Laure Van Rensburg, author of 'Nothing But Us' - Thriller writer discusses learning to plot, writing around work, and writing what you don't know
Writer's Routine
Dan Simpson
4.9 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 14 April 2022
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Laure Van Rensburg has been highly acclaimed with short stories, been published in magazines, and her debut, 'Nothing But Us', is out now.
It tells the story of Steven and Ellie, a professor and a student, on a romantic getaway to an isolated New York cabin. It's meant to be the perfect getaway, but he's not who he says he is... and neither is she.
We talk about why she's set it in a part of America she's never been to, confounding most debut practice by writing what she doesn't know. Also you can hear how Laure writes around her full-time job, how she's learned to be a plotter and why spreadsheets have really helped with that.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, welcome along to a brand new episode of writers' routine this week, |
| 0:12.5 | chatting to Law Van Rendsberg. |
| 0:14.9 | Law has been commended in short story competitions, been published in magazines, |
| 0:19.8 | and she's just published her debut, Nothing |
| 0:22.4 | But Us. It's all about a perfect romantic trip for two that goes horribly wrong. We talk about |
| 0:29.5 | how the idea that she had for this, the original one, all that came to her was just two people |
| 0:35.5 | in a car. That's it. How did she develop that? Also, we chat |
| 0:40.0 | how she manages writing around a full-time job, and you can hear how she gets to know her |
| 0:45.2 | characters along the way through each different draft. It's trying to understand who they are |
| 0:52.5 | by where they come from and what has happened to them before, |
| 0:57.6 | to then work at who they are in the moment or in the scene and then apply that to the story. |
| 1:04.7 | But it definitely doesn't come all at once. |
| 1:07.5 | It's kind of with each edit, I kind of get to know a bit more of the character or delves |
| 1:13.0 | a bit deeper into the character. There's more with Lor Van Rensberg in this week's |
| 1:18.3 | writer's routine. Yes, welcome along. Thank you for being there. My name's Dan Simpson. This is writer's routine, |
| 1:32.7 | where we take a look inside the working day of some of the best authors around, looking at how |
| 1:38.4 | they plan their time and their space to get their ideas down in the best way that suits them and what they're doing. |
| 1:45.7 | You can get in touch with the show, by the way. |
| 1:48.0 | If we're helping out what you do, if we're changing the way that you work, |
| 1:52.3 | or maybe you've learned a tidbit of a writing tip from somewhere else, |
| 1:56.1 | that you might think we could benefit from hearing. |
| 1:58.5 | Please, anything like that, let me know, share it with us. |
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