going, where's the script?
Speaker:So they have to deliver.
Speaker:So it was an important lesson to learn from them that this is, this is a job.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And this is a privilege.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:And, um, you know, I'm able to do this sort of full time.
Speaker:Thank God Claire's got a proper job.
Speaker:Um, and spend some time doing it.
Speaker:I mean, I used to write in my commute and my lunch break and
Speaker:all that kind of thing, you know.
Speaker:And that was handy 'cause you had thinking time between those sessions
Speaker:where you could mold these things over.
Speaker:But I'm not gonna be one of those people who goes, oh, it's so hard today.
Speaker:It's, this is the gig.
Speaker:And I've done proper jobs before and since, you know, over Christmas,
Speaker:over Christmas, I was, um.
Speaker:I realized I had no money writing money, cut, none coming in.
Speaker:I had a tax bill and Christmas, so I got a job, uh, on a Tesco
Speaker:truck delivering over Christmas.
Speaker:And uh, it was, you know, I've never been, so I lost weight over Christmas.
Speaker:But it was like, oh, this is a proper job, but I've got a boss again.
Speaker:And it's like, and they were lovely, don't get me wrong.
Speaker:They were lovely people to work with.
Speaker:But I was like, I just love the commute of coming down the stairs.
Speaker:I've got, so I, you know, I just, how do I get back into
Speaker:situation where I'm, you know.
Speaker:So I, I realized what a privilege is.
Speaker:You're never gonna hear me complain about writing on social
Speaker:media because I bloody love it.
Speaker:And the problem solving is part of the process.
Speaker:And that's what I, and it is about just writing down and figuring it out.
Speaker:And until you, you know, your head bleeds.
Speaker:Well, I think, you know, it's one of the benefits of the notebook
Speaker:is 'cause it's a working document.
Speaker:It's you telling the story to yourself.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I, I mean, like I say, each of their own, some people they go straight to the laptop
Speaker:and they get a, a really good first draft and there's that thing, what's it called,
Speaker:writing into the dark or, or something.
Speaker:Where people would just, they don't stop to correct spelling mistakes.
Speaker:They just get it all down there and it's, it is the proper kind of vomit draft idea.
Speaker:And they, they tend to be very prolific authors.
Speaker:Uh, it tends to be the more experienced authors, I think.
Speaker:They can, they can do that.
Speaker:Uh, and I'm, and that's kind of what I'm doing in a notebook.
Speaker:Then I type it up and, you know.
Speaker:Clean it up as you go.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Hop into Scrivener.
Speaker:So.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Uh, scrivener's a very popular app.
Speaker:I'm hearing more and more about people using Scrivener.
Speaker:'cause I think, 'cause you can have the split screen of your drafts and so you.
Speaker:I dunno why anyone uses Microsoft Word anymore.
Speaker:It was never designed, it was designed for memos.
Speaker:It was designed for office memos and presentations and documents.
Speaker:It was never designed for 80, 90,000 words of a novel.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:That's why it crashes all the bloody time.
Speaker:And now you've got this, is it co-pilot or some crap AI crap
Speaker:saying, oh, that's rather aggressive language you're using there.
Speaker:Uh, do you wanna tone that down a bit?
Speaker:No, piss off because, you know, I'm writing an action scene or whatever.
Speaker:Whereas Scrivener totally nonjudgmental.
Speaker:And also it's great for a search because you can, you know, you can
Speaker:put websites into it and images and, and that kind of thing.
Speaker:And it's all there in one document.
Speaker:The thing it can't do is track changes when you come to editing.
Speaker:But then I use Apple Pages.
Speaker:I don't use Word.
Speaker:Apple pages, perfect for that, you know?
Speaker:So, um, yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And with your rewriting and your editing, do you write everything freehand and
Speaker:then type it up at the end as a you know, that's your first draft revision,
Speaker:or when you say you, you pause mid action and you come back the next day.
Speaker:Is there a bit of revision of the day before?
Speaker:What I do, I will write by hand and then maybe the same session I'll type
Speaker:it up, or the next day I type it up.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:I'll come and then I'll go, okay, excellent.
Speaker:And then what I type up isn't exactly what's on the page, that it gets improved
Speaker:and embellished and changed and update it.
Speaker:So it's notebook screen, notebook, screen, notebook screen.
Speaker:And then I've got a first draft.
Speaker:And then when I've finished that first draft I do what I call the edit triage.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Because, you know, you'll, that very first draft is like, uh, it's unformed
Speaker:clay or a body on a gurney that's been, that's gone through the wars.
Speaker:And you're thinking, well, God, how do we, right.
Speaker:We'll have to slip the guts back in there, or whatever, or, you know, yeah.
Speaker:Sew them up there.
Speaker:And, uh, so I will read it and make notes again by hand.
Speaker:And, uh, then I tend to edit in, in threads.
Speaker:I go, okay, my main character isn't working, or my protagonist isn't working.
Speaker:Let's just concentrate on that.
Speaker:And that only, and I make notes and, and focus on that one thing.
Speaker:And then I go back and find something else that's not working.
Speaker:And the triage is right, let's fix the big things first.
Speaker:What's really not working in this story?
Speaker:Okay, that's not working.
Speaker:That's what way blah, blah, blah.
Speaker:Let's go and fix those.
Speaker:And then we can do the smaller stuff, and then we can finesse it.
Speaker:So it's very much a macro to micro kind of thing.
Speaker:And it's tricky, because the temptation while you're working on character A is
Speaker:like, oh, there's character B there.
Speaker:I really need to fix that too.
Speaker:Nope.
Speaker:No, resist that.
Speaker:Just keep going, fix them.
Speaker:And then what you find is it all blends really, really nicely.
Speaker:Because it's all thematic, because it's all has that unity of theme.
Speaker:Because you've been doing that in the first draft, it kind of makes the edit
Speaker:a bit easier because everyone's kinda singing from the same hymn sheet again.
Speaker:They're all, all, all on the same track in terms of theme.
Speaker:So, um.
Speaker:That's worked so far.
Speaker:Uh, I am trying to wrap up a trilogy, which is hard.
Speaker:Um, so ask me again in six months.
Speaker:But, yeah, I tend to, I tend to sort of do it in little Yeah.
Speaker:Threads of let's focus on this one thing and then fix the big stuff first
Speaker:and then whittle it down, you know?
Speaker:And so once you've got it as, 'cause you can get in isolation.
Speaker:So you've, you've gone back, you've gone through all these threads.
Speaker:Everyone's singing from the same hymn sheet.
Speaker:Who's the first person to read it next?
Speaker:Do you go straight to editor?
Speaker:Does your wife read it?
Speaker:Do you have beta readers?
Speaker:It wouldn't be my wife.
Speaker:God.
Speaker:She's got, she's got the worst reading habits, so very much.
Speaker:I mean uh, With the crow folk, she was my bell ringing expert.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Because, uh, she's a bell ringer has been since she was 12.
Speaker:She's like the, Jeff Becker of Bell Ringers in the, everyone
Speaker:wants her in their band.
Speaker:So she goes around all over the, you know, southeast ringing.
Speaker:So I said, I did promise her I'd make the bell ringers, the heroes in a novel.
Speaker:And, uh, I just gave her the bell ringing bits and she made a concerted effort to
Speaker:read it, go through it with a red pen and go, no, no, actually that works.
Speaker:Yes, put that back in.
Speaker:Um, no, I've, I have a couple of beater readers and we have
Speaker:a reciprocal arrangement.
Speaker:Uh, they read my stuff.
Speaker:I read their stuff.
Speaker:And, um, it's a real treat because they're both really good
Speaker:and it's not a chore at all.
Speaker:And they've learned my bad habits.
Speaker:So I'll do a messy first draft.
Speaker:No one gets to see that messy first draft, that's dirty laundry.
Speaker:And then I'll tidy that up and get to a point where I think it sort of
Speaker:works, and then I'll say to them, okay here's the first draft, air quotes.
Speaker:Um, can you tell me if the ending works?
Speaker:Can you tell me if the, you know, I, I'll have something that I kind of
Speaker:know might be wrong with it, but I just need to hear it from someone else.
Speaker:And I give them some kind of focus.
Speaker:And then they come back with usually really good notes.
Speaker:And because there's two of them, I look for the common bumps in the road.
Speaker:And address those.
Speaker:And then that's the triage thing again, you know.
Speaker:What's, you know, start with the big move down to the small.
Speaker:And then, uh, sometimes it'll go to my agent, or I send it to agent
Speaker:and publisher at the same time.
Speaker:I'm self-publishing a lot more as well.
Speaker:So I will, you know, I've got an editor that I will hire,
Speaker:and it then goes to them.
Speaker:But by the time the editor gets it, it's in pretty good shape.
Speaker:I've been very lucky in that I've never had any big structural changes.
Speaker:It's usually something along the lines of, you know, just try and
Speaker:dig a bit deeper with this character or, I'm a nightmare for timelines.
Speaker:Um, you know, People having breakfast and dinner at the same time.
Speaker:But again, it's, it's not a structural thing, it's just a you
Speaker:know, the odd tweak here or there.
Speaker:We usually fix it.
Speaker:I'm not moving act two into act three or anything like that.
Speaker:So, um, yeah, I've been quite lucky so far.
Speaker:But again, that's just a part of the process, I guess.
Speaker:And how are you when it comes to getting the notes back?
Speaker:Because some people, it's as like, great, stuff to work on.
Speaker:Others, I need to have a stiff drink and a lie down and I'll
Speaker:come back to this tomorrow.
Speaker:Uh, how are you good with that criticism and that, that feedback, for the readers?
Speaker:I'm getting better at it.
Speaker:Um, it's, it's, it's a bit like the, to be flippant, it's a bit like
Speaker:the stages of grief: anger, denial, eventually coming to acceptance.
Speaker:I mean, when I get the email from the editor, my reply, instant
Speaker:replies, this is brilliant.
Speaker:Thank you very much.
Speaker:Bye.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Uh, and then I'll look at it.
Speaker:And the thing is, when you've got a good editor, and I've been blessed
Speaker:to have very, very good editors, they will nail the stuff that you knew
Speaker:in the back of your head that you, you might have taken a shortcut or
Speaker:you just thought, oh, that'll do.
Speaker:And it won't do, and you know, you have to go back and, and address it.
Speaker:But, eventually you come to that acceptance where you
Speaker:go, yeah, they're right.
Speaker:This is gonna mean more work.
Speaker:Okay, fair enough.
Speaker:But again, I've learned that it's part of the process.
Speaker:See that's with editors and authors.
Speaker:In the film world, you sometimes get notes from people who are not that
Speaker:creative and you know, might struggle to write something themselves.
Speaker:So again, you look for the common bumps in the road.
Speaker:And, uh, you do have to engage because the difference there is
Speaker:there's so much more at stake in terms of budget and the production.
Speaker:And you are just a kind of mere cog in this.
Speaker:Particularly if you are already in production and the, the
Speaker:train is leaving the station.
Speaker:You can't really stamp your feet down and say, well, but what about my genius?
Speaker:You know?
Speaker:You have to, you have to engage with them and figure out the problem.
Speaker:Generally, again, I've been very lucky.
Speaker:The people I've worked with have been very, very smart and, uh,
Speaker:have wanted to do the right thing.
Speaker:And sometimes you can't, you know, you lose a location or, um we had
Speaker:a thing on Unwelcome, which we shot in that Covid sandwich, uh,
Speaker:sort of September, October, 2020.
Speaker:Uh, the lockdown sandwich where suddenly it was all right to go
Speaker:out and make a film, you know?
Speaker:And we had, um, Colm Meaney in the cast.
Speaker:He's a brilliant actor, but he was vulnerable.
Speaker:And we had, um, one of the cast got COVID and we had to shut down for a short while.
Speaker:And so they sent him home, and he still had a scene to shoot.
Speaker:So that was an interesting one, whether I, what do we do?
Speaker:So I took, repurposed the scene and gave it to, gave it to the,
Speaker:the characters of his kids.
Speaker:And it improved, you know, it was, it was a better scene, I think.
Speaker:'cause it gave them more to do.
Speaker:And they were, they were just fantastic.
Speaker:It's that thing of thinking on the fly and, and, and finding
Speaker:those solutions to those problems.
Speaker:Um, again, you, you just have to learn it's part of the process.
Speaker:And the more I've done it, I won't say it gets easier, but you just, you develop
Speaker:strategies for, for dealing with it.
Speaker:And going, okay, this is going to make it better.
Speaker:You, you know that it's going to make it better.
Speaker:And it will improve things and ultimately make you look better.
Speaker:So, roll with it.
Speaker:And when it comes to finishing a project, and I, I feel this will
Speaker:have a different outcome for the collaborative screenwriting and
Speaker:your own IP, your own novels.
Speaker:But once it's all done and dusted and you're no longer having to be in that
Speaker:world, no longer with those characters, is it a kind of a relief because you've
Speaker:got a b project that, okay, I can now redirect, focus on something else?
Speaker:Or is there any element of grief of, I really enjoy being in that world.
Speaker:Oh, I really enjoyed working with that group of people and I'm not
Speaker:gonna see them every day now.
Speaker:And yeah, just what's the ratio of grief to relief?
Speaker:Uh, at the end of a project?
Speaker:I have got a bit choked up at the end of a couple of projects.
Speaker:And I mean, the, the movies have not helped me.
Speaker:You watch something like Misery where he celebrates by, and this is Stephen
Speaker:King who should know better, uh, where, where, you know, he has a particular kind
Speaker:of whiskey and he smokes a particular kind of, and he, again, ritualizing,
Speaker:fetishizing the process of finishing.
Speaker:That's not the end of the book.
Speaker:He's just written the first draft.
Speaker:There's gonna be three bloody rewrites and copy edits and proofreading
Speaker:and all that stuff as well.
Speaker:You know, and so you, you kind of think there, there isn't that moment
Speaker:where you go, rah, it's, I mean, authors again, we perpetual, I,
Speaker:I've put the end up on social media.
Speaker:Just say, yay, I finished the draft where I know it's not the end, you know.
Speaker:And you constantly making changes.
Speaker:And you know, with The Corn Bride, the new book, Georgie, my editor, she's brilliant.
Speaker:She's very forensic, after the proofread she's going, I've spotted something.
Speaker:Oh, oh, Georgie.
Speaker:But you know, you come back to, you go, oh God, she's right.
Speaker:So you have to change that as well.
Speaker:So it's this incremental thing, and then you get the book come to you, you know.
Speaker:So it's usually, it is usually after maybe the first rewrite that you think,
Speaker:okay, this is the shape of it now.
Speaker:Yeah, I'm gonna tweak things and blah, blah, blah.
Speaker:But this is, this is what it is.
Speaker:Oh, that's a shame.
Speaker:I don't get to play with these, these guys anymore.
Speaker:So yeah, I can get a bit choked up, but like you say, uh, okay, cup
Speaker:of tea, do the washing, uh, right.
Speaker:Oh God.
Speaker:Bloody script rewrites.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Let's get into this.
Speaker:So, you're back on, back on a different horse, but it's great.
Speaker:Wouldn't, wouldn't, wouldn't change with the world.
Speaker:But it's, it is interesting as you seem to be coming to a close on
Speaker:two franchises that you've done.
Speaker:So The Witches of Woodville, you know, that's five books.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:That, that's just done.
Speaker:I know you're doing, uh, end of God's.
Speaker:The, the end of that trilogy.
Speaker:Those are things that have been with you two worlds for years.
Speaker:Two world wars.
Speaker:Yeah, no,
Speaker:it's, yeah, yeah.
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:And, um, I'm gonna take a break from Woodville, but I will come back to it.
Speaker:I've got a couple of ideas for, for where it could go and
Speaker:spinoffs and things like that.
Speaker:Um, but I do wanna take a break from it because I, I was with The Corn Bride.
Speaker:I was thinking, there were moments I had in the first draft where I
Speaker:thought, oh no, I've done that before.
Speaker:Oh, shoot.
Speaker:Am I repeating myself?
Speaker:And I don't want to repeat myself because then One thing I learned
Speaker:from the stage, darling, is always leave them wanting more.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:So, uh, you know, you wanna, you want to end on a high.
Speaker:Uh, and End Of Magic trilogy is a trilogy, so that's cool.
Speaker:So this is where, you know, I've got a couple of other ideas, like
Speaker:I said, that Lower Decks kind of fantasy idea where it's on the boil.
Speaker:So I am jotting things down and, you know, ideas are coming together.
Speaker:And there's a standalone horror novel that I'm sort of jotting at, and
Speaker:that's, I've got a Google doc for that.
Speaker:Funny enough.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Uh, where ideas are occurring to me, and I can do that on my
Speaker:phone and just jot things down.
Speaker:That's, that is almost notebook worthy.
Speaker:We are almost there.
Speaker:And yeah, that kind of Lower Deck fantasy idea that, that a thing with that,
Speaker:'cause it's a fantasy world, there's a part of me going, oh, world building.
Speaker:Where I know if I start going too far down that road, it
Speaker:can get a bit self-indulgent.
Speaker:Whereas the horror thing is contemporary.
Speaker:It's set in the real world.
Speaker:So I, when someone has a coffee, I don't have to worry about what part
Speaker:of the fantasy world it's come from and what they might call it, you know?
Speaker:Uh, which is refreshing.
Speaker:so, uh, yeah, we'll see.
Speaker:But, I, I think ideas are overvalued.
Speaker:And particularly people who aren't writers and you're finding this, any
Speaker:writer will tell you they'll have, once they've been published, I've had
Speaker:this, you know, friends and family culture, right I've got an idea, right?
Speaker:I got the idea.
Speaker:You write it, we split 50 50.
Speaker:It's like, that's not how, you know, it's not how it works, it's the execution.
Speaker:Any dingbat can come up with an idea you've actually got to do, do the work.
Speaker:So I got, you know, I've got lots of ideas sort of backing
Speaker:up there and, uh, waiting to go.
Speaker:But it's, um, it's like, which one is which one is the one that's gonna grab me?
Speaker:And so I am very much, you know, as you say, at the foot of the
Speaker:mountain with these things.
Speaker:But it's having been through it so many times before you think, yeah, I. yeah,
Speaker:it's gonna be tough, but I've been here before and just enjoy the process.
Speaker:That's, that's, you know?
Speaker:It'll be exciting to see where, you know, I like to revisit people in five years.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And so like, you know, sort of like where you were five years ago to where
Speaker:you are now, to where you would be in five years time is exciting to think.
Speaker:Well, I mean, you, you never know what's around the corner.
Speaker:We've got a, um, it's a TV project we've been developing.
Speaker:We've got a really good producer attached to it.
Speaker:And if that takes off, that's all consuming.
Speaker:I don't think I'd be able to write novels while that's going on.
Speaker:But the odds of that are, I mean, we've got a producer, we've got a director.
Speaker:It might happen, um, but then it might not, you know, it's kind of, you know, so.
Speaker:Touch wood.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:So, well, I'll go on to my final two questions, but Mark, it's been an absolute
Speaker:pleasure and you've been great guest.
Speaker:Oh, my pleasure.
Speaker:So it's my belief that writers continue to grow and develop their
Speaker:writing with every story they write.
Speaker:Mm.
Speaker:Was there anything in particular that you learned from your last
Speaker:finished project that you're now applying to your latest project?
Speaker:Well that's interesting 'cause they're both, like I say, they're
Speaker:both wrapping up uh, series there.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Uh, and I think with The Corn Bride, it was to leave the door
Speaker:open for further adventures.
Speaker:Because I think, uh, I mean this happened with the End Of Magic.
Speaker:The End of Magic.
Speaker:When I was first writing, I think this could be a trilogy and
Speaker:it was published with Unbound.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:And it was a crowd funded project.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And about three quarters of the way through the crowdfunding, I thought,
Speaker:I never want to do this again.
Speaker:That said, I'm looking to Kickstarters for a couple of things.
Speaker:So, you know, I never say never, but I got, I got two
Speaker:thirds of the way through that.
Speaker:And, and I'd also seen other authors on Unbound and on Kickstarter, who with
Speaker:their first book had raised money and all gone great for their second and
Speaker:third book they were really struggling.
Speaker:Because it's like, if you've ever worked in an office and you have someone who
Speaker:does a 5K charity run, oh yeah, I'll chuck your five or whatever, and then they're
Speaker:doing one every three months or whatever.
Speaker:It's like, why am I funding your hobby now?
Speaker:So it's, I I, I saw people were really struggling.
Speaker:So I made, when I got to The End Of Magic, I thought, I'm
Speaker:gonna make this a one and done.
Speaker:One and done fantasy, you know?
Speaker:And, uh, but I did leave the door open a bit for further adventures, and then
Speaker:I got the rights back from Unbound.
Speaker:I thought, oh, I can do that trilogy now.
Speaker:And, uh, and the 'cause that door was open, I was able to go
Speaker:back and go, okay, brilliant.
Speaker:It's five years on.
Speaker:We'll pick up our characters from there and, and go for that.
Speaker:So that's something I learned from The End Of Magic.
Speaker:But I, I applied it to, you know, The Corn Bride and I've, uh, without
Speaker:spoilers, the very final chapter is like, this is what the next thing could be.
Speaker:So with The End Of God's it will wrap things up, but you never know.
Speaker:There could be, could be further adventures down the
Speaker:line, but it is important not to get stuck in a rut, I think.
Speaker:Having worked in publishing, I've met a lot of authors who struck gold
Speaker:with a particular kind of book that they're then condemned to rewrite for
Speaker:20 years, and then when they try and do something different, it doesn't work.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:You know, I mean, that's the kind of the curse of success in a way.
Speaker:Uh, where, you know, certain kinds of authors end up writing stuff
Speaker:that just makes them miserable.
Speaker:Mm. Um, and then they try and do the thing they really want to do.
Speaker:You see it with musicians as well.
Speaker:It's the Spinal Tap thing.
Speaker:You know, jazz Odyssey.
Speaker:The audience says like, no, this is what we want from you and
Speaker:just keep churning out this.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:I mean, I've, I've kind of been lucky.
Speaker:Lucky was it, it's not like it was planned, but the first sort of five
Speaker:books I wrote were all very different.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:You know, there was Robot Overlords, which is a film tie in, there was
Speaker:End of Magic, which was fantasy.
Speaker:There was Back to Reality, which was a time travel body swap thing.
Speaker:And then there was The Crow Folk and uh, so they're all kind of very different.
Speaker:So no one's going, oh, you are that author who does the one thing.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:They're going, you are that author who's really difficult to sell.
Speaker:'cause everything he does is a bit bit, not different enough,
Speaker:but kind of different ish.
Speaker:So, okay.
Speaker:It's a curs and a blessing.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Well, you know, there's flexibility there and you know, I think there's
Speaker:definitely, you'll have people who are fans of different things.
Speaker:You can bring different audiences in.
Speaker:Yes, I've, I've done, and you know, for example, my mother-in-law, she loves
Speaker:The Witches Of Woodville and she said, I, I tried The End Of, it's not for me.
Speaker:Fair enough.
Speaker:I totally understand.
Speaker:If you don't this, I've got something else, I've got something
Speaker:in the back, you'll, I'll find something that you'll like.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:Well, I, I've been doing these Comic-Con, which has, uh, been fantastic.
Speaker:I get a table and I've got all my books there and 'cause
Speaker:I've got a sales background.
Speaker:And also my family.
Speaker:Were all, you know, my, my uncle, Desmond as per Ober d ob, he had a
Speaker:barrel in the marketplace in, you know, in, in the lane in Woolworth.
Speaker:You know, so it, I, I can sell.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I know how to sell and I'm selling myself.
Speaker:So I've, I'll say, oh, Woody r here, witchcraft.
Speaker:We got, we've got magic, we've got fantasy.
Speaker:You know, and I will pitch and engage with people and I love it.
Speaker:'cause I've tried Facebook ads and Amazon ads like this.
Speaker:I, the house always wins.
Speaker:It never works for me.
Speaker:But when I'm one-on-one.
Speaker:I can sell books.
Speaker:So, um, yeah, so I'm, I'm on this, on this crusade this year
Speaker:to do as many Comic-Cons as I can.
Speaker:It can be exhausting.
Speaker:You know, I was driving a Bournemouth and back yesterday, but it was worth it.
Speaker:I sold a lot of books, got a lot of new readers, met some wonderful
Speaker:people, met some fellow authors out there doing the same thing.
Speaker:It's great.
Speaker:I love it.
Speaker:So it's, it's kind of revitalized me as well in that.
Speaker:Um, so that's what's taken up a lot of my weekends at the moment.
Speaker:And you learn a lot just from engaging with your readers, finding out who they
Speaker:are, the sort of things that they like, the sort of things they, they react to.
Speaker:And that's huge.
Speaker:That, that's, I think that's the great, I know we're all very concerned about
Speaker:AI at the moment and publishing is in a difficult place and there's a lot of
Speaker:redundancies and people are, people in publishing are massively overworked.
Speaker:But I think as authors, if we can develop that one-to-one relationship
Speaker:with our readers via, I newsletters or social media or, or going to
Speaker:Comic-Con and things like that.
Speaker:Then I think if we've got that relate, that direct relationship,
Speaker:we don't have to worry about Amazon or publishers or anything like that.
Speaker:We've got that direct link, and that, I think is gonna be the, the
Speaker:key to the future I think of, of, sustaining a career as an author.
Speaker:For me anyway, that's, that's what I'll be doing.
Speaker:I'll say again.
Speaker:Ask me again in five years.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Now my last question is always, is there one piece of advice you find
Speaker:yourself returning to with your writing?
Speaker:But I also know that you coach other writers and as you have done
Speaker:podcasting about writing processes and you know, The Bestseller Experiment.
Speaker:So I'll, I'll ask it in two parts.
Speaker:What's the one bit of writing advice that resonates with you and what's
Speaker:the one bit advice you, you find yourself telling other people the most?
Speaker:Um, the bit that resonates with me, I think it is the Craig Mazen
Speaker:central dramatic argument thing.
Speaker:That completely changed how I write.
Speaker:It was like someone opened a door, it was like, oh, right, I can do this now.
Speaker:Mm.
Speaker:Um, so finding a good central dramatic argument, having that thematic unity.
Speaker:Mm. Uh, really, I mean, it's kind of, you know, it's kind of
Speaker:advanced stuff, but it, what I would also say is develop your voice.
Speaker:Mm.
Speaker:That's the advice I give to authors.
Speaker:It is the lesson that took me longest to learn as well, I think.
Speaker:In that I grew up, I, I would read Pratchett, I'd read Douglas Adams, I'd
Speaker:read PG Woodhouse, I'd read Ursula Le Guin and I tried to be these authors.
Speaker:I tried to be like them, and of course I wasn't.
Speaker:I'm me.
Speaker:And it took me a long time to figure out that I can write
Speaker:like me and just be my voice.
Speaker:And the other thing is, AI's not gonna do that.
Speaker:I think that the thing to develop over the next few years is be
Speaker:as weird and quirky as possible.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Facebook or Meta might steal it from you, from some piracy site, as has been
Speaker:revealed in the last couple of weeks.
Speaker:But they, they won't be able to reproduce it.
Speaker:They're not gonna predict what weird, quirky thing you're
Speaker:gonna come up with next.
Speaker:So I think to thy own self be true, you know, uh, develop your voice
Speaker:and make it as idiosyncratic as possible, because I think that's
Speaker:the thing we're gonna treasure most.
Speaker:I'm sure there will be publishers and con artists or whatever, putting
Speaker:out very bland generic thrillers and romances and things like that.
Speaker:And, and people will read them because The general public generally doesn't care.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Uh, but if you can develop something that's a bit weird and strange and
Speaker:personal, deeply personal, that is you, uh, I think you're gonna be all right.
Speaker:And if you develop that link.
Speaker:Develop your voice and enjoy the process.
Speaker:'cause it's the one thing you can control.
Speaker:Me sitting down here and writing is the one thing I can control.
Speaker:And if you go into it thinking, oh, if I write this, I'm gonna be rich.
Speaker:I'm gonna win awards, I'm gonna be adored.
Speaker:You have no control over any of that.
Speaker:But what you can do is write as much as you can, develop your voice,
Speaker:finish things, and put them out there.
Speaker:And if you can do that without an expectation of, this time next
Speaker:year will be millionaires, Rodney, then I think you'll be happy.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And anything that, anything good that does happen is a bonus.
Speaker:And all the kickbacks.
Speaker:Well, yeah.
Speaker:I mean, I'm still getting rejections.
Speaker:Projects still fall apart.
Speaker:It's just part of the life and you have to accept that.
Speaker:But the thing they can't take away from me is the fact that I can do
Speaker:this every day and I have a voice and I've got something to say.
Speaker:And it doesn't matter where you are.
Speaker:If you're sitting down and writing for the first time.
Speaker:Or you've been doing this for years.
Speaker:That's the thing they can't take away from you.
Speaker:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker:And Mark, that's been, that's a fantastic way to end the episode, I think.
Speaker:Uh, so, uh, Mark Stay, thank you very much for being my guest this month.
Speaker:Thanks, Tom.
Speaker:Thanks.
Speaker:And that was the wonderful Mark Stay.
Speaker:Some really good advice there I think.
Speaker:And I also think you should all go to his website, Markstaywrites.com because
Speaker:not only are there links to his books and affiliate links too, the guy earns
Speaker:double if you buy through him, clever boy.
Speaker:But there's also links to his films and his podcasts.
Speaker:He's currently doing a monthly podcast called The Creative Differences Podcast,
Speaker:where he discusses the little things that make a big difference in people's work.
Speaker:He also does mentoring and feedback services for writers,
Speaker:and he's an all round good egg.
Speaker:So please do check out his stuff and tell him Tom sent you.
Speaker:I get no financial kickback from it.
Speaker:I just want the bragging rights.
Speaker:I'll put a link to his books in the podcast description for this episode.
Speaker:I've also put his social media and I've linked that Craig Mazin podcast
Speaker:with John August called script notes.
Speaker:I dunno, which episodes discusses the central dramatic argument.
Speaker:There's over 400 episodes, and you can do that research yourself.
Speaker:I get the sense that you are the type of person that likes podcasts about writing.
Speaker:Anyway, that's all for me.
Speaker:Try and stay healthy, wear sunscreen, and keep writing until the world ends.
