Chris Bridges, author of 'Sick to Death' - Thriller author discusses getting life experience, the crucial mid-point, steering clear of tropes
Writer's Routine
Dan Simpson
4.9 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 16 May 2025
⏱️ 60 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Chris Bridges has worked as an NHS Nurse, a theatre reviewer, a columnist and now is a published author. It was his work as a nurse, coupled with his Multiple Sclerosis diagnosis, that gave him the inspiration and experience to get the novel done.
The novel is 'Sick to Death', it tells the story of Emma who can't go to work because of a neurological condition. When her boyfriend won't finally leave his wife, she takes matters into her own hands. Emma is sick, but not in the way you think. WHAT A LINE!
Chris talks about why he wanted to write a character with disability, where the disability wasn't simply a trope that allows other characters to get on with the plot. Yet also, how that influenced the character arc he could write. You can hear how he got into Emma's head, and told her side of a story dealing with disability. We discuss how much he thought about the genre he was writing in, how he found the crucial mid-point, and how living with M.S. affects his daily writing in ways we don't consider.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome along to a brand new episode of writer's routine. This week we're chatting to Chris Bridges. |
| 0:15.4 | Chris has been inspired by his own MS diagnosis to write the novel, Sick to Death, where we learn about |
| 0:23.1 | Emma, who is sick, but not in the way that you thought. |
| 0:26.6 | It's such a good tagline. |
| 0:30.0 | You can hear why he wanted to write fiction where illness is a part of the story, but not |
| 0:34.3 | a cliched trope half-heartedly thrown in. |
| 0:37.2 | So for the end point of a sick person, there's three options usually in fiction. One is that they get better. One is that they die. And the other one would be that they're proven to be a fake. And I'm not saying that I don't like those books. I don't mind them at all. You know, it doesn't bother me. If it's done well, it's fine. and if it's done respectfully, the main character is chronically ill. She's not going to get better. |
| 0:57.8 | Like me. If it's done well, it's fine. If it's done respectfully. The main character is chronically ill. She's not going to get better, like me. She's not going to die. |
| 1:00.9 | I kind of thought, what if I sort of flipped these tropes? |
| 1:04.2 | Also, we talk about why working as a nurse gave Chris the inspiration to write. |
| 1:08.9 | It was so much drama and so much character that for me, |
| 1:13.6 | it was just fascinating because people were so interesting and I was really intrigued by the |
| 1:18.4 | patients and by the stories and the things that were happening to them and the things around them. |
| 1:23.6 | And I was that person. I kind of always chose to make life a bit harder for myself. I didn't want to |
| 1:28.7 | do anything that was quite routine. I always wanted to go and work on the wards where things were |
| 1:34.4 | quite rough. So I kind of chose quite sort of sharp end things. But I think all of the experience |
| 1:41.0 | of being around people for all of those years. |
| 1:44.4 | It's really useful for writing. |
| 1:46.1 | It's all on the way with Chris Bridges in a brand new writer's routine. |
| 1:57.1 | Yes, welcome along to the show. |
| 1:59.7 | My name's Samson. This is writers' routine where we take a look inside an author's working day. We see what, where, and when they do everything, how do they give themselves the best chance of getting words on the page, then a book onto a shelf, and hopefully into your home. Now, a couple of days ago, we had a good chat on my |
| 2:21.4 | substack page about plotting versus panting, which side of the fence do you fall down? I interviewed |
... |
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