Catch up with Alex North in Conversation
Watch Alex and Suw chat about the ups and downs of a writing career, pseudonyms, writing processes, and much more.
I had a chat with award winning crime writer Alex North, aka Steve Mosby, on 8 June, and we talked about how Steve got his writing career going, why a career as an author isn’t the same as other types of career, how he approaches his writing and revising process, and how he learns something new from every book he writes.
If you’d like to catch up with the conversation or read the transcript, it’s below for paid subscribers.
Please note, the transcript below has been partially edited, because it frankly takes ages. I’ll come back and finish editing it when I have more time.
Suw Charman-Anderson: Hello, everyone. We are just going to wait a little while, because it has only just kind of clicked over to 7 pm. And I see someone joining, so we will just give folks a moment or two, and in the meantime I’m trying not kind of get too panicky about the cat interrupting, or it not recording, or any of that stuff.
Alex North/Steve Mosby: What about the… What about the angry… Is that… Is that an Angry Birds card behind you, a Christmas card?
Suw: This? Hang on. See that there you go! This is my Red Bugger. This is a a Christmas Northern Cardinal and I bought this in Cleveland, in Loganberry Books, which is just really amazing bookshop in Cleveland, near where I used to live, and I saw it just before I left, and fell in love with it, and just thought, “That is not a Christmas piece of art, that is an all year round piece of art.”
Steve: Because you've got the Christmas lights in the background as well on the other side.
Suw: They when up at Christmas, and never came down. That's kind of how I like it. I like fairy lights. So yes, yes. And I just moved my office around a couple of months ago without thinking about it. It's gonna be just vast amounts of sunlight everywhere. But it's fine.
Steve: Don't worry about it, Suw. It's gonna be cool. It's very interesting looking at people's background. So mine is is terrible. You know. There's all kinds of shit on that. I mean I am in like the corner of my living room at the moment. And it's like the the bookcase here, with some stuff on it. And just, you know, just random things, but if you can see the rest of the room, it's like a it's like a war zone.
Suw: Everything behind the laptop is a complete disaster zone, but it’s cool. Well, it it looks like this is a small and intimate soiree, one more person joining, so when they have joined, I think we should kick off. So, everybody who is here, Thank you very much for coming. For those of you who don't know me, I know some people do. But for those of you don’t… this is basically, well… this is the first of what I hope will be a regular sort of series of webinars, and so you know, as always, the first of anything is a little bit nerve racking.
So I'm Suw. I am, among other things, an early career author, as I like to put it, and and screenwriter, and my first webinar guinea pig, I mean esteemed guest, is Steve. Hello, Alex.
Steve: Hey! You don't have to call me Alex. By the way, because we've known each other for a long, long time. I say that you, when you say that you're like a beginning author. I remember reading Argleton. By you, back in like 2010. Something like that a long, long time ago. So we have known each other for for quite some time.
Suw: Yeah. Anyone who doesn't know, Alex is actually Steve. And and I want to come to that a little bit later. But as Steve Steve has got 3 books out Rhe Whisper Man, which is amazing, I really recommend. Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller, Richard and Judy pick. That must have been weird.
Steve: Yeah, that was really weird. But yeah, yeah, it was.
Suw: And it's being adapted for film, which is also kind of like I want to hear a little bit about, because that's that is going to be really, really cool. I don't go to scary movies, but I might try and make an exception, so long as I can like, take a cushion to hide behind in the theatre.
Steve: I mean I don't want to preempt this, but it's probably Netflix-y kind of territory, so you won't have to go to the cinema. You will, assuming that they even make it, then it will be at home that you'll be able to watch it. You can just have the cushions there.
Suw: We've got that little nook between, like, you know, the sofa and the chair. I'll just kind of like hunker down there, which is I used to do watching Doctor Who when I was a kid, like literally, that that little gap between the sofa and the chair that I used to hide in.
Steve: Yeah, everybody says that about hiding behind the so for Doctor Who, I was never that scared of that, as a kid, but I'm sure there were things that I was afraid of.
Suw: I was a delicate, delicate flower as a child.
Steve: No, I mean honestly, I was as well. I was absolutely terrified of the kid. And I mean we… we are…I'm already going off your script. I'm sorry for doing this.
Suw: But yeah, which is the fun part of all this.
Steve: So I mean, you know, I mean, we've known each other for ages, and it's kind of, it's nice to chat. But yeah, no. As a kid, I was absolutely terrified. You know. As a as a little boy I would, my parents would have to stay in the room with me when I went to sleep. They would have to leave a light on and everything like that, and then, you know, until, like I was 8 or 9 years old. But we grew up in this big… It was a flat in a converted Victorian house, and it was… The ceilings were very, very high, and it was all very dark and very damp and very scary, and everything like that, and my bedroom was at the end of the house, and the front room where my parents would be, and watching TV at the end, was was at the far end, and so it was just like thumping silence and fear. And so yeah, no, I was absolutely terrified. But not of Doctor Who.
Suw: It's funny, isn't it? It's like the things that scared me as a kid. The thing that scared me the worst, and stayed with me for an extremely long time and is, is frankly still with me, was one of those public health and safety films about…
Steve: Standing water and like…
Suw: There’s one set on a farm, and it's basically a sort of like, 10 Little Indians. These these kids go around a farm, and they all die in really horrible, gruesome ways, and that is all… It's all on screen, like they didn't shy away from it. It's on Youtube. It's terrifying.
Steve: They are terrifying. And like the pylons, you know. I used to think that I would most likely die by climbing on a pylon and like being electrocuted and thrown backwards. I mean, this is, there’s… again going off on a…. There's a there's a great film, a horror film called Possum, But I don't want his real name is. It's the Garth Marenghi guy, [edit: That’ll be Matthew Holness] you know, who did the comedy-horror, kind of thing. But you know, under his own name he's written serious horror stuff. And he wrote the short story called Possum, which was adapted into a film a few years ago. And it's terrifying. And it does play on all that kind of stuff, you know the standing water and these bogs and the pylons and everything like, these dangers that are out there for you as a kid, kind of thing. Yeah, I grew up with all that kind of stuff, and it's terrifying quicksand. You think you're gonna die in quicksand growing up, you know.
Suw: You might lose a welly.
Steve: But it doesn't even exist.
Suw: Yeah, maybe. That’s a whole other discussion, because I'm literally talking to ecologists about things like quicksand. But! We're here to talk about writing. Not quicksand!
Steve: I’m so sorry!
Suw: No, it's fine. It's awesome.
Steve: I'm your guinea pig. These are all going to get better after me.
Suw: This is going to be brilliant. So one thing, because I do have a list of questions, and I wanted to start with this idea of writing as a career. Because sort of, as Steve and as Alex, you've had like 15 books published, something like that.
Steve: Yeah.
Suw: Yeah, that's how many I managed to count. Anyway, I'm not might not have got them all. And I think the idea of writing as a career, when we talk about it like, that makes it sound and feel like it's kind of one step in front of the other. And you know, you're kind of climbing the ladder, and if you just kind of keep on, it will all be fine. But it's not really like that, because if you've had one successful book that doesn't necessarily mean that the next one is going to be successful, and we have friends in common who had publishing deals and then didn’t. And it it's all a bit haphazard and unpredictable. And you know, I thought you would be really nice to hear a little bit about how you've experienced your career, from the inside. What's it been like? What have the ups and downs been like? And how do you keep going?
Steve: Okay, I mean, so I always wanted to be a writer. I knew from a very early age that I wanted to be a writer, you know, my parents always encouraged me with writing, and I would do it from a very early. To the point that I remember being in a Maths exam, when I was at 11 years old, and I knew I'd messed it up really badly. And even at the age of 11, I thought, it's okay, because you're gonna be a writer. That's what you want to do.
So even earlier than that, you know, my mom used to like fold sheets of a 4 paper in half, like a big bunch of them. And so besides and I would write, kind of, choose your own adventure books and then, and things like that, you know, with the you know various kind of things and various stories.
It was all I wanted to do so. I was writing from a very, very young age, and I think I submitted my first book to an agent when I was 17, something like that. And it was awful. It was really, really awful. It was like this, 160,000 word fantasy. It was kind of slip-streaming and weird and everything, and obviously it got rejected.
But I kept doing it. I kept writing. I went to uni, I was studying philosophy there, and I was still, you know, writing and submitting these things. And I think, I submitted about 7 or 8 novels to agents that were all terrible. I thought they were great at the time, because I was young, and it's like Dunning-Kruger: you don't know what you don't know. But they weren't, they weren't good. But eventually, like about the age of 26 or so, I got an agent take me on.
At that point Orion, a huge publisher, took it from my agent very, very quickly. The hardest thing was getting the agent in the first place, and then the publisher took me on. And it was part of this reasonably big promotion, from their point of view. It was like 9 new writers and they promoted them all at the same time. And that book was a mixture of kind of horror and crime and science fiction or noir, and all this kind of stuff, all this stuff that I was interested in.
And so at that point I was kind of, I was kind of a crime writer at that point, because it was like the crime, the crime element… It was a crime promotion, so it's like “You are a crime writer now”, and I was like, “It's cool”, you know. I can do everything I want to do within the crime genre. It's a really good genre to write in.
And I thought, obviously, at that point, I’d got it made. And it's like, yeah, there was a big… There was a big launch in London that I went to, which is the only launch that I've ever had for a book since. I don't like launches. But it's the only one I've had, and it was brilliant, you know. It was amazing, but I was 27, I think, at that point, and so you don't know what you don't know. And then, after that, obviously the second book… the first book didn't do very well, and then the second book did even worse And then my third book with Orion, which was just straightforward crime, did really, really well, comparatively, at that time
And it was at the point where I was made redundant from my job. Everything just seemed to, the stars seemed to align now. I was at that point, I was working at Leeds University and, on a research project, and I got made redundant because the funding ran out. And at that point my third book is Steve Mosby, The 50/50 Killer kind of sold worldwide, in kind of a really cool way. And it just, since then I've been full-time.
And there have been been so, so many downs since then. You know, it's kind of like… I think you say, you've said in the description, like when you've been tweeting about this a roller coaster, I mean. That's what it is. You kind of imagine that you will have the trajectory of like, I don't know the famous crime writers who, like, the books just build and build and build, and they become massive. But that's just not the way it works at all. I have quite a big book early on with The 50/50 Killer, and then, after that it was very well, it was generally just like downwards, you know. But you kind of live hand-to-mouth at that point, after you've been a full time writer for a few years, you kind of, I don't know. There's nothing else you can do.
And so very much ups and downs, and everything like that, that was a huge up, and then it was kind of down once after that. But I managed to sort of survive on that for quite some time, until it didn't really work very well. And then I became Alex more often. And it became a bit better.
Suw: So that was the motivation for developing the pseudonym?
Steve: Well, no, no, I mean it saying ‘a motivation’ on that level makes it seem like I'm far more intelligent than I am. But it actually at that point, it was… I'd done 10 books with Orion by that point, all with kind of diminishing returns, because that's how publishing kind of works. Almost. You know, if the previous book doesn't do very well, then the next book has a lot more problems to overcome to even reach that level, so it was sort of diminishing returns.
I think about a tenth book with Orion, the agent that… I… this is really said, the agent that I was with had died. So I was agentless, and I think Orion, my publisher at that time, were like “We've done everything we can with you at this point. We probably… it's probably time to part ways”, almost. And so we sort of did. And I was 40, at that point. I had done 10 bucks, and it was maybe just time to rethink. I think I was working at that point on The Whisper Man, and I think I said to my wife, you know, it would just be really, really nice for me to finish this one, because this one means something to me, and I don't know what it's like for you as a writer, but some books mean more to you than other books do.
They’re more personal, you know, they just… They're all personal, in a way, but some of them are closer to your heart than others, and I was like, I really, I'd like to just finish this one if I can. And so we worked a way to do that. And it just so happened then that I happened to get a new agent who was interested, and she put The Whisper Man out there, and it just… okay. So it was, just, you know a nice confluence of circumstance. But a huge up on the row with those, they're after, like a fair amount of down, and then there's more down to come, I know, you know, it's all just fun and games.
Suw: And some of this is, it's completely outside of your control. I mean. What you can do is write the book.
Steve: Oh, completely, completely.
Suw: There's nothing you can do. And if a publisher decides to.. oh, we're not going to put quite so much marketing budget, it becomes a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy that they aren't, that the book isn't going to do quite as well, because it's not getting the push behind it.
Steve: Yeah, I mean, I so much of it is outside of your control. And it's not very encouraging for other writers to talk about the the role of luck and everything. But I mean it, it comes into it so much. Of course you have to write the best book you can, and you hope that you are pretty good at doing that. But luck, I mean…
You know, we both know loads and loads of writers who are just as good as me, you, loads of other people, who just haven't had the break, you know, and who things just haven't fallen correctly for. And, you know, I have those books on my shelves. And it's like, Why didn't this eat the world? And it just didn't, because it didn't land on the right, editor’s desk at the right time, or it didn't you know? They were already marketing a book a little bit like it, and they weren't going to spend the money on it, kind of thing. And it's like, you know These things could have been absolutely huge and fantastic. But just by the role of the dice, they weren't.
Suw: Yeah, I see. I don't mind too much the whole kind of like luck plays a big part side of things. It makes me feel a little bit better.
Steve: Well, completely. But I mean we all know great writers that just haven't clicked for some reason, and it's just, you know, how it… why, how… it's just the look of the draw.
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Suw: So we were talking when we did a little preparatory chat, one of the things that came up with that difference between when you are writing to a deadline. You have a a commission, you you're writing to Deadline and the and that
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Suw: when you're
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Suw: writing on spec for yourself, and how I actually fundamentally different. Those 2 processes are. So I wanted to like chat about
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Suw: that a little bit, because I think it's
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Suw: It's you know, I've got my first commission. and it's quite scary. Actually.
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Suw: it's going.
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Steve: So what? What is your commission?
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Suw: I have been commissioned to? My, yeah, I I'm gonna write. I am writing a short film script. and this is why I've been talking so many ecologists is specifically about ecologists in the field. so there's a lot of kind of background research to do. And and it's just so much fun. But at the same time it's like
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Suw: there is a little bit of my head kind of getting this. Of course I can do this, and then there's the other 99.9% go. Oh, my God, what if you agreed to do and it is very different from the work that I do on spec, that I'm basically I can take my time with. And I can do it. How I want to do it. And you know, if it doesn't work out, I can throw it away, and no one's gonna care.
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Suw: whereas I actually have to deliver
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Suw: the script at some point.
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Suw: So yeah, it's different to me. Then, if it's different to you.
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Steve: I mean it is. But yeah, I guess you you need to. I mean the the way that I
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Steve: approach any work is and let's just talk about novels, you know I mean it. I I I do a draft 0 which is just for me.
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Steve: And I found that quite freeing just to kind of sit and think. Well, this is what I'm gonna work on. I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna I'm gonna write. However, I write and everything. And I'm gonna get to the end of the draft, and it will be shit, and nobody will ever see it apart from me.
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Steve: And that's fine. I think it's quite free to think of it that way, and then you can edit it, and then you can change it when you you can do that on spec. Obviously, really you can take your time with it. when you have a deadline, you kind of have to factor that in. And I think one of the problems that I have is that I do
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Steve: fact to the end of that shit draft in to arrive at my deadline. And then it's like frantically kind of I mean. I'm at that point at the moment. This my my full, I've kind of promised to deliver to my editor at the at the end of this month. So it's like 3 weeks away.
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Steve: and
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Steve: I'm kind of I'm nearly at the end of it. If I'm about I' about, you know a few 1,000 words right to get to the end thing, and I don't quite know where they're going to be. But then I need to rewrite the whole thing.
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Steve: very, very, very quickly.
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Steve: but that that that is kind of how I work. I will. I, you know.
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Steve: work through it as best I can.
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force the words out.
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Steve: Yeah. And there there are different ways of working. We can talk about how many words a day you write, and everything, whether you're
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Steve: plotter or cancer, and all that kind of stuff. but get it done, and then
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Steve: have the deadline in mind, and I know that the I'm going to lime climb next week. for a festival, and then I've got 2 weeks
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Steve: to
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Steve: my aim is before that festival is to finish the 0 draft kind of thing. And then I've got 2 weeks where I basically will not see anyone. I won't do anything. I will just be. It will be just just be 24 h a day
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Steve: editing and going through stuff.
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Steve: It's not an idea what to do things but
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Steve: But every you know you just
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Steve: you figure out your own way of doing stuff like that.
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Steve: so how does that existing process work for you? I mean, do you? Is it just going to be a light line at it? And and that, or are you going to be chopping up? No, no, no, it like in terms of me going through it. No, not a live line at it. Total, no complete rewrite like page one. Me right? I mean, you have the material to work with, but it
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Steve: I mean, there have been days
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Steve: on previous books where it's like, I'm literally 20,000 words a day, like right
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Steve: through stuff. But that's not like writing 20, that is, it's going through it. And you know, as you, as you get closer and closer to the end you can. The material is kind of like
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Steve: getting better and better. I suppose you know I don't want to be asked without it, but it's it's getting closer and close to what you want to. You can deal with massive chunks of it, and just go through them. Shift bits here and there and everywhere.
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Steve: so you know, at the moment I've been writing 500 to a thousand words a day. But by the end of the month I'm going to be going through 10,000. What a day!
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Steve: it's just finest. It's like, you know, like getting the photograph into higher, higher definition.
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Suw: 15 books. Is it easier to do this now than it used to be. If you got kind of like a rhythm you get into.
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Steve: No, I mean it.
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Steve: I I mean, I was thinking about this because the like, this conversation is about writing a process, and it was like, I wish I had one all nice. It's kind of like. All the books have been very, very different by this one.
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Steve: you know, I have been quite slow on it.
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Steve: whereas with previous ones I've raced through it. But ultimately you're doing the same amount of work each time. I think it's just how how you kind of
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Steve: how you divide it up. But each book is new. So it's kind of like, it's not like you are.
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Steve: You learn to do something with one book, and you can necessarily apply it straight away to the the next book and everything like that. And then I think it gets harder, almost in a sense.
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Steve: yeah, no. I mean one thing you do. I can get with experiences that you recognize the problems along the way. It's almost like, you know.
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Steve: if you climbed Everest. This is that. That's a really ranky way of putting it, you know. But if you climbed Everest, you know they would be hard bits, and you would recognize them when you got to it. If you were doing it over and over again, you would. This is steep.
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Steve: and I think when when you have written a few books you recognize. This is the state that you know. It feels shit. It feels awful But I've been here before, and I know that if I keep going I will get to this plateau
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Steve: or whatever, and then it'll be okay for that kind of thing. So you do. I think you begin to
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Steve: recognize those points in the writing process where things getting tough. And you, you know that you just have to keep that and get through with me.
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Steve: It's like way points along the way. It's like I've been here before, and it absolutely sucks.
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Suw: But if I keep going it'll be okay. I. I remember you actually saying that at 1 point on Facebook, maybe last year, where I do repeat myself very often with these things. You were just kind of like, I hate this. This is awful And I seem to remember that you got like halfway through a book at some point I can't remember if it was
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Suw: last year of the year before. But and you actually threw out a whole load of words.
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Steve: get well, I mean, like the
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Steve: most recent book that I had out the the Half Burn House which came out in like March April.
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Steve: I don't know. I march in the Us. And I from the Uk. I think.
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Steve: that was my lockdown book, and I I wrote that. and it was so so tricky to Ryan. I ended up throwing away more than half of that, I think.
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Steve: but I I I think I'd kind of end up throwing away more than half of almost everything, I think, but I think that's the the pleasure of
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Steve: sort of freeing yourself up and just kind of like thinking. I I don't care. It doesn't have to be perfect. I'm going to just write a draft. and I'm going to figure it out, and by the time I get to the end
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Steve: I will know what I should have written.
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Steve: And then at that point, it's kind of like you didn't really
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Steve: care about throwing some stuff away, because you're so enthusiastic about the fact that you understand what you should have done, and you never really throwing anything out anyway, because it's like there will always be descriptive work and pros work and everything that you can. You can re purpose and reuse.
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Suw: I mean. But yeah, yeah, you think it's going normal? I I think it's quite normal. I throughout 40,000 words of a novel I was working on, and it was just like so much better for it that she felt quite freeing.
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Steve: But do you think that is throwing it out? Or do you think of it as just
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Steve: moving it to another file? Because I I almost think of like when I'm writing. I don't know. Like in the in the half that house as in a previous draft. There's a whole chat to set
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Steve: around the canal, and it can all bulge.
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Steve: which might as well we don't need that. I was like, yeah, we probably don't. So I took it out.
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Steve: But but I work very hard on that, and there's lots of nice descriptive pros in there, and I'm thinking I'm going to get a canal barge into the next book. I'm going to use that again. Almost kind of thing. It's almost like you're not throwing it away. You just put it to one side and stuff you've made that doesn't fit in that recipe kind of.
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Steve: So I was reading some of your old interviews and
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Suw: back in 2,008. You said you were always happy with the language down the plot.
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Steve: Yeah. Okay. Is that is that still true? It sounds like it might be.
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Steve: yeah, no, completely, completely.
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Steve: I'm much more yeah, no, I mean, I can. Even now I care more about my sentences almost than my than my plot.
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Steve: I'm never happy of them when I've written on my sentence, which I know that it's stupid, because most readers do not care about it. And most readers where it probably won't even read that sentence.
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Steve: but yeah, and I I mean, today, I'm like on the deadline. And I need to get to the end of the book.
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Steve: and I got like 500 words, but they were really good sentences, so I'm quite so happy, and it was like I couldn't have done that if I just accelerated through it, or anything like that, you know, if I was just thinking about the plot, and none of those sentences really matter when you do need
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Steve: kind of like, you need pros that
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Steve: pad out the plot to in terms of pacing and everything like that. And so I was very happy to
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Steve: you know. Just
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Steve: okay. I I I love like the poetry of sentences. I love the
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Steve: of of of the way that pros can work and everything, and I probably care for too much about that. More than
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Steve: pace and call and everything like that i' I I love a good sometimes.
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Steve: and it's
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Steve: you know, not what my editors would probably like to hear. They would probably like to hit action, and I think you're doing that. But no, I mean I'm I'm so never happier when
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Steve: a happy of them.
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Steve: when I'm sort of putting sentences together. It's just kind of fun.
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Steve: It's almost like music, you know. It's nice.
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Suw: So if can I assume from this that you don't really focus too much on things like structure. Then.
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Steve: yeah, I mean, I I have spreadsheets
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Steve: like I I have. I do structure in excel, and everything like that.
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Steve: Alright, I mean. Lots of people use scriven that, but I write in work, but I use excel, and I have
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Steve: an ongoing excel spreadsheet, which says, how many words are in each chapter. right?
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And
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Steve: I work it out to the percentage point of where I'm at in the book at each point. And I have a description.
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Steve: so I can look and say what's happening at 25% of the of the book. And I'm kind of familiar with like 3 x to a 5. I structure 7 extra all all that kind of stuff.
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Steve: It's kinda it's kind of good to know but I I try not to think about it too much.
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Steve: I think, when you learn like sort of classical
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Steve: Western structure in that way, you kind of can't help but
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Steve: notice. And there's always going to be a call call to action which may be refused, and you know, for a time and all that, and there's always going to be like the the middle after there's always going to be like the
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Steve: dark night of the soul. And then that kind of thing. You're gonna notice these kind of things, but I don't know. I mean I I I I'm not really interested in that kind of stuff. It's
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Steve: I kind of find it interesting to look at it after the fact.
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Steve: almost applying it. But I don't sit there and think. This needs to happen at 20% to the book kind of thing, you know. And then this needs to happen to it. It's really, really boring.
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Steve: It's kind of
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Steve: not boring. I mean, that kind of thing creates really interesting stories to an extent. But then there's like.
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Steve: Alright.
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Steve: if it's a book called Save the Cat, or something. Yeah, I mean, I'm not. I'm not rubbish it.
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Steve: or anything like that, because it's it's great, you know. I mean, it's it's really good to. And that kind of basic structure. But I I think it was safe to count where the author was.
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Steve: and kind of looking at how this the structures that he was explaining apply to famous films. Obviously Star wars maps on to absolutely perfectly kind of thing.
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Steve: this traditional kind of fine, some that structure. But then I think he looked at memento
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Steve: and he was like.
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Steve: it doesn't quite fit on the moment, you know, it's a really, really really good film. But obviously it could have been better if it just like map tons of this structure, and it's like, No, you getting it wrong. You get in the car before the horse. There, you know, it's all right. I think you can. I think it's really really good to.
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Steve: and especially if you're just starting out. It's really really good style of 3 at structure, you know, start building things like that. but it's not a beyond. And I think the most important thing with the story is to be interesting.
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Steve: Yeah.
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Steve: And there's a part of me that thinks you know the Star Wars is the perfect heroes journey that you know the the mon myth, everything like that. But then, when you watch that, what you think, if, like loose guy, or it was just shot in the middle and died, it would be like.
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Steve: okay, I'm really interested in what's gonna happen next kind of thing it it just be interesting. It's kind of, you know. Tell a story that keeps people on the edge of the seat wanting to to find out what happens.
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Steve: Yeah.
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Suw: often think sometimes, yeah, you you hear a lot about sort of interpreting theme and character, development and motivation. And and I sometimes think that's an emergent structure. this. It's about a post talk interpretation of whatever the story came out to be
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Suw: but because I I remember an interview once with Edgar right? And Simon Peg about space, and because that TV show was famous, for it's filmic references. The fans would kind of like go. And then there's this reference to this and a reference to that, and they'd be like.
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Suw: We didn't put those in there. If you've seen them, then that's lovely. But they we didn't actually think of that when we were doing it. So it feels like a lot of this stuff I think it's important to think about when you're critiquing someone else's work or just watching. And you know, paying attention to other people's work. But if you get to
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Suw: focused on it when you're writing, you can end up getting stuck, I think.
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Suw: or maybe that's just me. I end up getting stuck. If I'm too focused on what? What do I think this should be rather than what is coming out of my subconscious.
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Steve: Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I mean, I think
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Steve: it can be. It can be really free to have a structure, you know, it can be really free to think of. This is what happens here, there and then that I mean that can that can free you up to a matching stuff in other ways. But you you absolutely shouldn't be
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Steve: sort of curtailed by it, you know. You want it to be you if you need it if you want it, and if it helps which I don't mean in the sense of.
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Steve: you might.
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Steve: If you're a beginner and you need it kind of thing. It's like, you know it. It can handle just to have you know that that scaffolding, that to help you figure stuff out, and then you can always change it later kind of thing, but you don't want it to become like a rigid guideline. That is like, I absolutely have to do this because you absolutely do not have to do it. You can do loads of loads of interesting stuff, and it's just whatever gets you to the finishing line.
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Steve: I think in that level. And then it's interesting, like what you say about that, because I imagine they were channeling lots of stuff. But they just weren't thinking about it, you know, and it's so things will crop up if you relax. It's all I think a lot of it is about just kind of relaxing and and letting it. Come? Yeah, no, absolutely. I do. It's interesting because I
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Suw: I'm rewriting a six-part TV series which I'm writing on spec.
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Suw: and I've been really stuck with it for ages. I got some really good feedback from a a script editor and read it, and kind of went. I agree with all of this. Oh, shit!
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Suw: I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know how to fix this, and just kind of sat on it for a bit, and then recently discovered a book by someone that I've never heard of. He has no presence online. I could Marshall Dalton who wrote the 6 Act structure.
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Suw: And it's really, really fascinating. And the ring there, there's the 5 abstraction that it's like you saw a gap in the market. 6. That structure it it is. It's one of these things. I think it's
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Suw: Sometimes you just need a different lens through which to view what you're the story that you're telling. So it's kind of really interesting to read and kind of go. Oh, I can kind of see a little bit more about how to fix this, and it's not necessarily about adhering to like. You say it's not about adhering to a rich structure, but it is about kind of sometimes you need to push
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Suw: and maybe sort of structure can give you that.
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Steve: And there are, there are different
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Steve: the kinds of structures. I mean, there's a a for act kind of Asian. Well.
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Steve: the tradition of Asian Asian literature for act structure without conflict.
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Steve: Here I'm catching. I think it's schooled. I'm probably butchering the pronunciation there, but it's like it's a 4 inch structure.
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Steve: the way you have the set up the continuation of the setup. And then something that complete it seems completely out of the blue, and then the resolution of that. And it's a really satisfying story. But it's not like you would see in Western narratives and everything like that. And it's just really interesting to kind of absorb those different things. And when you
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Steve: I mean, you look at I I really love
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Steve: urban mess. The kind of
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Steve: you know when you think of.
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Steve: I like the story of like the hitchhi, the the the driver who picks up a hitchhiker who gives them
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Steve: it gives him usually her address, and the drives are there, and then when he gets there, she's disappeared.
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Steve: and the family are like. Oh, my daughter died on my road, you know, kind of like, and it's like, that's a really really effective story. But there's no real kind of conflict or anything like. There's no hero's journey there or anything like that. But it's still a very, very effective story, and it's just
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Steve: it's interesting to absorb all those different things and think about them and not be not be ruled by them.
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Steve: And it's nice to be able to understand them. Understand how things are working
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Steve: and they are a safety net kind of underneath your writing, I think, but it's always nice to be able to kind of go beyond them a little bit.
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Suw: So Steph, who I know understands that that sort of structure. It's tissue 10 katsu, and I probably mangled as well. But thank you, Staff.
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Suw: it's so. It's worth really looking up if if you're watching, and you've not heard of it, for it's really really interesting.
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Suw: But yeah, I think a lot of this stuff is I think it might be Neil Gaming who is essentially like you, you you you put all this stuff into your your, the back of your mind. It's like a compost. Keep everything gets put into the compost deep, and then eventually something will grow from it, but it will has to. You have time to
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Suw: ripen and mature
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Suw: before it kind of becomes something interesting. And I I like that way of of looking all of this stuff around.
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Suw: Sort of character. And yeah, and motivation and structure is is all kind of like this all should be rather than roadmap that you follow. It should be your
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Suw: nurturing, and occasionally you kind of shove some more stuff in it and turn it over and then see what happens.
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Steve: Yeah, I mean, absolutely whatever works, you know, at the end of the day you want to have written a story. So whatever gets you to that point, it's fine, and you know it.
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Steve: If you want to start off with a kind of very sort of basic skeletal structure that's enormously helpful. You can always mess around with it afterwards and change it if that's what it takes to get your imagination kind of firing and flaring, and and to come up with stuff, and to, you know, follow a story through
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Steve: because it because, you know, those structures, do you make really, really good stories and appealing stories and everything. So if that's what you want to start with, then that's absolutely fine, I think and it will help. And then you can play around with that once you call it. But whatever gets you to the point of getting worse down on a page, and and and Kari, can't we turn up? Yeah. Well, no, I'd be disappointed with what's the name of the cat?
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Suw: This is gravity
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Steve: gravity. Yeah, he's sadly no longer with us.
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Suw: She's She gets special dispensation because she's quite poorly. She's got poorly eyes, and
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Suw: is getting medicine 3 times a day that she hates. So she gets to do whatever she likes. Absolutely. So what talking of of starting? I where do you start? I I listen to this fantastic episode of a podcast called astronauts, where they were talking about how they start. And one person sort of like. And I start with vibes and another. One was, I. I start with world building
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Suw: character. and you know there's no one, right or wrong way of doing it. It's all what works for you, but what works for you. Where do you start?
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Steve: probably something different every time. and I think anybody who gives like it, like, you say, anybody who gives a definitive act like you should do that. That that that that's not the way it works. I mean
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Steve: plot and character. Everybody always says, you know.
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Steve: plot is the same as character on the North K character and plot completely related to each other. For me, it's kind of
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Steve: It's probably theme or idea which is
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Steve: again. A bit wanky, but it's like I this, it's like this, something that I want to write about. I never
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Steve: I lots of rises will say they have loads of ideas, you know. Kind of, but I don't. I never have more than really one idea at the time. I kind of spend everything that I've worked on all well, all the books I've I've worked on have been like. That's my project for this year and a half or whatever, and I'm kind of pouring everything into it. I don't have anything else on the back burner at that point at all.
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Steve: And so it's just a case of why, what am I going to do for the next year and a half almost, and I will start with usually an idea or a theme, or something like that, by with the wisp of man it was about. I want to write that far and sums
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Steve: And then what their ideas kind of attach themselves to that, and you gradually kind of build up a story.
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Steve: The Shadow Friend. It was, you know.
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want to write about Lucy dreams. But then characters begin to kind of like join into it. And then you realize I'm right about
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Steve: the families in a slightly different way. And then the half bone house was
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Steve: complete sort of fiasco, in a sense, in terms of how it came together. I want to write about determinism and
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Steve: like kind of mythical text. And then Brothers and sisters came into it, and everything like that.
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Steve: Everything just kind of gradually comes together. But usually it's thing. Usually it's thing I want to write about this particular subject, and then I will invent characters and clot devices and
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Steve: you know, bits of the story that fit. With that they help me explore it. So I mean, you know the with my father and some. That's why I wanted to write about. You know I had a son.
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Steve: I have a bother. It was kind of like I want to kind of
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Steve: to figure out how to tell a story about that and explore lots and lots of the stuff that I feel.
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Steve: Yeah, that's the starting point. And then it's also like, I'm a crime writer. So I automatically have a kind of framework. It's gonna be about serial killers. I'm gonna use some kind of metaphor there to kind of like, bring everything together.
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Steve: But it's it's always a thing, I think, to begin with.
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Steve: and then it's very, almost never a character. It's almost never going to be like, I'm really interested in this character because it's like, does he fit in the story or not? Or she, or whatever do they fit in a story? You don't know. You need the story first, I think, before you need the character. What about endings? When when do you do you work out your ending
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Suw: beforehand. So you know where you going, or do you discover it? Once you get that
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Steve: usually
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Steve: discover it to an extent. I'm rubbish it because
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Suw: They are all to be that.
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Steve: Yeah, no? Well, no, it is. It's it's all kind of harmon level.
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Steve: I'm rubbish at endings in terms of like doing a big yeah.
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ending. All this kind of really, really exciting stuff happening. Most of
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Steve: what I'm interested in in terms of writing is the emotional stuff which is usually settled
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Steve: almost before the ending by the whistle. Man the key scene and the whistle. Man happens long before the final confrontation. But you need that you need an action scene, and you need to kind of resolve everything
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Steve: but the main scene and the West. With that it's kind of like just an emotional thing.
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Steve: you know. towards the end.
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And I knew
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Steve: kind of when I was writing that that was the scene I wanted to write, I mean, I didn't know it, perhaps, when I started out, but it was like when I wrote it on when I was getting towards it was like this is, you know, this is the key scene of the book, and after this it's almost like.
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Steve: I don't actually need to write the end of the book. I I've kind of done it, but you need to have the actions. You have people fighting and people dying and stuff like that, you know.
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Steve: I I have word on what it in terms of like knowing the ending before you start. Kind of thing.
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Steve: no, I mean, I kind of always know
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Steve: the emotion by one people to feel at the end.
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Steve: but not quite how
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Steve: it will. I will arrive as it
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hmm.
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Steve: I will kinda know. Do I want it to be Mount? Do I want it to be hopeful?
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Steve: Don't want it to be, you know.
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Steve: very, very dark. I don't know. I mean something like that. I always have an idea of what I want to feel over these days. I always want it to be kind of hopeful.
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Suw: Yeah. any particular reason for that? Or is that just?
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Suw: It's kind of like,
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Steve: it's
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Steve: I don't know. I mean everything. Everything. The last few years have been very, very kind of dark and confusing for everybody and everything like that. I think when I was younger I kind of was much happier to
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Steve: go down the terrible dark kind of 7 7 ish, and then, you know, kind of oh, everything's awful, and it's kind of like, but at the same time it's like.
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Steve: is is that.
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Steve: yeah? Do you want to be doing that anymore? Almost, it's like, I almost kinda want a happy ending these days, you know. I it's kind of what happy endings are underrated. Let's have a little bit of you know. It's kind of. Do you want to put something out there that makes people feel like absolute shit
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Steve: to an extent. Yes, but it's it's it's kind of also nice just to end on a hopeful You know, I I I I think actually, that is
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Suw: just because of the state of the world. I think that actually is is
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Suw: better for me. Personally, I I'm I'm very much trying to avoid stuff that makes me
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Suw: angry, or frustrated, or
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Suw: upset, or depressed, or anything, because I don't really have the mental space for it.
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Steve: I'm not saying remotely that like this stuff shouldn't take you through that kind of stuff. I just think for me personally. But you know, at this point it's kind of I I did. I was a crime test in in Bristol like a
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Steve: well in May I say a few weeks ago, and
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Steve: you know somebody. I I was on the panel, and the moderator, as you know. How do you bring hope? And it's like kind of what I kind of
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Steve: it. The question answers it. Cell phones, you know, you want a happy handling to an extent, but a happy ending is almost just hope you can. How you want the characters. You want it to be some hope, you know there may not be a happy ending forever.
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Steve: because it's not this thing. but
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Steve: you know a sense of hope at the end is is kind of what I would want to leave people with Rome and just completely bombing them out rather than you know. So it's just like, you know, there's a place, but incredibly realistic.
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Steve: odd, you know. But I'm I'm kind of not home for it at the moment. I kind of want
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Steve: some kind of positivity.
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Suw: Yeah, no, I I agree. So just to get back to the wisdom and this film adaptation. How involved are you in that? If you just like, sold the right
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Suw: and that's it. Or do you have any involvement in the process.
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Steve: mostly just selling the rights, I mean.
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Steve: I
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Steve: I think like act, though, which is the of this bought the rights, and then, Netflix are involved.
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Steve: and there's all kinds of
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Steve: stuff going on there. And I I I just kind of find something else which I didn't see the other day kind of thing which is to do with the Shadow friend as well, and connection.
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Steve: But I mean I spoke to I spoke to the director, who was sort of in that tactically attached to it last year, who was lovely and but as an also, you kind of
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Steve: you just want to buy out of it almost this.
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Steve: It it it it was almost a miracle. They they asked me what I thought. You know, I've like the screen place and everything like that. They've done the various versions and everything. And it's like, Do you really want to know what I think? I mean? I think it's really matter. It's got once it's
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Steve: the books on the shelf, and it's like the film will obviously be incredibly different.
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Steve: And it's not really. I'm not a screen writer, so I can't really
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Steve: offer any kind of intelligent analysis of the screen. But they asked me, so you know I I you know I I've given some comments and everything like that, which I think you know.
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Steve: and that level is nice to be involved. We'll see what happens. It's kind of like, you know they do what
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Steve: they're doing, and it will be lovely if it happens. If it doesn't. It's been a nice ride. So it's kind of yeah. That's a very I think a healthy way to look at it can't invest too much stuff in this. We back to that luck thing again, because it's completely out of your hands. Well, exactly. And you know, the movie industry is obviously like a
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Steve: I mean, publishing is impenetrable and glacial. But the the movie industry is also kind of just it. It's even slower, and it's more confusing. And everything. And it's just like, literally, you know, if I see it on the screen. Then that'll be lovely, and I'll believe that. Then, you know, I'll respond to emails and I'll I'll do zoom chats with people and everything like that, but it's up to them to be what they want to do with it. You know they've bought it as an option. So you know
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Steve: my book is my book, and they doing something slightly different with it artistically. So if it works for them, that's great. I really really hope it does. But I look forward to it, and if not
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Suw: so we've got 5 min also left. So if anyone has any questions and it, we're we're a small and intimate crowd this evening. I'm so glad because I probably just like it so much chef. But it's kind of like it's been really, really fun, really interesting. and you know, I I I could talk about this kind of stuff for ages because I really enjoy just getting into different people's processes, because I think the more
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Suw: you know I have a whole well, you can't see them because they behind the
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Suw: the Red Bugger. But I've got a whole shelf of of writing books. I love
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Suw: sitting and analyzing stuff and thinking about how you added this work, what makes this tick?
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Suw: And and then, you know, I don't know if any of that comes from my right, because you can't judge your own writing at all.
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Suw: So I could talk about this stuff forever. so I mean in terms of actually of writing books. If you, if you ever have you got any favorite writing books that you would kind of say
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Suw: people should go read.
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Steve: I mean
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Steve: I mean Stephen King is on writing.
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Steve: you know, as is kind of a a classic. but it it doesn't focus to it. It focuses on on craft, but it it it's
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Steve: And on the same token, Ray Bradbury, Zen and the art of writing.
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It's called It's a collection of essays.
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Steve: but it's me rather than it being about craft and everything like that. You just read it, and you come away encouraged almost. It's kind of like it. It makes you enthusiastic about it, about writing. I don't think many
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Steve: writing kind of textbooks that you read, which are very, you know it, focusing on the craft and saying the structure of the structure, that kind of thing I'm going to make you come out of it. I feel really creative now, whereas, like steam and kings on writing and and and Ray Bracker, is that you? Out of writing, you come out of it like going to a festival or something like that. And then by theing, the atmosphere and everything you come out of it thinking.
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Steve: Yeah, I'm gonna go and write something now. And it doesn't really matter what it is. It's just, I'm you know, I feel yours to be creative, almost, you know, and I I think those books are a
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Steve: that that that kind of encouragement is far more useful. then, learning kind of
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Suw: very stock and bad technique in terms of how you in terms of how to do stuff. Yeah. So we do have a question. from staff. Thank you very much, Jeff. So she says, on managing your pseudonym in the Us. There seems to be advice on trademarking a pen name. Do you think that's necessary? And how is it officially recognized in terms of copyright, etc.?
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Steve: That is a a very, very probably a very good question.
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Steve: and it but it's very complicated for, and the answer is, I I I don't know I don't care. I've never really
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Steve: I thought that hard about how my pseudonym is handled.
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Steve: I think, when it came to it I signed with
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Steve: Michael Joseph. but Penguin Random House, and we agree.
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Steve: and I was happy to use A, and then, obviously, that translated to the Us. They bought the book. but they they bought the book from
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Steve: from Mj. From from Penguin Random House, and I assume that they are on top of things in terms of how they are handling it.
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Steve: but it's not really my concern. My contract is not with my us. Probably it's with my Uk publisher.
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Steve: So I I'm really, that's it's it's a really good question stuff. But I don't know. I just sit and write the books for the most part. And I, that kind of thing is sort of beyond my pay level.
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Suw: Yeah, I I would suspect that with copyright, because copyright is inherent in the work.
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Suw: I don't know how it applies. I don't know how it applies. I don't know how it applies. I didn't anything about trademarks at all. So yeah, X. Thank you. So excellent question. cool. We were coming up to 80'clock. I just wanted to say, Thank you so much, Steve. So much fun.
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Steve: I know. I thank you. I know that I just
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Steve: Whittaker. No, not not very, very clever or particular, but I hope it's been interesting. And I I really really really enjoyed that.
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Suw: and that is, that is my thing, and that I hope everyone else has enjoyed it as well. Thank you. off coming, and I'm also got my fingers crossed. That This is recorded properly because I'm not. I use zoom a lot, but It's always somebody else's so We shall see if we have a recording after this and and go from there. So
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Suw: thank you all so much. Thank you, Steve, and hopefully
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Steve: take one alright chef. Thank you.