Character Study

Screenwriter, artist and Murky Book Prize-winning novelist Sufiyaan Salam reads the opening chapters of Wimmy Road Boys: three young men in a BMW, cruising towards Manchester's Curry Mile at the start of a night that none of them yet know might be their last together.Sufiyaan and Freya talk about writing as a kind of method acting, how he inhabits his characters so completely that when they're in trouble, he is too, and the film-set principle of "method dressing" that shapes his approach to prose: build the parts of the room the camera will never see, because the reality bleeds through anyway. They discuss the histories buried in the text, from Tipu Sultan to Manto's Toba Tek Singh to Islamic Spain and Partition, and why he likes leaving them there as either a treasure trove or simply texture that feels real. And they talk about the pressure of being one of very few British Pakistani male literary novelists — and why he'd rather write questions than be anyone's spokesman.This is a conversation about the last night of being young, the work behind effortlessness, and why novels ask rather than answer.00:00:00 Introduction00:00:08 Wimmy Road Boys Passage Reading Chapter 1: three boys drive towards the Curry Mile00:04:40 Wimmy Road Boys Passage Reading Chapter 2: the homeless man00:09:28 The first chapter that barely changed00:12:06 "Method dressing": building what the camera won't see, and Martin Scorsese00:13:43 Writing as method acting00:14:09 Hidden histories: Tipu Sultan, Manto and Partition00:16:06 The last night of being young00:17:18 Can you come of age at any age?00:19:55 Why he doesn't want to be a British-Asian spokesman🎥 WATCH the full episode📘 Buy Sufiyaan's novel Wimmy Road Boys and Freya's novel: A Real Piece of Work💛 Follow @freybromley on Instagram for updates and to ask your questions📚 Join Freya's newsletter at freyabromley.substack.com for behind the scenes thoughts🎙️ And hit subscribe wherever you get your podcasts

Screenwriter and novelist Sufiyaan Salam won the #Merky Books New Writers' Prize for his debut Wimmy Road Boyz. He joins Freya to talk about his novel that follows three young British-Pakistani men across one chaotic night on Manchester's Curry Mile. Sufiyaan, who’s also a BAFTA-nominated screenwriter and animator, tells Freya where the book came from: a real night out where he wanted to tell his friends what he was going through but couldn’t, and wondered if they were holding something back too. They chat about why the novel is built to feel like a rap album rather than a novel, how screenwriting taught him to chase specificity and what it was like to take his dad to the BAFTAs. They also get into whether film audiences really are ruder than book audiences and why saying the dumb idea out loud is worth it if one in ten turns out to be brilliant.A funny, honest conversation between two writers about masculinity, specificity and throwing everything at the wall to tell a story.🎥 WATCH the full episode📘 Buy Sufiyaan's novel Wimmy Road Boys and Freya's novel: A Real Piece of Work💛 Follow @freybromley on Instagram for updates and to ask your questions📚 Join Freya's newsletter at freyabromley.substack.com for behind the scenes thoughts🎙️ And hit subscribe wherever you get your podcasts

This week, a special bonus episode: the prologue of Freya's debut novel, A Real Piece of Work, read by actor Ellie Kendrick. OUT NOWA Real Piece of Work follows Nola, whose memoir about her late sister Darina has become a hit — critics love it, producers want the film rights, and everyone in her family hates it. When an anonymous complaint about the book lands with her publisher, Nola is certain the culprit is one of her own relatives. As the family gathers on the remote island of Lundy to mark the fifth anniversary of Darina's death, Nola sets out to discover who made it before it does irreparable damage. It's a sparkling, spiky story about complicated families, who owns grief, and who gets to tell the story of those who are gone and those left behind.Want to know how Ellie brought Nola to life? Read Freya's interview with her in the Behind the Book series on Substack📖 Buy A Real Piece of Work🎧 Listen to the full audiobook📸 Instagram: @freybromley✉️ Substack: freyabromley.substack.com🎙️ And hit subscribe wherever you get your podcasts

Novelist Sarvat Hasin reads from the second chapter of her novel Strange Girls — the beginning of Alia's story.Sarvat and Freya talk about how the two narrators of Strange Girls arrived in different voices and tenses: Ava, bold and certain, who could only ever be written in first person, and Alia, quieter, rendered in a storybook third-person past. They discuss the novels woven through the book — Donna Tartt's The Secret History and Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence — and why an ambiguous relationship that's never named or declared can still change a person completely. Along the way, a conversation about what it means for writing to feel alive: raw, uncertain, and true to life, even when only a few stories have ever really been told.This is a conversation about voice, ambiguity, and the books that live inside the books we write.🎥 WATCH the full episode HERE📘 Buy Sarvat Hasin's Strange Girls and Freya's novel: A Real Piece of Work💛 Follow @freybromley on Instagram for updates and to ask your questions📚 Join Freya's newsletter at freyabromley.substack.com for behind the scenes thoughts🎙️ And hit subscribe wherever you get your podcasts

Novelist Sarvat Hasin, author of This Wide Night, You Can't Go Home Again and The Giant Dark , joins Freya to talk about her latest novel Strange Girls a novel that explores the relationship of two former friends forced to reunite at a hen party after a decade apart. She’s written many other award-winning books and is also in a workshop group with Freya, sharing early drafts with one another, which they talk about in this episode. They also discuss why friendship breakups are so much harder to talk about than romantic ones, what theatre taught Sarvat about structure and why she romanticises the mundane moments of her own life (and how that feeds directly into her writing).A funny, honest conversation between two friends about the creative process and everything it touches.🎥 WATCH the full episode📘 Buy Sarvat Hasin's Strange Girls and Freya's novel: A Real Piece of Work💛 Follow @freybromley on Instagram for updates and to ask your questions📚 Join Freya's newsletter at freyabromley.substack.com for behind the scenes thoughts🎙️ And hit subscribe wherever you get your podcasts

Author and Boys Book Club co-founder Lucas Oakeley answers listener questions in this Q&A episode of Character Study.Listeners ask Lucas where his creative spark comes from, whether he has a way of dealing with people who interrupt his energy (he doesn't, he thinks friction is good for you), and how he gets back into his novel each time he sits down to write. His tip: never stop writing when you have nothing left to say, stop when you know what comes next, so you always sit down with momentum. He also shares his niche Wikipedia rabbit hole hack for kickstarting creativity, and tells the story of spending a day visiting four London bookshops trying to find his own debut novel on the shelves, and not finding it in a single one.This is a conversation about the writing life and why, by bookshop four, he was absolutely fuming.🎥 Watch on YouTube📘 Nearly Departed by Lucas Oakeley📘 Buy Freya's novel: A Real Piece of Work💛 Follow @freybromley on Instagram for updates and to ask your questions📚 Join Freya's newsletter at freyabromley.substack.com for behind the scenes thoughts🎙️ And hit subscribe wherever you get your podcasts

Lucas Oakeley is the author of Nearly Departed, a debut novel about a man navigating grief and love three years after losing someone close — a rom com that somehow manages to be genuinely funny. He's also the co-founder of Boys Book Club, a community built around the radical idea that men can just read books for pleasure, and a journalist whose bylines span Vogue, GQ, and Esquire. In this episode, he joins Freya to talk about the writer he always wanted to be versus the writer he actually is, and why those two things aren't always the same.They discuss what it means to write emotionally open fiction from a male perspective — and why an early agent told him nobody would want to read a rom com written by a man. Lucas talks about writing grief that's "fuzzy rather than sharp": the kind that happens three years on, when the emails still need answering and rent still needs paying. He and Freya also get into the strange intimacy of writing characters who are, essentially, all versions of yourself; what Boys Book Club is really for (it's not a men's mental health initiative); the moment he knew his book was real — a stranger in a falafel queue; and why social media is basically professional wrestling.A warm, funny, honest conversation about finding your voice, learning to let go of the book you thought you were going to write, and the small happy ending Lucas is currently hoping for.🎥 Watch on YouTube📘 Nearly Departed by Lucas Oakeley📘 Buy Freya's novel: A Real Piece of Work💛 Follow @freybromley on Instagram for updates and to ask your questions📚 Join Freya's newsletter at freyabromley.substack.com for behind the scenes thoughts🎙️ And hit subscribe wherever you get your podcasts

Singer-songwriter Hope Tala answers listener questions in this Q&A episode of the podcast.Listeners ask Hope what she wouldn't change about the music industry, who her dream collaborator is — her answer is Kendrick Lamar, whose album To Pimp a Butterfly she wrote her university dissertation on — and how she navigates the pressure to post constantly on TikTok when she'd rather be writing. She also shares the message a stranger sent her ten years ago about a song she'd put on SoundCloud that made her realise making music might be her purpose — a message about grief, and a moment of peace — and why she still remembers it now.This is a conversation about what keeps a creative going — and why it's almost never the things you'd expect.🎥 WATCH the full episode HERE📘 Buy Freya's novel: A Real Piece of Work💛 Follow @freybromley on Instagram for updates and to ask your questions📚 Join Freya's newsletter at freyabromley.substack.com for behind the scenes thoughts🎙️ And hit subscribe wherever you get your podcasts