Ken Follett's Writing Routine Insights

Hi guys, it's Fern Cotton here from the Happy Place podcast. I'm just popping in to tell you about Good Luck To You, Leo Grand, the brilliant new movie starring the icon that is Emma Thompson and Peaky Blinders'Daryl McCormack. The film follows Nancy, a retired widow who hires a gorgeous young sex worker, hoping to fulfil a lifetime's worth of fun and passion that's been missing from her life. Emma Thompson brings the most brilliant positive, shame-free, life-affirming take on how sex can and should be enjoyed by all women. The new film Good Luck to You, Leo Grant, is exclusively in cinemas on June the 17th. Book your tickets now. Get ready for five days of feasting at Taste of London this 15th to the 19th of June in Regent's Park, bringing together the best restaurants, bars, superstar chefs, innovative producers and immersive experiences in one stunning... For the largest celebration of food and drink in the capital this summer. Book today and use the code COCKTAIL to get a free premium tails bottle cocktail with every ticket. On sale now at tasteoflondon.com. While stocks last, arrive hungry. Hello, welcome along to a brand new episode of Writer's Routine. This week we're with Ken Follett, a hugely successful author. Listen to this, sold over 178 million books across 80 countries. He usually writes historical fiction but he's back with a thriller, it's called Never. Now we talk about the pressure of huge success when you've got a team working for you and you're kind of writing for them as well I guess. Also... why his outline is crucial across three years of novel writing, and why he doesn't want to be too mealy-mouthed about things. Did I use a Latin or French-type word like, say, malediction when I really should have used a good old-fashioned English word like curse? You know, that's the kind of thing that occurs to me in the rewrite when I'm re-keying stuff. I realise that I haven't. I haven't used the best possible words. A sentence, I see a way to make a sentence easier to understand. I want my sentences to be understood instantly. I never want, I want, I never want people to read a sentence of mine twice. There is more on the way with Ken Follett in this week's Writer's Routine. Yes. Hello, welcome to the show. It's Writer's Routine. We take a look inside the working day of some of the world's most successful authors, and that's certainly true today. My name's Dan Simpson. Thank you for finding us. Thank you for following, streaming, coming back, downloading, however you've reached us. I appreciate you being there. Now, what I love most about chatting to the authors I do over the last, what, 200 episodes or so, and I hope you enjoy hearing this part of it at all, it's the wide range of writers we have. Some are just starting out, some have come to it late, some non-fiction, some memoir, some kids books and some enormously massive. Today it's one of those. Ken Follett has sold over 178 million books across 80 countries. He has a whole staff of people working on everything else. All the contracts, all the legal side of things, all the publicity. They do that so he can just focus on telling his story, on writing. pretty much every day of the week. Now we talk about how much pressure that puts on him knowing he's providing an income not just for himself but also for around 20 other people. Now if you've never heard of Ken before, if you've never read any of his books, he publishes those thick, weighty historical tomes normally with thousands of pages in them. He's best known for his Kingsbridge series, the Pillars of Earth from that went absolutely massive. It's set in medieval times, all about building a cathedral. A series was made about it and he's also published 35 other books. His new one is called Never. It's all about decisions that could lead to World War III. We talk about researching the story, about his china shelf that he's got at home. Also how he uses pictures that he finds online for his characters, how that interweaves with his outline, and why he takes quite a portion of time, a substantial portion of time, writing a novel. Talking of time, I didn't have the longest time ever with Ken, and we had some tech issues as well, which is why at the start, I'm going quite frantically, trying to make up for lost time. It's pretty frenetic, so I just thought I'd warn you about that. We jump into it, as we always do, with what Ken Follett sees around him in the place where he sits down to write. Mainly books. This is my library in my country house. And all the walls are lined with bookshelves. I also have a kind of... A desk that's kind of three quarters of a circle so I can spin around and access lots of different things. And odd things that are in the room. A few guitars. A lot of pictures of my children and grandchildren. A fireplace. And I've got the curtains closed at the moment because I'm doing some visuals later. But outside. The window is a cedar tree that is 200 years old. What colour are the walls? In here, it's a sort of, this is a rather Victorian house, so the wallpaper in this library is cream-coloured with a kind of burgundy Victorian pattern. Now, you've written books across many different places and times in history. Just give us a little flavour of some of the books that we'd find on your bookshelf behind you. What research materials are there? Well, now, let me see this. I've still got quite a lot of the books that I read for Never, which is the book that's published today. They are all about China, Chinese foreign policy, the White House. They're about predictions that various people have made about the Third World War. or war with China. And also a few, because China is so involved in Never, there are a couple of Chinese movies on DVD and a couple of Chinese novels and short stories as well. That's the China shelf. Take us to the desk that's in front of you. You said kind of semi-circular, so you've got full scanning all around you. What detritus do I find on that, little trinkets? I know sometimes authors love that kind of thing. I'm not superstitious, so I don't have anything here that doesn't have a function. I've got quite a lot of files and notebooks. I've got a letter tray. Far more pencils and pens than I will need in the next hundred years. And a few books close to hand that I use all the time. The Dictionary of First Names. Okay, why? I mean, you're someone who's written, I think, 37 books now. Why are you needing a dictionary of first names always with you? It's hard to think of them. And, of course, in real life, we don't use very many names. I mean, most people are called Richard or William or Edward or, you know, there's a very limited number of... of first names in common use. So you constantly have to, because you want to distinguish between your characters, of course. And my books tend to have quite a lot of characters. So it's often quite difficult to think of a name that you haven't already used for somebody else. And actually, one of my notebooks that's always in my desk, at the back, I keep a list of names that I think I might be able to use. I've got here Jimmy Passfield, Al Crockett, Cecil Pressman, Rob Appleyard, Bartholomew Small. There you are. They're all names that I've come across. Janet Gee, Pauline Hand, Laura Mallett, Kathy Keithley. There we are. All names that sort of seem to me like I might be able to use them one of these days. May I ask, are these names coming to you in a... fit of inspiration or are you coming across them on a gravestone perhaps and thinking ah kathy pressman that'll be great no i don't look at i don't go into graveyards in search of names um no um they just uh i sit sometimes i sit i wake up in the morning sometimes sit in bed drinking a cup of tea and i just get good names in my head and i write them all down um So where are we? So you're on your desk. You've taken me through the notebook. You've got the dictionary of names. What other, I guess, plotting and planning materials are around you? I mean, do I find you with post-it notes, a vast spreadsheet somewhere so you can keep everything in track? Well, on the bookshelf, which is just in front of me, the other side of my computer screens, I have got some ring binders. Some have the materials that I gathered for Never, because I still need to refer to those because I'm doing interviews about it. And some refer to my next book, the subject of which is a secret. I know what you're going to ask me next, but I'm not revealing the subject. But so I have when I come across something useful about some technical subject, as in in Never, it would have been. you know, where are the missile sites in North Korea? That was quite important. That's quite important in NEVA. Where are, they have many missiles in North Korea. Some have nuclear warheads and some have conventional warheads. And where are they? Of course, I mean, you can discover this from, I mean, the Americans, the CIA can discover this from satellite photographs. And then sometimes they just post the information. So that kind of thing, a map of North Korea showing where its nuclear missiles are, that's the kind of thing. I mean, that's gold dust, actually. So coming across something like that, I would print it and put it in a file which has similar material. So I've got my files in front of me. And on the same shelf is the usual paraphernalia of bulldog clips and sellotape and elastic bands and all that kind of thing that you use to keep all this stuff together. It's quite a thing when you do a lot of research. You do a lot of research and then you're in the middle of writing the book and you think, oh, I know, I read something about that. I know that. I know where those missile sites are. Now, where the hell did I put that map? So it's really important to try and keep all that stuff in order. So that's the ephemera of writing. What about the actual physical practice of it? Is it a laptop screen for you, paper and pen? Are you doing it the old-fashioned way? Talk me through actually how the words get down. Well, I have three screens in front of me. The middle screen is the one I'm writing on. On the left-hand side, normally, there is an outline of the book that I'm writing. I always start by writing an outline. And while I'm writing, I refer to it constantly. And when I've written the chapter or the scene, I delete it. So that's a kind of, so that's a sort of redacted, if you like, document, which basically shows me what I've got left. And if I planned to put something in chapter one and it just didn't fit, then I keep that scene up on the screen to remind me that I've got to do it at some later point. Otherwise, that story point will go unexplained. So that's on the left hand screen. And on the right hand screen, I have a spreadsheet in Excel on which I keep the details of the characters in the story. So as soon as a named character. appears in the story, I put an entry in the spreadsheet, the person's name, usually their age, if their age has been mentioned when they're introduced, which usually is one way or another. And anything I say to describe them, you know, like a woman may be, there might be a woman who is rather beautiful, although she has a big chin that suggests determination. That's the kind of thing. I might say, and I would make a note. I would paste. I would cut and paste that, copy and paste that so that I don't, A, I don't forget that she's got a big chin, or B, so I don't say it twice because that looks silly, doesn't it? So you don't want to say something like somebody's got a big chin. You don't want to say that twice. You say it once and then you make sure you don't repeat it. And then I also, on that spreadsheet, for the most important characters, I find a photo or a. Find a picture of some kind, photo, drawing, painting of somebody that looks like the person that I'm imagining. And I paste the picture into the spreadsheet so that I can remind myself. And this is, as time goes on, this becomes less and less necessary because the image of the person gets totally embedded in my brain. But in the early... times in the early chapters when I've got a lot of characters and I'm trying to keep track of them it can be quite useful to have a picture that just reminds me in you know a tenth of a second that I said um that she was a freckled redhead or something and writing is going in the middle that's on the main screen I would imagine I know I know this sounds this might sound very ordinary and tedious but what software are you writing on what font are you writing with as well Ken I'm using Word. I still mourn the passing of WordPerfect, which was much better than Word for me anyway. I used a lot of its features that just have never appeared in Word. But I use Word now because everybody uses it. And the font I use is Constantia, which is a bit like Times Roman, but it's a bit more elegant. I like it better. And actually, everybody in my office uses it. You know, it's like the standard office font. 12 point I use. I have an office about a mile or two from here. And they run the business. You know, they deal with all the foreign publishers and they deal with the contracts and all the financial statements and all that kind of thing. And, of course. fixing up interviews with people like you. And so that, you know, there are 25 people in the office, so it's quite a big enterprise. And they all use Constantia. It's the office standard, and I use it as well because I like it. It was gradual. First, it went from one secretary to six people. And then there wasn't room in my house for any more than that. So we got an outside, we got outside premises, and it went up and up. um um I had the help of an agent for many years. I don't use an agent anymore, but I did for many years. An agent is very useful, especially at the beginning of a career. But as time goes on, you have to take control of all these things yourself. And fortunately, a big increase in the paperwork for my business coincided with my wife, Barbara, retiring from politics. uh at which point i made her an offer she couldn't refuse and since then um she has been she she works full-time managing what's what we now call the follett office and it's 25 and it really needs a full-time manager i mean if i i myself tried to manage an enterprise of that size i wouldn't i'd never write a line i wouldn't have time how much responsibility do you feel from that has it changed the way that you think about storytelling that now it's not just you carving out your imagination, entertaining readers, you've also got to think about a lot of people that rely on you for an income. It doesn't. I don't think it's made any difference to the way I write. I've always been conscious from when I was first successful, I've always been conscious that a lot of people were relying on me to produce another bestseller because their living was involved. Before I had employees of my own, of course, they were my publishers in different countries who all had high expectations. And then there are all the people who work in bookstores all over the world. And I know that they think, oh, great, there's a Ken Follett this year. We'll do well with that. That's what the books ever say. And so, yes, I do think, as well as my own pride in... writing a book that people will love. There's also, I'm also conscious that all those other people also have a very acute interest in whether my next book is any good. But it doesn't really change how I write. I mean, if I had a smaller audience, I think I'd write in much the same way. Well, I generally wake up early. I don't set the alarm, but I generally wake up. between five and six. I get up at six o'clock and I make tea for myself and my wife and I come to my desk. I don't get dressed because the reason for that is that I'm full of ideas first thing in the morning and I like to get to my desk as soon as possible. And those early hours of the day are quite productive with me. So I work then fairly solidly um through to mid-afternoon obviously i take some time to have breakfast and have lunch and shave and all that stuff um but but my day up until that point up until mid-afternoon is focused on writing i slightly you know i i i'm a little less sharp by the time it gets to three or four o'clock in the afternoon and so at that point i stop writing and i do i look at my emails and uh and i usually tweet and deal with any sort of questions that come in from the office about business matters. Around about five o'clock, I leave my desk, leave the library, this library, beautiful though it is. And I usually make a cup of tea. And then I quite often play backgammon with Barbara. We find it a nice way to... Unwind for half an hour in the evening. And I'm the cook in the house, so I make supper and generally have a glass of wine or, to be honest, a bottle with supper. And read for an hour or two after supper and sometimes watch a television drama or a documentary. We often watch television for an hour before we go to bed. We go to bed quite early. go to bed between 10 and 11 and then i'm up again at six in the morning that's the day when you sit there at the very start of the day and you're you're in your pajamas whatever it is you're not fully dressed you've got all these ideas buzzing around how do you know what it is that you're writing that day you said earlier on on one of your screens you've got a vague outline Is that day specific? So you sit there and think, right, now I need to crack out so many words of this chapter. How does that part of it work? No, what the outline tells me is what's next. I actually begin by reading what I wrote yesterday. I think most people do that, but I certainly always do that. And I always improve it. So there's always shortcomings. So I read what I wrote yesterday. And then when I've dealt with that. I continue, either continue the scene or begin the next scene or the next chapter. And yes, the outline, by the way, it's not a vague outline. It's a very precise outline. I take a long time to produce it. It can take six months to a year. And it's quite precise. It tells me what happens in every chapter and who the people are. I will get into how forensic that is in just a sec. When you sit there of a day, is there an aim for how much you want to get done? A word count in mind? What constitutes a good writing day for you, Ken? Five pages, which is about 1,250 words, is a good day. Less than four is a bad day. It means that I've run into some kind of obstacles and it's taken me some time to get over them. And of course... If I'm in full flow, especially when it comes towards the end of the book, when all the preparatory work is complete and in a way I'm just watching the dominoes fall over. So at the end of the book, I might write eight, nine, ten pages in a day. How perfect do those words need to be on your first draft? Oh, well, um... I they're never perfect, but I do I I do every correction that I think of. So, you know, if I've written if I've written 100 pages and I realize that I've I've I'm steering in the wrong direction, I go back and redo the whole thing. I never I never say, oh. that I'll correct that in the rewrite. I never do that. If I thought of it, I'd do it. There'll always be plenty to correct in the rewrite. I won't be short of stuff to do. So it's not that it has to be perfect because I know, I mean, it's never perfect, but if there's a way to improve it and I've noticed there's a way to improve it, I have to do it. What is there during the day? You mentioned various moments where you'll stop for... breakfast and to have a shave when you're when it's a hard day and the words are struggling to come out along your 37 books have you learned anything that just helps unclog things a bit maybe a piece of music at a certain time a cup of coffee no i'm afraid um that kind of thing i don't have any of that those things i used to smoke cigarettes and um of course uh when i started writing full-time my consumption went up you know doubled And I had to discipline myself so that I didn't light a cigarette every time I had to stop and think, which is absolutely fatal. And for some years, I used to smoke one cigarette every hour on the hour as a way of preventing myself from smoking 40 or 60 cigarettes a day. That was always helpful, by the way. Lighting a cigarette was always helpful, but I don't do that anymore. And thank goodness. And so there is Barbara, my wife, Barbara says that she knows when I'm stuck because I walk up and down a lot. And I had I wasn't conscious of that until she pointed it out to me. But I suppose that must be true. It doesn't really make any difference. And you really are better off sitting in front of the screen because then, you know, your hands are ready to write it. And thinking about it is is. you know thinking about it's no good you're going to write it down so anyway um i don't have a magic formula i just a friend of mine from um from the northeast of england used to use the phrase nut it out meaning work it out but work it out like i bang it's like banging you know it's a cross between working it out and banging your head on the wall and he used to say nut it out and that's what i do i nut it out i just chew away at it until i think of something you Get ready for five days of feasting at Taste of London this 15th to the 19th of June in Regents Park. Bringing together the best restaurants, bars, superstar chefs, innovative producers and immersive experiences in one stunning restaurant. For the largest celebration of food and drink in the capital this summer. Book today and use the code COCKTAIL to get a free premium tails bottle cocktail with every ticket. On sale now at tasteoflondon.com. While stocks last, arrive hungry. Hi guys, it's Fern Cotton here from the Happy Place podcast. I'm just popping in to tell you about Good Luck To You, Leo Grand. The brilliant new movie starring the icon that is Emma Thompson and Peaky Blinders'Daryl McCormack. The film follows Nancy, a retired widow who hires a gorgeous young sex worker, hoping to fulfil a lifetime's worth of fun and passion that's been missing from her life. Emma Thompson brings the most brilliant, positive, shame-free, life-affirming take on how sex can and should be enjoyed by all women. The new film Good Luck to You, Leo Granz, is exclusively in cinemas on June 17th. Book your tickets now. London to the Grands. Hello, Friday listeners. Thank goodness it's Friday, right? The day we've been waiting for. Finally, it's the end of the working week and two glorious days of weekend stretch out ahead of us. Hashtag Friday! You're right, it's not Friday. Things just don't feel right when they're in the wrong space. That's why we're helping businesses find the right space with 60 London locations, your own office and flexible contracts. Space matters. Workspace. We'll have more with Ken in just a sec. A big order on the show today. If you're enjoying learning stuff from one of the most successful writers on the planet, if you've learned anything that might change the way that you tell your stories, if you want to say thanks to us for that, you can do that over on Patreon. By becoming a backer at patreon.com forward slash writers routine, you get loads more things available to you. There is bonus content, even more bonus content. You get our undying thanks. You get merch as well. There is also a way for your book to sponsor this show. I think this is the 200th episode. Near enough, the 200th episode. If any time along the way you've learned something and you would like to say thank you, that's what you need to do. It will help us carry on bringing you chats with the best authors around as often as we can. I think maybe we've missed one week all year. I don't know. We very rarely do miss a Friday. And you can help that carry on by backing us by pledging over at patreon.com forward slash writers routine. Let's get back to it with Ken Follett then. All about his new novel, Never. The events that could lead to World War III. In this half, we talk about how the process starts. What happens when he has the outline and how he moves on with that. Also, why he wants his sentences to be understood straight away. And he tries to be quite direct with them. And we pick things up talking about the writing routine of a year. He's such a machine of storytelling. He sells so many books. When he's finished one, how does he reset himself to start again? When I've finished, finished a book, which means really that the second draft has been reviewed by my editors. They've made a few suggestions. I've tweaked it and I've then sent it. back to them and I've sent it to all the translators. That's a point at which I can start working on something new. I sometimes say to myself that I ought to take a couple of weeks off and let the well fill up. But it never works because after a few days, something will occur to me and I'll think, I wonder if that would make a story. And I start working on it. I start elaborating it. I might read a book. book that's relevant you know a factual book bit of research and really pauses just I don't take I don't get much pleasure from stopping work I get pleasure from doing the work so so it would be almost immediate after I feel that I finished a book I almost immediately start another one and then normally if it's a long historical novel I would allow a year for the outline, a year for the first draft and a year for the rewrite. That would be my normal practice. And some of my novels have taken longer than that. The Pillars of the Earth was a bit longer than that. Sometimes they might be six months shorter. Never, of course, is not a long historical novel. And I wrote it in lockdown, so it was much quicker. But my normal practice, I would allow three years. And that initial period... of writing the outline and doing the initial research is absolutely crucial. And is this five days a week of work? It is now. Yeah, now, there have been times when I've worked seven days. When the publishers read the first draft of Never, they were very, very keen. And they said, please, please, please, can't you rewrite it faster than normal so that we can publish it next year instead of the year after? And you know, Dan, when your publishers are that excited, you don't sort of turn your back on them and say, no, I can't be bothered to write. write any faster. You say to them, I'm so glad you love it so much, and I'm going to break my neck to do what you want. And so Never was written much more quickly. But the general pattern is a year for that rewrite. And when I rewrite, I don't edit. I key the whole thing. And that's because when I read my own sentences, I'm a bit inclined to think that That's brilliant, Ken. You're a genius. But when I actually key them, I get focused on ways to improve them. And I find ways to improve the sentences that I didn't notice when I was just reading it. So it has turned out that literally rewriting is an important discipline for me. It makes me more perfectionist, more particular about. You know, the weight of words in a sentence. Did I, you know, did I use a Latin or French type word like, say, malediction when I really should have used a good old-fashioned English word like curse? You know, that's the kind of thing that occurs to me in the rewrite when I'm re-keying stuff. I realize that I haven't used the best possible words. A sentence, I see a way to make a sentence easier to understand. I want my sentences to be understood instantly. I never want people to read a sentence of mine twice. If the sentence is any good, they'll get it as soon as they look at it. But that comes with a bit of perfectionism in the rewriting. Well, it starts when I have the very first idea. I might typically write down three paragraphs and then I'll think about it and the next day I might write a page and the next day two pages. And quite soon I get to the point where it's actually taking me a whole week to rewrite the outline and it's getting more elaborate all the time. By the time I finish the outline, it's about 50 typed pages. And it says, it'll say Chapter One, and then there'll be a name, as it might be in Never. Chapter One begins with Tamara. There was a young woman CIA agent working in Chad, a North African country in the Sahara Desert. So I might say, I would say, Chad, I would say Tamara is 30 years old. She's from Chicago. She's working in the American embassy in Chad in North Africa, and she is an agent for the CIA. Today, she is driving to an oasis in the desert called Lake Chad, that kind of thing. And who's with her, what she looks like. And it's very, very important early, early in the story for a main character. What are her hopes and fears about life in general? What is she passionate about? So as it happens, Tamara is passionate about freedom. And that's why she's joined the CIA, because she really believes in that American virtue of freedom. Sorry to interrupt there, Ken. These, the passions and the hopes and the dreams, how are they coming to you? Is it flights of inspiration or is it studious brainstorming? I'm not a great believer in flights of inspiration. You know, this woman is going to be involved in quite a dangerous adventure and she's going to be willing to risk her life. So there must be something about the job that makes her willing to do that. And so in some ways, her character has to grow out of the story that I've invented for her. But then also comes a point a little further into the story where I'm starting to think now, we know her basic characteristics. We know what she wants out of life. But what else? Does she have hobbies? What are her parents like? Does she have a brother or a sister? How does she feel about her brothers and sisters? What was school like for her? Was she a good scholar? Was she badly behaved? What about her first boyfriend? What was he like? Who was the first person she fell in love with? That kind of thing. These things may not be directly connected with the story, but this is how she becomes, to me and to the reader, how she becomes a real person. Before you start, I guess when you've invented this character, Tamara, and you're going to plop her in this situation, how much do you know about the entire thing before you even outline? I mean, do you know the beginning, the middle and the end already? Or does that kind of come to you as you're figuring things out? Well, it's hard to answer that, actually. But it starts with a notion that gets me excited. So... In the case of Never, I was thinking about the First World War and how nobody really wanted it. And it was caused by a series of decisions, which the people making the decisions didn't think they were building up towards a world war. And I then thought, could that happen now? And I then thought, can I make a story about that? So I knew from the start. that there was going to be a global crisis that threatened to start the Third World War. So that's the central notion, that's the one sentence that sums up the idea that came to me. And so I guess I knew right from the start, I knew that at the end of the book, we would get close to World War III. I didn't actually know whether it would happen or whether there would be some way out of it or some alternative ending. And of course, now that the book's out, I'm not going to say, because the readers won't find out until the very last page how it ends. But I certainly knew right from the start that I knew what happened on the page before last. I didn't know what happened on the last page. And just lastly, Ken, as I say, writing is... quite often a method of self-analysis. You're always getting better. Otherwise, why would you do it? I don't know if this is still the same for you as you've written so many books. Is there anything about the way that you work, the way that you write, the way that you tell the stories that you would like to improve on going forward? I hope that's not presumptuous. There may be nothing. And if that's the case, that's fine. No, I constantly, when I'm reading, I constantly think, now that's a really good way. to tell this part of the story. And I must remember that. I think I do that all the time with all kinds of writers. I read the Victorians a lot. And I recently read The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Charles Dickens'unfinished novel. And I found myself doing that. I found myself thinking, I must write more like this, of course, I'm never going to be able to write. Nobody can write like Charles Dick, but you know what I mean. I think I see the things he does. Dickens has this marvellous thing called As If, he writes As If. He says, you know, he'll say something like it was raining. It was raining so hard. It was raining as if the Almighty had left a tap on up in heaven. and all the water in the universe was pouring onto this village. He'll do that as if all the time, and it always leads to a hyperbolic sort of image, which is brilliantly effective. And I was saying, of course, I can't do it like him, but I was thinking, well, I could do it a little bit like that, couldn't I? Put one or two of those things in, and I think that all the time. That is it for Ken Follett on this week's show. Hope you learned something. Hope it might change the way that you tell your stories. Maybe it'll impact your day. If it does, you can always say thanks. Pledge to us. Become a backer at patreon.com forward slash writers routine. Next week, we're with Joanne Harris, MBE, best known for Chocolat, became the movie with Johnny Depp in the early noughties. Yeah, she wrote it and she's on next week to talk about her new one. It's magical realism thriller in there as well. It's called. a narrow door that's next week in the meantime uh you can get in touch writersroutine.com you can drop us a follow on twitter we're at writers pod there and a review on apple always goes a long way if you have the time it takes like a minute i would really appreciate that and i'll see you next week with joanne harris on the show until then bye Hi, guys. It's Fern Cotton here from the Happy Place podcast. I'm just popping in to tell you about Good Luck To You, Leo Grand, the brilliant new movie starring the icon that is Emma Thompson and Peaky Blinders'Daryl McCormack. The film follows Nancy, a retired widow who hires a gorgeous young sex worker, hoping to fulfil a lifetime's worth of fun and passion that's been missing from her life. Emma Thompson brings the most brilliant... positive, shame-free, life-affirming take on how sex can and should be enjoyed by all women. The new film Good Luck to You, Leo Grant, is exclusively in cinemas on June 17th. Book your tickets now. Get ready for five days of feasting at Taste of London this 15th to the 19th of June in Regents Park, bringing together the best restaurants, bars, superstar chefs, innovative producers and immersive experiences in one stunning... For the largest celebration of food and drink in the capital this summer. Book today and use the code COCKTAIL to get a free premium tails bottle cocktail with every ticket. On sale now at tasteoflondon.com. While stocks last, arrive hungry.

Book your tickets now. Get ready for five days of feasting at Taste of London this 15th to the 19th of June in Regent's Park, bringing together the best restaurants, bars, superstar chefs, innovative producers and immersive experiences in one stunning... For the largest celebration of food and drink in the capital this summer.

Book today and use the code COCKTAIL to get a free premium tails bottle cocktail with every ticket. On sale now at tasteoflondon.com. While stocks last, arrive hungry. Hello, welcome along to a brand new episode of Writer's Routine.

This week we're with Ken Follett, a hugely successful author. Listen to this, sold over 178 million books across 80 countries. He usually writes historical fiction but he's back with a thriller, it's called Never.

Now we talk about the pressure of huge success when you've got a team working for you and you're kind of writing for them as well I guess. Also... why his outline is crucial across three years of novel writing, and why he doesn't want to be too mealy-mouthed about things. Did I use a Latin or French-type word like, say, malediction when I really should have used a good old-fashioned English word like curse? You know, that's the kind of thing that occurs to me in the rewrite when I'm re-keying stuff.

I realise that I haven't. I haven't used the best possible words. A sentence, I see a way to make a sentence easier to understand.

I want my sentences to be understood instantly. I never want, I want, I never want people to read a sentence of mine twice. There is more on the way with Ken Follett in this week's Writer's Routine.

Yes. Hello, welcome to the show. It's Writer's Routine. We take a look inside the working day of some of the world's most successful authors, and that's certainly true today. My name's Dan Simpson.

Thank you for finding us. Thank you for following, streaming, coming back, downloading, however you've reached us. I appreciate you being there.

Now, what I love most about chatting to the authors I do over the last, what, 200 episodes or so, and I hope you enjoy hearing this part of it at all, it's the wide range of writers we have. Some are just starting out, some have come to it late, some non-fiction, some memoir, some kids books and some enormously massive. Today it's one of those.

Ken Follett has sold over 178 million books across 80 countries. He has a whole staff of people working on everything else. All the contracts, all the legal side of things, all the publicity. They do that so he can just focus on telling his story, on writing. pretty much every day of the week.

Now we talk about how much pressure that puts on him knowing he's providing an income not just for himself but also for around 20 other people. Now if you've never heard of Ken before, if you've never read any of his books, he publishes those thick, weighty historical tomes normally with thousands of pages in them. He's best known for his Kingsbridge series, the Pillars of Earth from that went absolutely massive. It's set in medieval times, all about building a cathedral.

A series was made about it and he's also published 35 other books. His new one is called Never. It's all about decisions that could lead to World War III.

We talk about researching the story, about his china shelf that he's got at home. Also how he uses pictures that he finds online for his characters, how that interweaves with his outline, and why he takes quite a portion of time, a substantial portion of time, writing a novel. Talking of time, I didn't have the longest time ever with Ken, and we had some tech issues as well, which is why at the start, I'm going quite frantically, trying to make up for lost time. It's pretty frenetic, so I just thought I'd warn you about that.

We jump into it, as we always do, with what Ken Follett sees around him in the place where he sits down to write. Mainly books. This is my library in my country house. And all the walls are lined with bookshelves.

I also have a kind of... A desk that's kind of three quarters of a circle so I can spin around and access lots of different things. And odd things that are in the room.

A few guitars. A lot of pictures of my children and grandchildren. A fireplace.

And I've got the curtains closed at the moment because I'm doing some visuals later. But outside. The window is a cedar tree that is 200 years old.

What colour are the walls? In here, it's a sort of, this is a rather Victorian house, so the wallpaper in this library is cream-coloured with a kind of burgundy Victorian pattern. Now, you've written books across many different places and times in history.

Just give us a little flavour of some of the books that we'd find on your bookshelf behind you. What research materials are there? Well, now, let me see this. I've still got quite a lot of the books that I read for Never, which is the book that's published today.

They are all about China, Chinese foreign policy, the White House. They're about predictions that various people have made about the Third World War. or war with China. And also a few, because China is so involved in Never, there are a couple of Chinese movies on DVD and a couple of Chinese novels and short stories as well.

That's the China shelf. Take us to the desk that's in front of you. You said kind of semi-circular, so you've got full scanning all around you. What detritus do I find on that, little trinkets?

I know sometimes authors love that kind of thing. I'm not superstitious, so I don't have anything here that doesn't have a function. I've got quite a lot of files and notebooks.

I've got a letter tray. Far more pencils and pens than I will need in the next hundred years. And a few books close to hand that I use all the time.

The Dictionary of First Names. Okay, why? I mean, you're someone who's written, I think, 37 books now.

Why are you needing a dictionary of first names always with you? It's hard to think of them. And, of course, in real life, we don't use very many names. I mean, most people are called Richard or William or Edward or, you know, there's a very limited number of...

of first names in common use. So you constantly have to, because you want to distinguish between your characters, of course. And my books tend to have quite a lot of characters.

So it's often quite difficult to think of a name that you haven't already used for somebody else. And actually, one of my notebooks that's always in my desk, at the back, I keep a list of names that I think I might be able to use. I've got here Jimmy Passfield, Al Crockett, Cecil Pressman, Rob Appleyard, Bartholomew Small. There you are. They're all names that I've come across.

Janet Gee, Pauline Hand, Laura Mallett, Kathy Keithley. There we are. All names that sort of seem to me like I might be able to use them one of these days. May I ask, are these names coming to you in a... fit of inspiration or are you coming across them on a gravestone perhaps and thinking ah kathy pressman that'll be great no i don't look at i don't go into graveyards in search of names um no um they just uh i sit sometimes i sit i wake up in the morning sometimes sit in bed drinking a cup of tea and i just get good names in my head and i write them all down um So where are we?

So you're on your desk. You've taken me through the notebook. You've got the dictionary of names.

What other, I guess, plotting and planning materials are around you? I mean, do I find you with post-it notes, a vast spreadsheet somewhere so you can keep everything in track? Well, on the bookshelf, which is just in front of me, the other side of my computer screens, I have got some ring binders.

Some have the materials that I gathered for Never, because I still need to refer to those because I'm doing interviews about it. And some refer to my next book, the subject of which is a secret. I know what you're going to ask me next, but I'm not revealing the subject. But so I have when I come across something useful about some technical subject, as in in Never, it would have been.

you know, where are the missile sites in North Korea? That was quite important. That's quite important in NEVA.

Where are, they have many missiles in North Korea. Some have nuclear warheads and some have conventional warheads. And where are they? Of course, I mean, you can discover this from, I mean, the Americans, the CIA can discover this from satellite photographs.

And then sometimes they just post the information. So that kind of thing, a map of North Korea showing where its nuclear missiles are, that's the kind of thing. I mean, that's gold dust, actually. So coming across something like that, I would print it and put it in a file which has similar material. So I've got my files in front of me.

And on the same shelf is the usual paraphernalia of bulldog clips and sellotape and elastic bands and all that kind of thing that you use to keep all this stuff together. It's quite a thing when you do a lot of research. You do a lot of research and then you're in the middle of writing the book and you think, oh, I know, I read something about that. I know that.

I know where those missile sites are. Now, where the hell did I put that map? So it's really important to try and keep all that stuff in order.

So that's the ephemera of writing. What about the actual physical practice of it? Is it a laptop screen for you, paper and pen? Are you doing it the old-fashioned way? Talk me through actually how the words get down.

Well, I have three screens in front of me. The middle screen is the one I'm writing on. On the left-hand side, normally, there is an outline of the book that I'm writing.

I always start by writing an outline. And while I'm writing, I refer to it constantly. And when I've written the chapter or the scene, I delete it.

So that's a kind of, so that's a sort of redacted, if you like, document, which basically shows me what I've got left. And if I planned to put something in chapter one and it just didn't fit, then I keep that scene up on the screen to remind me that I've got to do it at some later point. Otherwise, that story point will go unexplained. So that's on the left hand screen.

And on the right hand screen, I have a spreadsheet in Excel on which I keep the details of the characters in the story. So as soon as a named character. appears in the story, I put an entry in the spreadsheet, the person's name, usually their age, if their age has been mentioned when they're introduced, which usually is one way or another.

And anything I say to describe them, you know, like a woman may be, there might be a woman who is rather beautiful, although she has a big chin that suggests determination. That's the kind of thing. I might say, and I would make a note. I would paste. I would cut and paste that, copy and paste that so that I don't, A, I don't forget that she's got a big chin, or B, so I don't say it twice because that looks silly, doesn't it?

So you don't want to say something like somebody's got a big chin. You don't want to say that twice. You say it once and then you make sure you don't repeat it.

And then I also, on that spreadsheet, for the most important characters, I find a photo or a. Find a picture of some kind, photo, drawing, painting of somebody that looks like the person that I'm imagining. And I paste the picture into the spreadsheet so that I can remind myself. And this is, as time goes on, this becomes less and less necessary because the image of the person gets totally embedded in my brain. But in the early...

times in the early chapters when I've got a lot of characters and I'm trying to keep track of them it can be quite useful to have a picture that just reminds me in you know a tenth of a second that I said um that she was a freckled redhead or something and writing is going in the middle that's on the main screen I would imagine I know I know this sounds this might sound very ordinary and tedious but what software are you writing on what font are you writing with as well Ken I'm using Word. I still mourn the passing of WordPerfect, which was much better than Word for me anyway. I used a lot of its features that just have never appeared in Word. But I use Word now because everybody uses it. And the font I use is Constantia, which is a bit like Times Roman, but it's a bit more elegant.

I like it better. And actually, everybody in my office uses it. You know, it's like the standard office font.

12 point I use. I have an office about a mile or two from here. And they run the business. You know, they deal with all the foreign publishers and they deal with the contracts and all the financial statements and all that kind of thing.

And, of course. fixing up interviews with people like you. And so that, you know, there are 25 people in the office, so it's quite a big enterprise.

And they all use Constantia. It's the office standard, and I use it as well because I like it. It was gradual. First, it went from one secretary to six people. And then there wasn't room in my house for any more than that.

So we got an outside, we got outside premises, and it went up and up. um um I had the help of an agent for many years. I don't use an agent anymore, but I did for many years. An agent is very useful, especially at the beginning of a career. But as time goes on, you have to take control of all these things yourself.

And fortunately, a big increase in the paperwork for my business coincided with my wife, Barbara, retiring from politics. uh at which point i made her an offer she couldn't refuse and since then um she has been she she works full-time managing what's what we now call the follett office and it's 25 and it really needs a full-time manager i mean if i i myself tried to manage an enterprise of that size i wouldn't i'd never write a line i wouldn't have time how much responsibility do you feel from that has it changed the way that you think about storytelling that now it's not just you carving out your imagination, entertaining readers, you've also got to think about a lot of people that rely on you for an income. It doesn't.

I don't think it's made any difference to the way I write. I've always been conscious from when I was first successful, I've always been conscious that a lot of people were relying on me to produce another bestseller because their living was involved. Before I had employees of my own, of course, they were my publishers in different countries who all had high expectations.

And then there are all the people who work in bookstores all over the world. And I know that they think, oh, great, there's a Ken Follett this year. We'll do well with that.

That's what the books ever say. And so, yes, I do think, as well as my own pride in... writing a book that people will love.

There's also, I'm also conscious that all those other people also have a very acute interest in whether my next book is any good. But it doesn't really change how I write. I mean, if I had a smaller audience, I think I'd write in much the same way. Well, I generally wake up early. I don't set the alarm, but I generally wake up.

between five and six. I get up at six o'clock and I make tea for myself and my wife and I come to my desk. I don't get dressed because the reason for that is that I'm full of ideas first thing in the morning and I like to get to my desk as soon as possible.

And those early hours of the day are quite productive with me. So I work then fairly solidly um through to mid-afternoon obviously i take some time to have breakfast and have lunch and shave and all that stuff um but but my day up until that point up until mid-afternoon is focused on writing i slightly you know i i i'm a little less sharp by the time it gets to three or four o'clock in the afternoon and so at that point i stop writing and i do i look at my emails and uh and i usually tweet and deal with any sort of questions that come in from the office about business matters. Around about five o'clock, I leave my desk, leave the library, this library, beautiful though it is. And I usually make a cup of tea.

And then I quite often play backgammon with Barbara. We find it a nice way to... Unwind for half an hour in the evening.

And I'm the cook in the house, so I make supper and generally have a glass of wine or, to be honest, a bottle with supper. And read for an hour or two after supper and sometimes watch a television drama or a documentary. We often watch television for an hour before we go to bed.

We go to bed quite early. go to bed between 10 and 11 and then i'm up again at six in the morning that's the day when you sit there at the very start of the day and you're you're in your pajamas whatever it is you're not fully dressed you've got all these ideas buzzing around how do you know what it is that you're writing that day you said earlier on on one of your screens you've got a vague outline Is that day specific? So you sit there and think, right, now I need to crack out so many words of this chapter. How does that part of it work? No, what the outline tells me is what's next.

I actually begin by reading what I wrote yesterday. I think most people do that, but I certainly always do that. And I always improve it.

So there's always shortcomings. So I read what I wrote yesterday. And then when I've dealt with that.

I continue, either continue the scene or begin the next scene or the next chapter. And yes, the outline, by the way, it's not a vague outline. It's a very precise outline. I take a long time to produce it. It can take six months to a year.

And it's quite precise. It tells me what happens in every chapter and who the people are. I will get into how forensic that is in just a sec.

When you sit there of a day, is there an aim for how much you want to get done? A word count in mind? What constitutes a good writing day for you, Ken? Five pages, which is about 1,250 words, is a good day.

Less than four is a bad day. It means that I've run into some kind of obstacles and it's taken me some time to get over them. And of course... If I'm in full flow, especially when it comes towards the end of the book, when all the preparatory work is complete and in a way I'm just watching the dominoes fall over.

So at the end of the book, I might write eight, nine, ten pages in a day. How perfect do those words need to be on your first draft? Oh, well, um... I they're never perfect, but I do I I do every correction that I think of.

So, you know, if I've written if I've written 100 pages and I realize that I've I've I'm steering in the wrong direction, I go back and redo the whole thing. I never I never say, oh. that I'll correct that in the rewrite.

I never do that. If I thought of it, I'd do it. There'll always be plenty to correct in the rewrite.

I won't be short of stuff to do. So it's not that it has to be perfect because I know, I mean, it's never perfect, but if there's a way to improve it and I've noticed there's a way to improve it, I have to do it. What is there during the day?

You mentioned various moments where you'll stop for... breakfast and to have a shave when you're when it's a hard day and the words are struggling to come out along your 37 books have you learned anything that just helps unclog things a bit maybe a piece of music at a certain time a cup of coffee no i'm afraid um that kind of thing i don't have any of that those things i used to smoke cigarettes and um of course uh when i started writing full-time my consumption went up you know doubled And I had to discipline myself so that I didn't light a cigarette every time I had to stop and think, which is absolutely fatal. And for some years, I used to smoke one cigarette every hour on the hour as a way of preventing myself from smoking 40 or 60 cigarettes a day.

That was always helpful, by the way. Lighting a cigarette was always helpful, but I don't do that anymore. And thank goodness. And so there is Barbara, my wife, Barbara says that she knows when I'm stuck because I walk up and down a lot. And I had I wasn't conscious of that until she pointed it out to me.

But I suppose that must be true. It doesn't really make any difference. And you really are better off sitting in front of the screen because then, you know, your hands are ready to write it. And thinking about it is is. you know thinking about it's no good you're going to write it down so anyway um i don't have a magic formula i just a friend of mine from um from the northeast of england used to use the phrase nut it out meaning work it out but work it out like i bang it's like banging you know it's a cross between working it out and banging your head on the wall and he used to say nut it out and that's what i do i nut it out i just chew away at it until i think of something you Get ready for five days of feasting at Taste of London this 15th to the 19th of June in Regents Park. Bringing together the best restaurants, bars, superstar chefs, innovative producers and immersive experiences in one stunning restaurant.

For the largest celebration of food and drink in the capital this summer. Book today and use the code COCKTAIL to get a free premium tails bottle cocktail with every ticket. On sale now at tasteoflondon.com. While stocks last, arrive hungry. Hi guys, it's Fern Cotton here from the Happy Place podcast.

I'm just popping in to tell you about Good Luck To You, Leo Grand. The brilliant new movie starring the icon that is Emma Thompson and Peaky Blinders'Daryl McCormack. The film follows Nancy, a retired widow who hires a gorgeous young sex worker, hoping to fulfil a lifetime's worth of fun and passion that's been missing from her life. Emma Thompson brings the most brilliant, positive, shame-free, life-affirming take on how sex can and should be enjoyed by all women. The new film Good Luck to You, Leo Granz, is exclusively in cinemas on June 17th.

Book your tickets now. London to the Grands. Hello, Friday listeners. Thank goodness it's Friday, right? The day we've been waiting for.

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We'll have more with Ken in just a sec. A big order on the show today. If you're enjoying learning stuff from one of the most successful writers on the planet, if you've learned anything that might change the way that you tell your stories, if you want to say thanks to us for that, you can do that over on Patreon. By becoming a backer at patreon.com forward slash writers routine, you get loads more things available to you. There is bonus content, even more bonus content.

You get our undying thanks. You get merch as well. There is also a way for your book to sponsor this show.

I think this is the 200th episode. Near enough, the 200th episode. If any time along the way you've learned something and you would like to say thank you, that's what you need to do. It will help us carry on bringing you chats with the best authors around as often as we can.

I think maybe we've missed one week all year. I don't know. We very rarely do miss a Friday. And you can help that carry on by backing us by pledging over at patreon.com forward slash writers routine. Let's get back to it with Ken Follett then.

All about his new novel, Never. The events that could lead to World War III. In this half, we talk about how the process starts.

What happens when he has the outline and how he moves on with that. Also, why he wants his sentences to be understood straight away. And he tries to be quite direct with them.

And we pick things up talking about the writing routine of a year. He's such a machine of storytelling. He sells so many books.

When he's finished one, how does he reset himself to start again? When I've finished, finished a book, which means really that the second draft has been reviewed by my editors. They've made a few suggestions. I've tweaked it and I've then sent it. back to them and I've sent it to all the translators.

That's a point at which I can start working on something new. I sometimes say to myself that I ought to take a couple of weeks off and let the well fill up. But it never works because after a few days, something will occur to me and I'll think, I wonder if that would make a story.

And I start working on it. I start elaborating it. I might read a book. book that's relevant you know a factual book bit of research and really pauses just I don't take I don't get much pleasure from stopping work I get pleasure from doing the work so so it would be almost immediate after I feel that I finished a book I almost immediately start another one and then normally if it's a long historical novel I would allow a year for the outline, a year for the first draft and a year for the rewrite.

That would be my normal practice. And some of my novels have taken longer than that. The Pillars of the Earth was a bit longer than that.

Sometimes they might be six months shorter. Never, of course, is not a long historical novel. And I wrote it in lockdown, so it was much quicker. But my normal practice, I would allow three years. And that initial period...

of writing the outline and doing the initial research is absolutely crucial. And is this five days a week of work? It is now.

Yeah, now, there have been times when I've worked seven days. When the publishers read the first draft of Never, they were very, very keen. And they said, please, please, please, can't you rewrite it faster than normal so that we can publish it next year instead of the year after? And you know, Dan, when your publishers are that excited, you don't sort of turn your back on them and say, no, I can't be bothered to write. write any faster.

You say to them, I'm so glad you love it so much, and I'm going to break my neck to do what you want. And so Never was written much more quickly. But the general pattern is a year for that rewrite.

And when I rewrite, I don't edit. I key the whole thing. And that's because when I read my own sentences, I'm a bit inclined to think that That's brilliant, Ken. You're a genius.

But when I actually key them, I get focused on ways to improve them. And I find ways to improve the sentences that I didn't notice when I was just reading it. So it has turned out that literally rewriting is an important discipline for me. It makes me more perfectionist, more particular about.

You know, the weight of words in a sentence. Did I, you know, did I use a Latin or French type word like, say, malediction when I really should have used a good old-fashioned English word like curse? You know, that's the kind of thing that occurs to me in the rewrite when I'm re-keying stuff.

I realize that I haven't used the best possible words. A sentence, I see a way to make a sentence easier to understand. I want my sentences to be understood instantly.

I never want people to read a sentence of mine twice. If the sentence is any good, they'll get it as soon as they look at it. But that comes with a bit of perfectionism in the rewriting.

Well, it starts when I have the very first idea. I might typically write down three paragraphs and then I'll think about it and the next day I might write a page and the next day two pages. And quite soon I get to the point where it's actually taking me a whole week to rewrite the outline and it's getting more elaborate all the time. By the time I finish the outline, it's about 50 typed pages.

And it says, it'll say Chapter One, and then there'll be a name, as it might be in Never. Chapter One begins with Tamara. There was a young woman CIA agent working in Chad, a North African country in the Sahara Desert.

So I might say, I would say, Chad, I would say Tamara is 30 years old. She's from Chicago. She's working in the American embassy in Chad in North Africa, and she is an agent for the CIA.

Today, she is driving to an oasis in the desert called Lake Chad, that kind of thing. And who's with her, what she looks like. And it's very, very important early, early in the story for a main character.

What are her hopes and fears about life in general? What is she passionate about? So as it happens, Tamara is passionate about freedom. And that's why she's joined the CIA, because she really believes in that American virtue of freedom.

Sorry to interrupt there, Ken. These, the passions and the hopes and the dreams, how are they coming to you? Is it flights of inspiration or is it studious brainstorming?

I'm not a great believer in flights of inspiration. You know, this woman is going to be involved in quite a dangerous adventure and she's going to be willing to risk her life. So there must be something about the job that makes her willing to do that. And so in some ways, her character has to grow out of the story that I've invented for her. But then also comes a point a little further into the story where I'm starting to think now, we know her basic characteristics.

We know what she wants out of life. But what else? Does she have hobbies? What are her parents like? Does she have a brother or a sister?

How does she feel about her brothers and sisters? What was school like for her? Was she a good scholar?

Was she badly behaved? What about her first boyfriend? What was he like?

Who was the first person she fell in love with? That kind of thing. These things may not be directly connected with the story, but this is how she becomes, to me and to the reader, how she becomes a real person.

Before you start, I guess when you've invented this character, Tamara, and you're going to plop her in this situation, how much do you know about the entire thing before you even outline? I mean, do you know the beginning, the middle and the end already? Or does that kind of come to you as you're figuring things out?

Well, it's hard to answer that, actually. But it starts with a notion that gets me excited. So... In the case of Never, I was thinking about the First World War and how nobody really wanted it. And it was caused by a series of decisions, which the people making the decisions didn't think they were building up towards a world war.

And I then thought, could that happen now? And I then thought, can I make a story about that? So I knew from the start.

that there was going to be a global crisis that threatened to start the Third World War. So that's the central notion, that's the one sentence that sums up the idea that came to me. And so I guess I knew right from the start, I knew that at the end of the book, we would get close to World War III. I didn't actually know whether it would happen or whether there would be some way out of it or some alternative ending.

And of course, now that the book's out, I'm not going to say, because the readers won't find out until the very last page how it ends. But I certainly knew right from the start that I knew what happened on the page before last. I didn't know what happened on the last page.

And just lastly, Ken, as I say, writing is... quite often a method of self-analysis. You're always getting better. Otherwise, why would you do it?

I don't know if this is still the same for you as you've written so many books. Is there anything about the way that you work, the way that you write, the way that you tell the stories that you would like to improve on going forward? I hope that's not presumptuous.

There may be nothing. And if that's the case, that's fine. No, I constantly, when I'm reading, I constantly think, now that's a really good way.

to tell this part of the story. And I must remember that. I think I do that all the time with all kinds of writers.

I read the Victorians a lot. And I recently read The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Charles Dickens'unfinished novel. And I found myself doing that.

I found myself thinking, I must write more like this, of course, I'm never going to be able to write. Nobody can write like Charles Dick, but you know what I mean. I think I see the things he does.

Dickens has this marvellous thing called As If, he writes As If. He says, you know, he'll say something like it was raining. It was raining so hard. It was raining as if the Almighty had left a tap on up in heaven.

and all the water in the universe was pouring onto this village. He'll do that as if all the time, and it always leads to a hyperbolic sort of image, which is brilliantly effective. And I was saying, of course, I can't do it like him, but I was thinking, well, I could do it a little bit like that, couldn't I?

Put one or two of those things in, and I think that all the time. That is it for Ken Follett on this week's show. Hope you learned something.

Hope it might change the way that you tell your stories. Maybe it'll impact your day. If it does, you can always say thanks.

Pledge to us. Become a backer at patreon.com forward slash writers routine. Next week, we're with Joanne Harris, MBE, best known for Chocolat, became the movie with Johnny Depp in the early noughties. Yeah, she wrote it and she's on next week to talk about her new one. It's magical realism thriller in there as well.

It's called. a narrow door that's next week in the meantime uh you can get in touch writersroutine.com you can drop us a follow on twitter we're at writers pod there and a review on apple always goes a long way if you have the time it takes like a minute i would really appreciate that and i'll see you next week with joanne harris on the show until then bye Hi, guys. It's Fern Cotton here from the Happy Place podcast.

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Transcript for:Ken Follett's Writing Routine Insights

Transcript for:
Ken Follett's Writing Routine Insights