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#169 - Sally Hepworth
372 Plays1 year ago
Best-selling contemporary fiction author, Sally Hepworth dials into the podcast this week all the way from Australia to chat about her latest novel, how she finds a different approach to writing each of her stories, where she finds inspiration and the dream of a big screen adaptation.
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:00:00
Speaker
To listen without ads, head over to patreon.com slash right and wrong.
00:00:04
Speaker
Ooh, a spicy question.
00:00:06
Speaker
I love it.
00:00:07
Speaker
Because the writing is sort of everything, right?
00:00:09
Speaker
You can fix plot holes, but if the writer... So some readers love that and some readers are like, but I wanted more of this.
00:00:15
Speaker
So it's kind of a gamble.
00:00:18
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to the Right and Wrong podcast.
Discussion of 'Darling Girls'
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Speaker
On today's episode, I'm joined by a New York Times bestselling novelist who has sold over 1 million books worldwide, all the way from Melbourne, Australia.
00:00:30
Speaker
It's Sally Hepworth.
00:00:31
Speaker
Hello, welcome.
00:00:32
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Hello, thank you for having me from the other side of the world.
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Yes.
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Thanks so much for joining me.
00:00:39
Speaker
Let's get straight into it with your latest release, the ninth novel, I believe, which is out in Australia, will be out in the UK by the time this airs.
00:00:49
Speaker
Tell us a little bit about Darling Girls.
00:00:52
Speaker
Darling Girls, like all of my other books, is about family dysfunctionality with a side serving of murder.
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So this particular family is three sisters who are not in fact biological sisters, but they were raised in foster care together.
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Speaker
And now at the beginning of the book, they are adults and
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Speaker
And they are living, you know, fairly functional lives, but, you know, with a few little idiosyncrasies.
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And then they receive a phone call from a police detective saying that a body has been found underneath the foster home where they
Real-life Inspiration for 'Darling Girls'
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Speaker
grew up.
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And the three of them are sent back to that little town to revisit their childhood and to figure out who the body was and if they were, in fact, victims or perhaps villains.
00:01:43
Speaker
It's great stuff.
00:01:44
Speaker
I wonder, Cold Case kind of things is very in right now.
00:01:49
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What is it about having a sort of murder that happened a long time ago that is kind of really engaging to write?
00:01:56
Speaker
Well, that's a great question and you're absolutely right.
00:01:59
Speaker
I've been watching a lot of them lately.
00:02:01
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It's the first time I've done it, a cold case, and I wouldn't say that I planned it that way or because it was on trend.
00:02:10
Speaker
Every book just is kind of guarded by what that book needs and this book was inspired by a real-life foster care
00:02:20
Speaker
situation that I read about in the news where there had been a little girl who had gone missing from foster care when she was three and then 25 years later
00:02:32
Speaker
an adult woman was watching TV, saw this program about missing children and had an inkling that the little girl on the news was
Writing Approach and Inspirations
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her.
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Speaker
And she then went to the police and she ended up having a DNA test and proved that it was in fact her.
00:02:49
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So that became the sort of, that was the impetus for the book, but
00:02:54
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I didn't want to retell that story, but it got me thinking about what if a child had gone missing, but in fact had not survived and their body was found.
00:03:05
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It's about what really works for that particular story rather than finding something on trend and trying to jam it in.
00:03:15
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Yeah, it was just a happy coincidence that it was a very popular thing.
00:03:19
Speaker
Exactly right.
00:03:21
Speaker
So is this the first novel that you've done that's been inspired by real life events or have the other ones also kind of... Almost always there'll be something from real life that has inspired it.
00:03:33
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It might be...
00:03:34
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a news article, which it's been a few times, like with this one, it might be something that I've overheard at a cafe.
00:03:41
Speaker
It might be, you know, a suggestion that someone's made to me or something my children have said.
00:03:48
Speaker
It does, it comes from the world.
00:03:52
Speaker
But it's rarely just one particular thing.
00:03:53
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And I never, for example, with the story about foster children, I never hear that story and think, I'm going to recreate that story.
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because that's not interesting to me.
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I have to create my own characters with their own stories and I don't know the real people's stories.
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So I will take that little kernel of inspiration and then perhaps one or two other kernels of inspiration or things that I'd like to explore and they all kind of come together to become something that is fictional.
00:04:24
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Yeah.
00:04:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:26
Speaker
And it sort of has to be that way because you kind of alluded to it earlier when you were talking about the novel, but your books are often the family unit, the kind of dysfunctional family unit comes first and the murder or the crime comes second.
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So obviously if you're basing it on a real life event, you don't know what the family dynamics are like necessarily, but you just know the step-by-step things that happened.
00:04:51
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Yes, exactly right.
00:04:52
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And that's how I see it too, that I always lead with it's the family dysfunctionality.
00:04:57
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That's what makes me tick.
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And that's what I love to read about.
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And that's what I love to write about.
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And the murder or the crime in my books is just sort of a vehicle to get us to really uncover what's going on with this family.
Evolving Writing Style
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Speaker
That's so interesting that you frame it that way.
00:05:15
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Would you ever write a story which was about a dysfunctional family that didn't have a crime or murder side plot to it?
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Again, I have never thought, oh, well, there needs to be a crime.
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What's the crime going to be?
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I always just write first stories.
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with the premise and then the characters.
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And some of my earlier books didn't have crime.
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I think my first book that had a murder was The Mother-in-Law.
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And, you know, with that title, obviously, we all knew who was going to get murdered and that was not the surprise.
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Yeah.
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that the mystery was who did it um and and yes I would absolutely uh if if I understood what I was writing that book for and what was going to happen and if the stakes were high uh and and it wasn't the crime that did it then sure I would write that book it's just that
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I think crime really lends itself very nicely to high stakes and also, you know, when you put crime and family together, I just always think you end up with something pretty interesting and a pretty good story.
00:06:25
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Yeah, because it's, I guess, on one end of the, with the crime and stuff, you're sort of pushing people to a limit in a way that's sort of breaking the law and like, will they get caught?
00:06:35
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Will they get away with it?
00:06:37
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And then on the other side, it's family sort of problems seem much more mundane, but they can be just as intense.
00:06:42
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So you have sort of two ends of the spectrum.
00:06:44
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Exactly right.
00:06:46
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Yeah.
00:06:47
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And I like to play into that, you know,
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something that's familiar to people and perhaps that they can identify with, like, for example, not getting along with your mother-in-law as, you know, that book is about.
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I think everyone, that was the most universal of all of my books that everyone understood it, but not everyone has murdered her.
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So that is a way of kind of, you know, getting people nodding and understanding and feeling that character, but then just taking it perhaps a little bit further away.
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just to see what might happen.
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Maybe it saved a lot of mothers-in-law.
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I don't know that they might realise, but maybe I won't go through with it.
00:07:26
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I've seen what happened.
00:07:27
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You're doing a great service to humanity protecting mothers-in-law across the world.
00:07:37
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So based off that, I'm going to guess if I were to ask you whether you were a plotter or a pantser, you would probably be on the side of pantsing.
00:07:46
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Oh, good, good guess.
00:07:48
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I don't even know the answer to that.
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Early on in my writing career, I would have said I was a plotter.
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Absolutely, I would have said that.
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In fact...
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I would have told everyone else that that's what they needed to do because I'd written one novel and I plotted it and that was how I did it.
00:08:04
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Now that I've written nine and people ask me how I do it, I don't know.
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I don't know the answer.
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I tell people to go and ask someone who's written one novel because they'll speak about it with
Writing Journey and Early Publications
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great certainty.
00:08:15
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Yeah.
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And they'll have a way.
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But for me, every novel is different and some of them are very tightly plotted.
00:08:24
Speaker
Some of them are more of a pantser situation where I have a premise and then I just go.
00:08:29
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And then I've kind of done everything in between, like a really loose kind of high-level plot or I will have a few scenes that I'll plan out and the rest kind of will be made up along the way.
00:08:41
Speaker
The thing that is consistent is that I always end up doing a lot of drafts.
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And whether I plot or I don't, nothing saves me from that fate.
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So a certain amount of it, no matter how much you plot, just happens as you write.
00:08:59
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And then for me, I get to the end and I finally figured out what the story is.
00:09:04
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And so I have to go back to the beginning and just make all roads lead there, I guess.
00:09:10
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Okay.
00:09:10
Speaker
Well, they do say most novels are written in the drafts.
00:09:14
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So I think no matter how much you plot, there's always going to be at least several drafts to go through.
00:09:22
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Well, I've met a couple of authors who, a friend of mine actually, will write from beginning to end and type the end and send it to her editor, which fills me with horror and dread.
00:09:35
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But
00:09:36
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That's kind of what I love about creative people is that we're all doing the same thing but so differently and we're also all desperate for things
00:09:46
Speaker
someone to tell us the right way.
00:09:48
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You know, it doesn't matter how many books you've written, how successful you are.
00:09:51
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You know, I've sat in a room with Jane Harper and Leon Moriarty and, you know, really fantastic authors who all their ears have pricked up and when another author started explaining how they do it because, you know, we all kind of have this deep-seated belief that we're doing it wrong and that we need to figure out a better way.
00:10:12
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Yeah.
00:10:13
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If anyone knows one, let me know.
00:10:17
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That's it.
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Because I think we're all, we're all searching for like, oh, come on, there must be an easier way than what I'm doing.
00:10:22
Speaker
An easier way.
00:10:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:23
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But deep down, we all know that there is no one way of doing it and you just have to do whatever works for you.
00:10:28
Speaker
Exactly right.
00:10:29
Speaker
Or whatever you decide to try that day is, is, you know, the right thing for them.
00:10:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:35
Speaker
I do think there's something to be said for trying different things.
00:10:39
Speaker
So like if you're someone who has only ever pantsed a novel and
00:10:43
Speaker
if you try plotting one, that novel might not work out for you because that's just not your style.
00:10:48
Speaker
But I think when you go back to the style you're used to, you will have learned or like picked up things just from trying at one time.
00:10:55
Speaker
Yeah, I agree.
00:10:56
Speaker
And I'm a big trier.
00:10:57
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I love to try.
00:10:59
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I'm very Gemini of me.
00:11:01
Speaker
Love nothing more than a new regime, a new way of doing things.
00:11:06
Speaker
But I actually, another friend of mine, an author, I tried to convince her to plot at one point and I got out all the index cards and I was going there and she just ended up throwing the index cards at me and saying, I'm not doing this.
00:11:19
Speaker
This is not how I do it.
00:11:22
Speaker
And I was like, well, okay.
00:11:23
Speaker
So, you know, not everyone feels like me about those things, but I like to try.
00:11:29
Speaker
I'm still hopeful that there'll be another way I haven't tried that's going to make it easier.
00:11:35
Speaker
But there's no wrong ways.
00:11:38
Speaker
No, exactly.
00:11:39
Speaker
I'm really interested in your kind of approach, it sounds like, and this is not just from the plotting or kind of panting point perspective, but it also sounds like when you were talking about
00:11:50
Speaker
whether you would do something without a cold case or like whether the family unit would be first and things like that, is that you approach every novel in an entirely unique way.
00:11:59
Speaker
You don't sort of say, okay, so this is what I did last time.
00:12:02
Speaker
So I'm going to do that and put a twist on it.
00:12:04
Speaker
This is what I did last time.
00:12:05
Speaker
It sounds like you really kind of have an idea and then you're like, let's just see, let's see how that grows and let's see how I'll tackle it based on how it develops.
00:12:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:13
Speaker
Exactly, yeah, which is why I find it really difficult to really nail down a premise when I'm speaking to my editors in the early days where they, you know, now my books, I'm lucky enough that my books are contracted before I start writing them and so my publishers, fair enough, want to know what I'm going to be writing about.
00:12:36
Speaker
And when I've decided on something, it's such a,
00:12:39
Speaker
pickle pie in the sky idea that I find really hard to explain.
00:12:44
Speaker
And, you know, the more they kind of push me to nail it down, the harder I find it because it, you know, reveals itself as I write.
00:12:56
Speaker
So I can pitch something that sounds wonderful, but I don't know if that's what the book's going to be like when it comes out.
00:13:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:04
Speaker
But I know all of the authors I know also have trouble with that.
00:13:09
Speaker
So I think I'm in fine company.
00:13:12
Speaker
Yes, you definitely are.
00:13:13
Speaker
I've spoken to plenty of authors who they'll land on a pitch that they like, give it to their editor or the publisher, and they'll say, yes, go ahead.
00:13:21
Speaker
And then sort of halfway through writing, they're like, but I want to go in this other direction now.
00:13:27
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:13:27
Speaker
And you absolutely just do that.
00:13:29
Speaker
And then you hope
Growth as an Author
00:13:31
Speaker
to hell that when you turn in the book,
00:13:33
Speaker
that your editor just won't have remembered what the initial pitch was about.
00:13:40
Speaker
I thought you were going to say that it'll be good enough that they'll be like, yeah, this was a much better decision.
00:13:45
Speaker
You're just like, please don't remember.
00:13:50
Speaker
Both.
00:13:51
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Either.
00:13:51
Speaker
You're always hopeful at that point.
00:13:57
Speaker
I'd love to dial it back a bit and ask about how long you've sort of been writing stories.
00:14:02
Speaker
When did you first start wanting to be an author?
00:14:06
Speaker
Oh, gosh.
00:14:06
Speaker
Well, I famously...
00:14:10
Speaker
I wrote my first book when I was seven years old and I decided I wanted to write a book and I sat down at my kitchen table and I wrote a book of short stories that I called Mustard and Ink.
00:14:25
Speaker
And my mum's sister, my aunt, was a publisher of school textbooks, you know, nonfiction books at the time.
00:14:34
Speaker
And so I rang her up and I said, I'd like you to publish this book for me.
00:14:37
Speaker
I didn't understand what nonfiction was.
00:14:41
Speaker
And I went to her house and she put a cover on it and I drew a picture and she wrote on that copyright, Sally Carradice, which is my maiden name, 1988.
00:14:49
Speaker
And at my first...
00:14:54
Speaker
book launch, you know, 10 years ago, my mum bought it and said, you know, it's always been written in the stars.
00:15:01
Speaker
And I said, well, thanks, mum.
00:15:02
Speaker
Why didn't you tell me for those 10 years when I didn't know what to do with my life?
00:15:07
Speaker
But, I mean, suffice to say, I always loved to write.
00:15:11
Speaker
And I think even more than to write, I love to tell stories.
00:15:16
Speaker
And so it might have been, you know, verbally I love to tell stories and
00:15:21
Speaker
And, you know, I love to write them down and to share them and to listen.
00:15:25
Speaker
And I was a big reader, I'm a big reader.
00:15:29
Speaker
So, yeah, I always feel like,
00:15:33
Speaker
when I'm talking to other writers or particularly when writers say that thing about the second book syndrome or, you know, getting that first book out and then they're looking at the second book and they feel a bit lost.
00:15:48
Speaker
That didn't happen to me because it wasn't,
00:15:51
Speaker
so much that my first book was the story I'd always wanted to tell.
00:15:55
Speaker
I just like telling stories and I could, you know, I wouldn't mind if someone said to me, here's an idea, go and write that story.
00:16:03
Speaker
But the fun part for me is bringing it into life and
00:16:08
Speaker
you know, a new story with all the bits and pieces that can make people feel and laugh and cry and be scared.
00:16:14
Speaker
So that's what really does it for me, that storytelling piece.
00:16:18
Speaker
So, yeah, so to bring that back, always loved it.
00:16:22
Speaker
I didn't start writing my first book, my first novel until I was 20,
00:16:30
Speaker
28 so 20 years after that first collection of short story um I then started writing my next my next and my first novel was that the was the first novel that you sort of wrote in full in seriousness was that your first published novel the secret of midwives
00:16:50
Speaker
No.
00:16:51
Speaker
In fact, this is a good story.
00:16:52
Speaker
This is the only author I've known that has this particular start to publishing.
00:16:58
Speaker
I wrote that book.
00:17:01
Speaker
It was called Love Like the French and it was the first novel I'd ever written during my first year of maternity leave.
00:17:08
Speaker
And I ended up landing a literary agent with that book, but he didn't find a publisher for it.
00:17:15
Speaker
He was based in New York and tried the New York publishers.
00:17:19
Speaker
And then
00:17:20
Speaker
When it wasn't successful, he decided to send it over to the Frankfurt Book Fair.
00:17:26
Speaker
And at the Frankfurt Book Fair, it had an offer from a German publisher, a very small, you know, offer.
00:17:34
Speaker
And so it was published.
00:17:36
Speaker
And so my very first book to be published was, in fact, in German.
00:17:40
Speaker
So the only two words I can understand in that book are Sally and Hepworth.
00:17:44
Speaker
So I thought...
00:17:47
Speaker
Okay.
00:17:47
Speaker
I have never met anyone else that that has happened to.
00:17:50
Speaker
So then my next book and my first book to be published in English was The Secrets of Midwife.
00:17:59
Speaker
Oh, that's so interesting.
00:18:03
Speaker
Did it sort of feel like you had two first publishings?
00:18:08
Speaker
Because the German one, I imagine, you couldn't do the same level of press or the same kind of fanfare because you couldn't read the book that you'd written.
00:18:19
Speaker
nor could anyone else, which I will say that now, you know, I've written nine more novels.
00:18:25
Speaker
I'm very grateful that no one can read it.
00:18:27
Speaker
And every now and then some people say, oh, my mum speaks German or I speak German or I'm going to buy it for my wife.
00:18:33
Speaker
And I say, oh, buy it.
00:18:34
Speaker
Just don't read it.
00:18:35
Speaker
Because there is something to say for, you know, those first books, you know, aren't always our best work.
00:18:43
Speaker
And I'm really glad that I did, I was able to kind of
00:18:49
Speaker
mature my writing and take it in a different direction.
00:18:52
Speaker
And The Secrets of Mid-Vibes is a book that I'm still, you know, really proud of and lots of people tell me that they love it.
00:18:58
Speaker
So I'm glad that that was the first one that was published in English.
00:19:02
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:19:03
Speaker
Speaking from that, do you feel like, and I'm going to guess the answer is yes, but do you feel like you have improved as an author with each book?
00:19:13
Speaker
Well, that's the hope, isn't it?
00:19:14
Speaker
I mean, you always want to.
00:19:17
Speaker
You always want everyone to say, you know, this one, the latest one is the best one yet.
00:19:23
Speaker
You know that you're in trouble when everyone's saying that book you wrote 10 years ago, that was your best one.
00:19:29
Speaker
You peaked.
00:19:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:31
Speaker
And I suppose at some point we will all peak, but look, I can see absolutely that the craft has improved and I find a lot of things easier.
00:19:43
Speaker
And I feel like probably most importantly, I've really nailed my voice, you know, that elusive voice that takes so long for a writer to kind of fully understand.
00:19:56
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I know my author voice and it comes very naturally.
00:19:59
Speaker
I don't
00:19:59
Speaker
think I could write that any other way other than, you know, in my own voice.
00:20:04
Speaker
But every book then is still a challenge in a different way.
00:20:09
Speaker
One book might be the plot that gives you grief.
00:20:11
Speaker
Another book might be the characters.
00:20:13
Speaker
Another book might be the particular research that you do or the way that you wrote it means that there's some knotty part in the middle that you can't figure out.
00:20:21
Speaker
And I've yet to have written a book that I found very easy or without troubles.
00:20:30
Speaker
So I think that might just be the way
Juggling Multiple Books
00:20:32
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it is.
00:20:32
Speaker
But yeah, my goal, like all of us, is just to keep writing consistently good books that people enjoy.
00:20:41
Speaker
And if I can do that, then I'm happy.
00:20:44
Speaker
I think there's a strong argument to be made that if it were easy, everyone would do it.
00:20:49
Speaker
There's a reason that it's difficult to write a book, let alone write a commercially successful book.
00:20:57
Speaker
Yeah, it's not easy, but it is the best job in the world.
00:21:02
Speaker
I wouldn't do anything.
00:21:03
Speaker
Luckily, because I don't have any other skills.
00:21:05
Speaker
So let's hope that we keep getting published.
00:21:12
Speaker
I am sure that's not true.
00:21:14
Speaker
No, it is.
00:21:15
Speaker
It's actually 100% true.
00:21:17
Speaker
But look, I'm doing okay right now, so I can keep on keeping on.
00:21:22
Speaker
Speaking of writing and like, I'm sure that you, it sounds like your approach nowadays is very kind of fluid.
00:21:30
Speaker
Like you said, you kind of tackle these stories as they sort of grow themselves.
00:21:35
Speaker
But do you have like a schedule?
00:21:38
Speaker
Do you keep yourself on a strict routine that kind of locks you down, forces you to write for a certain amount of time per day or something?
00:21:45
Speaker
Yes, if I'm in the drafting period, then yes, I usually have got a word limit.
00:21:52
Speaker
I usually kind of try and write 2,000 words a day roundabout.
00:21:56
Speaker
But now I write a book a year, which means that I'm pretty much straddling three books at any one time.
00:22:03
Speaker
I might be working on a first draft for one book.
00:22:06
Speaker
I might be doing publicity for another book and I might be editing a third book.
00:22:13
Speaker
And so it's a balancing act and it's very rare that I would have a whole week where all I'm doing is working on that book.
00:22:25
Speaker
I'd be jumping across all of the different parts of that.
00:22:29
Speaker
of being a writer, which includes, you know, paying invoices and editing and marketing and putting stuff on my website or touring or so, yeah, I mean I'm absolutely lusting to get back from the tour that I'm about to go on so I can sit down and maybe have a few uninterrupted weeks where it is, you know, get up and put on my tracksuit pants and sit at the desk and, you know, just get those words out.
00:22:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:58
Speaker
It's more of a rarity than the norm now.
00:23:03
Speaker
It's much more like, you know, finding a couple of hours here and there.
00:23:09
Speaker
But as you say, I mean, it's absolutely a job and I'm at the desk now.
00:23:15
Speaker
you know, eight to 10 hours a day.
00:23:17
Speaker
It's just that it's, you know, it's more likely to be like anyone at work that you do a bit of work, have a meeting, you know, jump back to something else.
00:23:26
Speaker
It's much less writerly than I thought it might be when I started out.
00:23:30
Speaker
Let's say that.
00:23:32
Speaker
Yeah, it's not like it's depicted in the movies where you're sitting looking out the window.
00:23:36
Speaker
It's not Colin Firth in Love Actually.
00:23:40
Speaker
All the time in the world.
00:23:44
Speaker
And also where is my house cleaner bringing me a sandwich?
00:23:48
Speaker
That's what I want to know.
00:23:49
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:23:53
Speaker
you you said you usually have sort of three novels you're sort of somewhere between a certain point across three novels at any one time is it do you find it useful to have that kind of to be able to sort of be like okay I'm doing this one for now I'm going to move to that one then I'm going to move to that one does it help kind of keep things fresh as you're constantly changing so that you can never kind of get bogged down in one story
00:24:17
Speaker
I think there are pros and cons.
00:24:19
Speaker
Like sometimes I think that there would be a lot more, it would be a lot better if I could just keep my head in one book at a time because, you know, it's just that kind of,
00:24:34
Speaker
you know, you pack up your tools and put them away and start working on something else and then you kind of have to get them all out again, so to speak, and that can take some time to get your head back into something.
00:24:45
Speaker
It definitely keeps things interesting and keeps things ticking along.
00:24:50
Speaker
It doesn't – and it means that I –
00:24:54
Speaker
I'm time poor and I'm constantly kind of jumping around.
00:24:58
Speaker
I like that.
00:24:58
Speaker
That actually works with my brain pretty well.
00:25:01
Speaker
If it was, you know, if we're talking about what is the most practical use of time, I think it would be much faster and probably more effective to just do one thing at a time.
00:25:11
Speaker
But who gets to do one thing at a time in this life?
00:25:13
Speaker
You know, no one.
00:25:15
Speaker
Everyone's, you know, at work and their kids are there and they're, you know, late for this.
00:25:21
Speaker
And so it's true with writing too.
00:25:24
Speaker
Certainly at a book a year.
00:25:25
Speaker
Some of the authors I know who write a book every other year or less than that, they get a lot more Colin Firth time.
00:25:33
Speaker
But for us one book a year people, no, it's a lot more jumpy than that.
00:25:39
Speaker
It's interesting.
00:25:40
Speaker
I know that some authors deliberately will be working on two.
00:25:44
Speaker
This is usually when it comes to series.
00:25:46
Speaker
And as a big fantasy reader, a lot of these big fantasy series run for like seven or eight books, but a lot of the authors will have sort of two concurrent series that are not related so that they don't have to write that one series back to back to back for like almost a decade so that they can move between the two.
00:26:06
Speaker
But I guess that's a certain thing.
00:26:09
Speaker
By the time I've finished a book, I'm definitely ready to dive into a completely different world.
TV and Film Options
00:26:15
Speaker
So I can see that, I think, to not have a bit of a palate cleanser between writing a series, which I've never done, so I'm kind of imagining this.
00:26:24
Speaker
I would find that really hard.
00:26:25
Speaker
And turning in a book, particularly having done all the edits and read it so many times, to then go back into a world with those characters, I don't know.
00:26:36
Speaker
Maybe I...
00:26:37
Speaker
I don't know if I could do this.
00:26:39
Speaker
You'd want a break.
00:26:40
Speaker
I think I would, yes.
00:26:41
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:26:44
Speaker
A palate cleanser, as it were.
00:26:46
Speaker
That's right.
00:26:47
Speaker
Speaking of books and their worlds, how many of your books have been optioned for TV and film?
00:26:55
Speaker
I think they all have now.
00:26:57
Speaker
I was just, there was, I'm pretty sure, and I need to confirm that, but I'm pretty sure all of them have.
00:27:07
Speaker
And I think the mother-in-law was the first one to be optioned, which was my fifth book.
00:27:12
Speaker
But since then they have all been picked up and, yeah, there's one I'm not sure about, but I'm pretty sure that all the rest of them have and they're all in different kind of,
00:27:26
Speaker
stages of development and seeing some scripts and things and
00:27:30
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's really exciting and, you know, who knows?
00:27:34
Speaker
It's such a long game that it's so exciting to have something optioned and then, you know, things start to happen but then there's a delay and there's writer's strikes and there's someone attached and then they're not attached.
00:27:46
Speaker
But just to have, you know, people interested and reading the books and talking about the books in Hollywood is, you know, incredibly humbling and I'm so excited and grateful.
00:27:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:58
Speaker
Yes, it's one of those, but it's one of those things where it's, there's some wild statistic of all it is, where it's like the number of books that are actually made into films from their optioning versus not.
00:28:08
Speaker
But it's, it's just nice to sort of dream.
00:28:10
Speaker
And you think one day, maybe I could go to cinema and see my book and realise it in live action.
00:28:17
Speaker
I know.
00:28:17
Speaker
And look, it's happened to some of my friends and I've been able to go along with them.
00:28:21
Speaker
And it's just, yeah, it's a really, it's a cool thing.
00:28:26
Speaker
And even if, you know, nothing happens with my books, it's fun to have got it to this stage.
00:28:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:32
Speaker
And for me, I suppose, one question that I've had a few times is,
00:28:37
Speaker
you know, do you dream about your book going to screen or, you know, the big or the small screen?
00:28:43
Speaker
And, of course, the answer is yes.
00:28:44
Speaker
But for me, I think that the most rewarding part is seeing it do well as a book because I am a, you know, a reader from way back and reading is still my number one thing.
00:28:57
Speaker
And so, you know, to have people actually enjoying my words and, you know, the scenes that I have created, I think that's the point
00:29:06
Speaker
that is the real privilege that the kind of screens that's a nice to have but the book doing well um for its own kind of sake that's that's pretty exciting to me yeah for sure i mean and that's its kind of original most raw most true form an adaptation will always be and like a version of the original right exactly right yeah
00:29:29
Speaker
If one of your stories were to progress through the kind of inter-pre-production and the adaptation was being made, would you want to be involved in that?
00:29:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:41
Speaker
Well, in the
00:29:44
Speaker
the option agreements that I have.
00:29:46
Speaker
I am an executive producer in the contract, which sounds so cool,
Role in Adaptations
00:29:52
Speaker
doesn't it?
00:29:52
Speaker
It's actually far less cool than it sounds.
00:29:55
Speaker
It pretty much just means that I get a credit at the end and I have a seat at the table.
00:30:02
Speaker
So they'll include me in their conversations about scripts and about writers and about
00:30:09
Speaker
casting and things like that.
00:30:11
Speaker
And I, being, you know, almost British in my ways of doing things, am very good at just deferring to the people who know me.
00:30:21
Speaker
more about it than me.
00:30:23
Speaker
And then, you know, every now and then reading the script and writing a comment just so they know that I've actually read it.
00:30:31
Speaker
And then just staying out of it and leaving them to do their best job.
00:30:36
Speaker
But, yeah, look, all of the people who have optioned
00:30:40
Speaker
my books they're people that I'm so excited to be working with and people who are real experts in their field and so I would really just consider it a learning process to be involved and then maybe if a few of them get made then I might have some things to say down the road when I've got a bit more experience with it
00:30:59
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:31:01
Speaker
I think that's the way to do it really, especially because screenwriting is a very different skill to writing prose.
00:31:08
Speaker
And then even beyond that, adaptation is a whole skill of itself.
00:31:14
Speaker
Making that kind of translate onto a different medium is a tricky thing to do.
00:31:18
Speaker
It's what I would do.
00:31:18
Speaker
And as an entirely British person, I would say, yes, 100%.
00:31:22
Speaker
I would immediately defer to everyone around me.
Desert Island Books and Conclusion
00:31:27
Speaker
Yeah, well, no, and I agree.
00:31:29
Speaker
It's a completely different skill to do screenwriting and I wouldn't be any good at it because I love narrative.
00:31:34
Speaker
I love the stuff that we say in between words
00:31:38
Speaker
the dialogue and, you know, what's really going on in their head.
00:31:42
Speaker
And, you know, so much of that is to do with the director and the actor if it's a screenplay.
00:31:47
Speaker
So, yeah, it wouldn't be something that I would be desperate to do, write a screenplay.
00:31:54
Speaker
Not yet.
00:31:54
Speaker
Anyway, maybe never say never.
00:31:55
Speaker
Maybe one day.
00:31:59
Speaker
So that brings us to the point in the episode where we go to the desert island.
00:32:05
Speaker
So Sally, if you happen to be stranded on a desert island with a single book, which book do you hope to be stranded with?
00:32:14
Speaker
It feels a bit basic to say this, but I loved Where the Crawl Don't Sing.
00:32:20
Speaker
I think that that's probably, I mean, I loved it and I also think that that is a book where I would really go over and over and, you know, you imagine on a desert island you might get to read it
00:32:34
Speaker
quite a few times if we're talking, you know, as long as Gilligan and, you know, the skipper were there for, I'd probably get to read it hundreds of times.
00:32:41
Speaker
And I think that there is so much more in that book than I would have got the first time that I read it or actually listened to it on audiobook.
00:32:51
Speaker
because some of the way she describes the swamp and the marsh, it's just so beautiful.
00:32:59
Speaker
And there's, you know, I think it's just such a beautiful story.
00:33:04
Speaker
So I think that would probably be it.
00:33:06
Speaker
My other favourite is A Man Called Ove.
00:33:10
Speaker
And I think, again, like a completely different book.
00:33:13
Speaker
But I think that character was just so well drawn.
00:33:16
Speaker
And, yeah, I could definitely read that book a few hundred times as well.
00:33:21
Speaker
A few hundred times.
00:33:22
Speaker
I mean, they're great choices.
00:33:23
Speaker
Both of those great choices.
00:33:25
Speaker
What is your Desert Island book?
00:33:28
Speaker
It depends on the week.
00:33:30
Speaker
What am I reading this week?
00:33:33
Speaker
My usual go-to is Small Gods by Terry Pratchett.
00:33:37
Speaker
Yes, yes, good choice.
00:33:39
Speaker
As a lover of fantasy and whimsy, Terry Pratchett really connects in a way that not many other authors do.
00:33:47
Speaker
Also Douglas Adams, but very similar trend.
00:33:50
Speaker
Because for me, I would need something silly and lighthearted, but also that refers to the sort of mundane things in life.
00:33:59
Speaker
And both of those authors are very good at being in the most British way, being like very mundane whilst also very silly and epic.
00:34:07
Speaker
Yeah, good choices.
00:34:09
Speaker
Okay.
00:34:10
Speaker
Well, thank you very much.
00:34:13
Speaker
And for everyone listening, look, I've got some questions coming up about craft and books and writing, as well as advice for aspiring authors and marketing as an author.
00:34:20
Speaker
But we're at the end of the regular episode and into the extended cut exclusive to Patreon subscribers.
00:34:25
Speaker
So anyone listening who hasn't yet joined the Patreon, please do think about it.
00:34:28
Speaker
It goes a long way towards covering the cost of running this podcast.
00:34:37
Speaker
Yes.
00:34:38
Speaker
What a way to end the interview.
00:34:41
Speaker
Thank you so much, Sally, for coming on the podcast and chatting with me.
00:34:45
Speaker
It's been super fun chatting with you and super interesting learning about all of your books and writing and your publishing experience.
00:34:51
Speaker
It's my pleasure.
00:34:51
Speaker
Thank you so much for having me.
00:34:53
Speaker
And I'm glad that the sound is okay from the other side of the world.
00:34:59
Speaker
Yes, who would have thought?
00:35:00
Speaker
Technology nowadays, eh?
00:35:01
Speaker
Amazing.
00:35:03
Speaker
For anyone listening, if you want to keep up with what Sally is doing, you can find her on Instagram at Sally Hepworth and on Facebook at Sally Hepworth Author.
00:35:11
Speaker
Or you can head over to her website, www.sallyhepworthauthor.com.
00:35:17
Speaker
To support the podcast, you can like, follow and subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts.
00:35:20
Speaker
To stay up to date, follow along on socials and for extended episodes, join the Patreon and you'll get it all ad free in a week early.
00:35:27
Speaker
Thanks again to Sally and thanks to everyone listening.
00:35:29
Speaker
We'll catch you on the next episode.