The Riff Raff Podcast: Writers community | Debut authors | Getting published

Amy Baker of The Riff Raff chats to debut author, Stephanie Scott, about her beautiful novel, What's Left of Me is Yours. They discuss how to effectively write about people falling in love, how to take inspiration from real life and craft it into your own narrative, and how to effectively combine extensive research with letting your novel guide you. Stephanie's novel is out now! Music: www.bensound.com.

Debut author and Founder of The Riff Raff, Amy Baker chats to Alex Allison, author of The Art of the Body - a novel about the relationship between a young artist and his carer. They discuss how to approach writing about disability, how theme informs plot and character informs theme, and how Alex used SMART targets to get his novel written around a hectic day job. They also touch on how to use events to drive a novel forwards, whether you need to define the 'wants' of your characters and how writing to make people think you're clever is a huge error. Music by www.bensound.com.

Amy Baker of The Riff Raff chats to Kiley Reid, author of Such a Fun Age - a novel that tells the story of a young black girl wrongly accused of kidnapping a white child and the events that follow. Amy and Kiley discuss writing a book that makes people question their perceptions, the multiple layers of effective dialogue, and why you must always think about what a scene needs to achieve before writing it. They also discuss taking on the subject of race with humour, how scrapped scenes are still forward progress and the importance of writing to the truth of your characters' experience.

Music: bensound.com.

Amy Baker of The Riff Raff chats to Elle Nash, author of 'Animals Eat Each Other' - a complex and impressive psychological exploration of obsession and desire. Amy and Elle chat about writing without judgement of your characters, giving yourself the necessary space for magical epiphanies to occur and using universal experiences to convey feelings and emotions that your reader may not be familiar with. Music by www.bensound.com.

Amy Baker of The Riff Raff chats to Richard Roper, author of Something to Live For, about how on Earth you write something 'life-affirming', the art of receiving and applying feedback and how writing chronologically helped him to stay motivated. Music: bensound.com

Amy Baker of The Riff Raff chats to Richard Roper, author of Something to Live For, about how on Earth you write something 'life-affirming', the art of receiving and applying feedback and how writing chronologically helped him to stay motivated. Music: bensound.com

Amy Baker of The Riff Raff chats to debut author Daniel James about his novel, The Unauthorised Biography of Ezra Maas. They discuss his genre-busting novel, which combines multiple disciplines, questioning the concept of truth, and playing with your readers expectations. Music by www.bensound.com

Amy Baker of The Riff Raff chats to Lara Prescott, author of instant New York Times Bestseller, The Secrets We Kept - a book inspired by the CIA plot to infiltrate Soviet Russia, not via propaganda, but via the novel, Doctor Zhivago. Amy and Lara discuss how books can change the world, writing historical fiction based on real life events and using visual exercises to understand the rhythm and balance of your novel. Music: www.bensound.com.

Amy Baker of The Riff Raff writers' community chats to Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, author of Sarong Party Girls, about inhabiting your characters to create a believable first person narrative, revelling in your story's details & conveying perspective shifts in your characters. They also discuss writing to tight deadlines, using humour to provide levity to dark subject matter and finding inspiration in the world around you.

Music: bensound.com

Amy Baker, author and Founder of The Riff Raff, chats to Ashley Hickson-Lovence about his debut novel, The 392. We discuss those special moments that spark book ideas, writing about one event from multiple perspectives, the challenges of taking on 11 different voices, and the art of editing a finale. Music: www.bensound.com/