Sarah Pinborough: Relatable is Commercial

Here’s a clip of me mansplaining theme to bestselling author Sarah Pinborough, before she sums it up succinctly… 🙂



Or watch the whole interview on Youtube…


TRANSCRIPT

MARK: We have a thing called the Green Room where people… we talk about writing, and I bang on and on about things like central dramatic arguments and themes. When you say, what is your book about? You’ve just given us a brilliant example because you’ve, you know, it’s about the lies couples tell each other and that thematically, you know, runs through the whole story and it’s so strong because we spent, you know, eight minutes talking about it already. And I think we could talk about it all night. But it’s and that’s what I think makes your book so compelling because it is, you know, about these terrible truths…

SARAH: It’s that awful word, ‘relatable’.

MARK: ‘Relatable’.

SARAH: ‘Relatable’.

MARK: Relatable equals commercial equals money in the bank. Yeah, it’s Mike says 100%. All you need is a dog. And we had we had, we had Mike and his dog on here a few episodes ago, folks. I’ll, I’ll put a link in the show notes. You can check the episode out.

MIKE SHACKLE: I am a professional. I’m sorry.


LINKS MENTIONED

The episode with Mike Shackle and his dog…

Here’s my writing group The Green Room…

And here’s my favourite video on theme and the central dramatic argument with Craig Mazin…

Simon Scarrow on the Bestseller Experiment

One of the easiest jobs I had when I was a sales rep was selling Simon Scarrow’s books to booksellers. Of course, the writing is superb, but so much of that first book, Under the Eagle, had everything it needed to become a bestselling series. A great premise, a great package, and Simon knew exactly who his readers were. Lots to absorb in this one! I was joined by guest co-presenter Julian Barr, whose own fantastical historical fiction is definitely worth checking out. Have a look here!