https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/foreshadowing/id1674424465?i=1000660259470
Dropping hints about events to come in your stories can raise tension and add depth and interest to your work. In this episode we look at the art and technique of foreshadowing and ask why should writers consider it an important tool in their skillset.
For this week ONLY at the Writers’ Gym…
I’ll be leaving you in the very capable hands of my fantastic assistant Bella for the first part of this week. Join her in the Writing Room this TUESDAY 11am-1pm, free to everyone on the mailing list as always.
I’ll be and rejoining you all on Thursday evening at Riverside Studios then for members’ Writing Room Extra on Friday morning and to end the week with Coffee & Creativity on Friday afternoon…
The Writing Room | 11-1pm Tuesday 25 June
FREE for everyone on my mailing list (if you’re reading this, then that’s you!). Time and space to think and write with like-minded people. No expectations, no readings, just an open chat box and unmuting for ten minutes’ chat at the end. Click here
Writing to a Brief: Freelance Writing Toolkit | 7-9pm Thursday 27 June
Join me at Riverside Studios, Hammersmith for all you need to know about applying for writing work and assignments, and asking the questions that allow you to find freedom rather than pressure in your deadlines. Click here
Writing Room EXTRA | 11-1pm Friday 28 June
Members only: please check your Voxer messages for this link.
Coffee & Creativity | 2:30-4pm Friday 28 June
Quality writing time and quality company! Grab a coffee and have a mid-week chat, a write and then another chat with your fellow creatives. Free for Writers’ Gym members: type your discount code where indicated. Click here
Members and VIP Members: please use your exclusive codes on any online workshops to activate your discount. Forgotten/lost your code? No problem: just email info@rachelknightley.com or ask Rachel in the Voxer app.
“Rachel, I’ve got something to tell you. You have to promise not to tell anyone.”
I swallowed, as every safe-guarding bone in my body went into hypervigilance and began to tell my young LAMDA student, “I can’t promise that. But I can promise I’ll do everything I can to help you with whatever it is –”
“No, no, it’s nothing like that. It’s my mum’s birthday. I want to write a speech for her.”
Every bone in my body moved from hypervigilence to utter joy.
“It’s a big birthday. You have to not tell her because it’s a surprise. Can we do that speech as well as my two exam speeches?”
There is a special kind of happiness in any kind of coaching for when a client (of any age, and certainly not just one who has a qualification involved at the end of the process) voluntarily asks you to help them up their game. Writing and speaking are the world’s most transferable life skills, so seeing someone enjoy their LAMDA pieces enough to grow in confidence and apply what they’re learning to other areas of their lives absolutely makes my day.
So please join me in a big congratulation to Sid, not just for this thoughtful (and, I hear, very successful) addition to his mum’s birthday celebrations but his and his older sister Shradha’s distinctions this week at Public Speaking Grades 4 and 5.
This is absolutely why I love what I do. As a writer myself, as a speaker myself, and as a coach of writers and speakers of all ages. Because when it’s done from a place of truth, and love, it celebrates exactly who we are. I’m so glad I came to business and personal coaching through a background in communication and performance, in that order. The vocabulary of coaching (not telling someone what to do but listening to how they think, how they feel and discovering how their unique character fits their words and deeds best) was always what got the best out of the actors, speakers and writers I was working with, and out of me. When you dig for the truth – what you truly mean, truly want and, yes, truly fear – you find something unique.
Congratulations Sid and Shradha – and happy late birthday Varsha!
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/short-fiction/id1674424465?i=1000659469713
In this week’s episode we’ll look at short fiction and the skills and techniques you’ll need to master concise storytelling. We discuss the pros and cons of writing short fiction and some of the drawbacks and limitations of the form. As usual we end with a writing challenge from Rachel.
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/relationships-in-fiction/id1674424465?i=1000658720467
In this episode we talk about relationships in your fiction and how they can mould and shape your stories and the arcs of your characters. We explore the ways in which characters interact and consider sources of conflict and interest in these interactions. From dysfunctional families to romantic attachments via warring parties and long-held feuds we hope to provide you with some ideas and inspiration for writing your own fictional relationships.
The chat at the end of yesterday’s Writing Room included us congratulating a writer on saying a significant “No”.
Some writing work had come in for them during their two hours they’d put aside for doing their own writing, here in the Writing Room (if you haven’t joined us before, it’s a free silent space for writing, or co-working of any kind, unmuting for a chat at the end. Join us any Monday morning).
The “no” in question was the best kind of “no” when it comes to boundaries around things we do, actually, want in our lives.
‘Sure,’ the “no” went. ‘I’ll be on it after 1pm” which is when the Writing Room ends.
I’m not the only writer and/or freelancer in that Writing Room who recognised and celebrated that victory. Victories of self-esteem and free will, of noticing our choices exist and making them actively, are the core of being a good line manager to ourselves.
And it can be bloody hard.
Maintaining boundaries around things we love is a different kind of difficult to when it’s other people’s time, or money, or love, we’re protecting. If we’ve booked time with a friend, or for work, it’s easier to recognise our own unavailability. But writing time is a contract with ourselves. Sure, emergencies may come along. But what we accept from ourselves as “reasons” not to show up for our writing are always worth checking in with.
Am I being a supportive boss to myself right now? Or am I taking myself for granted?
The Writing Too conversation went on to what happens “when” someone comes into the room we’re writing in and starts talking to us. I remember being on both sides of this, and how surprised I was many years ago when a family member snapped at me, apparently (to me at least) out of nowhere when I thought I’d just been being friendly. It was being on the other side of that which helped me realise a boundary-pusher isn’t a boundary pusher if they don’t know the boundary is there.
Another example I hear from time to time is “Oh yes, I reinforced the boundary… but then they were so insistent…”
A wall isn’t a wall because somebody else acknowledges it. It exists independently of their acknowledgement – or lack of acknowledgement.
That’s why I’m sharing this, because most or all of us are on at least one side of it any given day:
Our next workshop is Feedback: How To Give It, How To Take It: Wednesday 12 June at 1pm.
Or, join us Friday evening to start the weekend with Cocktails & Creativity, 6.30pm-8pm.
The Writing Room returns next Monday, 11am-1pm.
Listen to The Writers’ Gym podcast with Rachel Knightley, Emily Inkpen and Chris Gregory on Apple, Spotify or any of your favourite platforms. Next new episode, Relationships in Fiction, airs tomorrow morning.
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/making-time-to-write/id1674424465?i=1000657874826
In this episode we look at the challenges of making time for your writing and how best to use time when you have it. As usual we have tips, advice and experience from Dr Rachel Knightley and Emily Inkpen and a writing challenge from Rachel.
Take your words for a workout this week, 1-7 June
Many years ago, before I was published and before I realised how much knowing I had the right to write came into what I did (or didn’t do), here is what I noticed: enthusiastic, talented writers would turn up for workshops, full of good intentions. They’d return the next week, full of those same good intentions. What happened to us in between? Lots of things. Life. But not very much writing. This wasn’t because writing wasn’t important to us. The opposite was the truth. We don’t put off the things that don’t have to be done at all, unless we care a great deal how they turn out.
The Writers’ Gym was born of that recognition: that, as with the physical gym, writers can develop strategies to make, and keep, writing a regular and healthy routine; that what goes on the page begins in our mindset.
Creative confidence doesn’t just affect what happens on the page. It’s how we approach career and personal life decisions, conversations, and everything else we care about.
If you’re new to the Writers’ Gym, drop in any time this week:
Saturday 1 June, 2pm-3pm at Riverside Studios: Curious about creative writing? Love flexing those storytelling muscles but don’t always find the time to make it a habit? Drop in for a writing workout at the Writers’ Gym. A fun and freeing work-out to build your confidence and your word-count.
Monday 3 June, 11-1pm: The Writing Room FREE for everyone on my mailing list. Time and space to think and write with likeminded people. No expectations, no readings, just an open chat box and unmuting for ten minutes’ chat at the end.
Monday 3 June, 6:30-8pm: Your Writing Career Whether you’re considering your first steps into professional writing or are looking to expand on the writing career you’ve already begun, this is the place to clarify the aims, markets and networks that will get you where you want to be, and how to make sure you treat your ‘dreams’ as the goals they truly are.
Wednesday 5 June, 1-2:30pm: Coffee & Creativity Community time to talk, write, and share work, ambitions and celebrations. Free for Writers’ Gym members. Free for Writers’ Gym members: type your discount code where indicated.
Thursday 6 June, 7-9pm: Freelance Writing Toolkit at Riverside Studios: Week 1 is all about Thinking on the Page: Explore your motivation and interests as a writer, extend the power and reach of your voice, and discover how that voice directs you to new markets and opportunities.
Friday 7 May, 12-1pm: Friday Writing Workout Boost your confidence and your word-count with our lunch-hour writing workout. Whether you’re an experienced writer or just beginning, enjoy exercises, discussion, tips and techniques to build your strength, knowledge and creativity.
Members and VIP Members: please use your exclusive codes on any online workshops to activate your discount. Forgotten/lost your code? No problem: just email info@rachelknightley.com or ask in the Voxer app.
Plan your writing workouts from events listed up to a month ahead, or request your membership booklet on the website.
Catch the latest episode of The Writers’ Gym podcast on Apple, Spotify or any of your favourite platforms.
In this edition Rachel, Emily and Chris each share pieces of writing advice which we hope you’ll find useful.
And how being a writer makes you a better friend.
TRIGGER WARNINGS: SEXISM; RACISM.
About seven years ago, shortly after I moved in with my partner, I asked him to hang a sheet I’d taken out of the washing machine over his office door.
He looked at me (a foot shorter than him), at the door, and at the sheet. Then he said one of my favourite character dialogue lines I ever pocketed for writing workshops.
“It must be weird being little.”
It was funny and it was beautiful. A sudden and absolutely truthful realisation shared aloud that he and I live in the same home but in different worlds. That was what made it so touching, so memorable. We recently compared our pedometer steps after sharing the same walk the other day (big difference); he’s also been present when I’ve told an event organiser something wasn’t working and been ‘reassured’ and dismissed, then had my partner communicate the same information to the same person (and be listened to, taken seriously and thanked).
The best writing prompt of all? Stepping into someone else’s shoes. Maybe the ones right next to ours. We always, always come out of it with a better understanding of a character, having hit ‘refresh’ on our assumptions.
The better we think we know someone, or something, the less precisely we go about imagining what it’s like to be them.
Except in those moments like the sheet over the door.
But creative writing means thinking as someone else. It means actively creating those moments, those realisations, that empathy.
That’s why I find swapping genre, height, race, hidden disability, musical or literary taste – et infinite cetera – so liberating as writer. I can access what it feels like to be me, unlimited.
A less funny example of assumptions and opportunities of turning them around happened to me yesterday morning.
I was in a cab on the motorway, somewhere between my home and the home of my co-presenter where we’d be recording the second half of the current series of The Writers’ Gym podcast. I was in a cab rather than doing the thrice-as-long journey to alleviate any anxiety, so I’d be as present as I could be when we recorded. This is what he said:
“You look like that singer. The one who died. She was Jewish but she was very good.”
Oh, the power of that conjunction. The assumptions it contained.
“Amy Winehouse,” I said.
“Yeah, Amy Winehouse. She was Jewish but still, very good. You look like her.”
Right, I thought. Here I have a choice.
I had no choice. that right now I was on a motorway, in the rain, halfway between home and where I was going, that the driver (a large male) and I (a small female) were alone together. I didn’t necessarily believe I was in any immediate physical danger. But like anyone who is smaller than most people and has been sexually assaulted and/or stalked, imagination and awareness of potential are skills we don’t just use in our writing.
But I do not feel in physical danger. Emotionally hurt, vulnerable. But with a chance to create something here rather than hide, rather than withdraw. I could let feeling small and vulnerable (short woman, large man, who had already made comments that made me not be surprised when this particular line of dialogue came out) mean playing small and vulnerable. And comparatively safe.
This man, I reminded myself, has heard and been interested in me talking about being a writer and coach; how having a career where I get to witness and support people unlocking their creativity to make their own stories happen – yes on the page but also in their careers and personal lives; moving beyond their assumptions about themselves and the world. He already knows that about me.
What if, when I leave this cab, he is slightly less racist (ie slightly less generalising of a group) or at least more aware of racism, than when I got into it?
That’s what I did. I told him I was Jewish, and let the reality of me speak for itself.
He backtracked a bit, I continued talking to him.
I will never know if it changed anything, if he is any more aware of having made an assumption or seen the potential for specificity where before there was generalisation.
But we do. We know.
When we write, when we explore the specificity of a character, we’re flexing those creative muscles and seeing individual people, greater possibility.
“It must be weird being little.”
It’s not being another person that’s weird. What’s weird is those moments of opportunity where we see not our own version of someone else but what it’s like to be them. And it’s so much more complex, more nuanced, more individual, than the version of their story we’d otherwise have written.
Creative I-dare-you:
Write a scene in which your character is wrong about something. What’s the realisation, if there is one? Or the missed opportunity, if there isn’t?