D.V. Bishop, author of 'Ritual of Fire' - Historical fiction author talks his rules of writing, planning in the past, and tie-in novels
Writer's Routine
Dan Simpson
4.9 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 5 January 2024
⏱️ 76 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Happy New Year! Let's start 2024 with a bumper episode from a fantastic historical fiction author. D.V Bishop has published 3 'Cesare Aldo' novels, and the 4th is on the way. He's won the CWA Historical Dagger Award, and his novels are highly commended across the board.
His newest novel is 'Ritual of Fire'. It takes you to 1538 Florence, where a rich merchant is found hanged and set ablaze in the centre of the city, as a warning to put the fear of God into Florence... only Cesare Aldo can discover what's happening.
We talk through the process of planning historical fiction, how much he's strict on sticking to the facts of the day, and what happens when he's got something wrong. You can hear how he overcomes the challenges of using language approriate for the 1500s, why word-count isn't the end of the world, and what writing tie-in fiction is really like... how does it feel to be responsible for some of the most famous characters in the world.
This week's episode is sponsored by 'Who is the Cheese Wire Killer?', a true-crime podcast about Scotland's most gruesome unsolved murder... which is being solved at this moment. Take a listen wherever you get your shows.
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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. |
| 0:12.7 | This week we're chatting to historical fiction author, D.V. Bishop. |
| 0:16.5 | His newest novel is Ritual of Fire. |
| 0:19.0 | It's the third Chesire Aalo novel. We chat about how he plans |
| 0:23.1 | books set hundreds of years ago, how he keeps the stories, the plots the characters going, |
| 0:27.9 | across multiple books, how much he knows, how much he doesn't. Also, you can hear what his |
| 0:32.8 | strict rules of writing are, and all about his method of plotting inspired by some iconic British |
| 0:39.6 | characters. |
| 0:40.6 | And so what I've learned to do over time is to have a rough shape, have a sense of trajectory, |
| 0:48.8 | have a sense of where I'm going with the story, and then I, these days I do what what I call my Wallace and Gromit method to plotting. |
| 0:58.4 | So anybody hasn't seen it. In Wallace and Gromit, the wrong trousers, there's a lovely action |
| 1:01.8 | sequence where Wallace is on a toy train and he's having to lay the track down in front of himself |
| 1:07.3 | as he's weaving through furniture in a big action sequence. |
| 1:12.9 | And that's kind of how I plot. |
| 1:18.5 | I just lay down enough track in front of me to get to the end of the day within the chronology of the story. |
| 1:19.8 | There is more with DV Bishop in this week's writer's routine. |
| 1:47.9 | Yes, welcome along. Welcome back. It's writer's routine where we take a look through an author's working day. My name is Dan Simpson. Thank you so much for being there. Happy New Year. I hope you've had a brilliant holiday season and you've got lots more books to stick on the to-be-red pile, also that you've got a busy 20-24 ahead. |
| 1:52.9 | How would you like to start this year by helping to solve a murder? |
| 1:55.2 | By giving it a try at the very least. |
| 2:02.7 | This episode of Writers' Routine is brought to you by the new True Crime podcast, Who is the the cheese wire killer and it puts you right in the heart of things it's a brilliant new show which you can add to your |
| 2:07.3 | feed if you love writing a crime writing storytelling and podcasts and because you listen to the show |
| 2:14.8 | i think that you might i think you'll really enjoy this new show. |
... |
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