The Writers’ Gym Podcast

Mar 09 2025 41 ep. 43 mins 11
The Writers’ Gym Podcast artwork

Build creative confidence and grow your writing world with Dr Rachel Knightley and Emily Inkpen. Every episode, we’ll discuss key writing topics while exploring the goals, exercises, tools and techniques necessary to discover what you really want from your writing — and what your writing really needs from you.

  Arts  Fiction  Education
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JD Barker's Writing Life

Mar 09 2025 32 mins  
This week at the Writers’ Gym, Dr Rachel Knightley is joined by New York Times and international bestselling thriller writer JD Barker. His work has been broadly described as suspense thrillers, often incorporating elements of horror, crime, mystery, science fiction and the supernatural. He is a frequent collaborator with James Patterson. JD shares the creative exercises and habi

Returning to Being a Writer – Prano Bailey-Bond joins the Writers' Gym

Mar 02 2025 43 mins  
Today’s episode and writing workout feature the art and life of Prano Bailey-Bond. Prano is an award-winning filmmaker and screenwriter who grew up on a diet of Twin Peaks in the depths of a strange Welsh community. Her work invokes imaginative worlds, fusing a dark vocabulary with eerie allure, revealing how beauty resides in strange places. Prano shares with Dr Rachel Knightley

Adrian Tchaikovsky talks Writing Health (and Insects)

Feb 25 2025 35 mins  
Episode 2: Adrian Tchaikovsky Today at the Writers’ Gym, Dr Rachel Knightley is joined by multi-award-winning science fiction and fantasy author Adrian Tchaikovsky. Find out how early experience running Tabletop roleplaying games combine with Adrian’s childhood inspiration (mainly insectoid) and adult inspiration (including coffee) to create his career as an author and what a

Dr Rachel Knightley and Ashley Lexine - Building Creative Confidence at the Writers' Gym

Feb 24 2025 27 mins  
The Writers’ Gym is not just a podcast: it’s a membership platform, supporting writers (and writers-to-be) in buildingcreative confidence, growing their writing life and beating the inspiration addiction. Membership of the Writers’ Gym puts you in charge of your writing. It means creative confidence for life, work and art. It also means being part of a writing community with

Memory and Flashback

Dec 10 2024 37 mins  
In this final episode of season 3, Dr Rachel Knightley and Emily Inkpen chat about memory and flashback and the ways in which authors can use them to add colour, realism and plot twists to their work. Harking back to our episode about unreliable narrators, we look at the ways in which our memory can play tricks upon us and we examine memory-loss as a plot device. As always we end w

A Writer's Fuel

Dec 03 2024 43 mins  
Whether it be ensuring the correct amount of nourishment for your body, exercise, a good sleep or combinations of aspiration and fear, writers tend to need to look after themselves in order to produce their best work. In this episode Dr Rachel Knightley and Emily Inkpen look at fuel for writing. And coffee...lots of coffee. Join the Writers’ Gym and book your next writing workout

Prologues and Epilogues

Nov 26 2024 36 mins  
In this episode Dr Rachel Knightley and Emily Inkpen discuss prologues and epilogues and how writers can use them to create intriguing openings and satisfying endings for their fiction. As usual we range from novels to TV, film, and audio drama looking at good and not-so-good examples. Join the Writers’ Gym and book your next writing workout at https://www.rachelknightley.com/

Narrators

Nov 19 2024 39 mins  
In this episode we look at the role of narrators in fiction and discuss when, how and whether to deploy them. As usual Dr Rachel Knightley and Emily Inkpen bring examples from their own writing and from the wider worlds of literature and drama.

Reading For Writers

Nov 12 2024 44 mins  
In this episode we look at reading and how it can help to fire creativity and inspire imagination for authors. As usual, Emily and Rachel bring plenty of stories and anecdotes about ways in which books have inspired them. We end with a look at books about writing. Books mentioned in this podcast include Ursula Le Guin: Steering the Craft and Conversations on Writing Stephen Kin

Viewpoint and Perspective

Nov 05 2024 43 mins  
In this episode we explore viewpoint and perspective in fiction. Rachel Knightley and Emily Inkpen discuss the different types of perspective and the ways in which a writers' instinct might dictate the best approach to telling their particular story. In the discussion Rachel references “Point of View: the thing that makes all other things more doable” which you can find on You