Richard Armitage, author of 'Geneva' - Actor talks writing audiobooks, creative exhaustion and what TV taught him about storytelling
Writer's Routine
Dan Simpson
4.9 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 22 December 2022
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Richard Armitage is a very successful actor, appearing in 'The Hobbit' movies, the Harlan Coben Netflix thrillers, and many more besides. He's also one of the most popular narrators for Audible audiobooks. So successful, they invited him to work on his own project for the platform.
The finished story is 'Geneva', a psychological thriller which follows scientist Sarah Collier and her husband Daniel at a global conference, when they realise they're in a high stakes game with hidden players and worldwide consequences.
We talk about his routine whilst staying in hotels all around the world, also how he managed creative exhuastion, and how acting actually gives you a lot of time to think through plot and to plan. You can hear how Richard's routine was mostly thinking things over before hand and working late into the night, often getting dragged off course by his characters.
We learn when he decided to seek out Harlan Coben's advice on psychological thrillers, and how the whole Audible project came about.
The connection Richard and I had was terrible, so you can blame the short run time, and slight editing leaps on that.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, ahoy and welcome to a brand new episode of writers' routine. This week we're chatting to Richard |
| 0:13.9 | Armitage. He is an actor, a narrator, and now an author. He's just released his first work of |
| 0:20.1 | fiction as an audiobook over on |
| 0:23.1 | Audible. We talk about his routine, most of it's in the planning and then working late. |
| 0:29.9 | Also, how much acting takes the creativity out of his writing. And even when he's plotted it out, |
| 0:35.8 | how much does he wander from that plan? |
| 0:37.6 | If your brain becomes interested in something, I don't stop it. |
| 0:40.9 | I sort of just go down that little tangent or down that path. |
| 0:44.0 | And even though you know I'm on the wrong track here for this chapter, |
| 0:47.9 | but I'm going to let it, you know, I'm going to explore it anyway and use it in a different chapter. |
| 0:53.7 | But there were some chapters that I couldn't wait to write anyway and use it in a different chapter. But there were some |
| 0:54.5 | chapters that I couldn't wait to write and some that felt like a chore I needed to do this |
| 0:59.4 | because it was connective tissue. There is more with Richard Armitage in this week's writer's routine. |
| 1:13.6 | Yes, welcome to writer's routine. |
| 1:19.5 | This is the show where we take a look inside an author's working day to see how they get stuff done, all types of authors. |
| 1:27.6 | To see how they plan things out to, well, both their day, their time and their idea to give them the best chance of getting it down, |
| 1:32.1 | getting it published, getting it onto the shelves, or in the case of today's guest, |
| 1:37.5 | getting it listens to. My name is Dan Simpson. Thank you so much for being there. I'll get it in early. I hope you have a very merry Christmas. If you're listening to this after the big day, |
| 1:40.8 | I hope you had a very Merry Christmas Christmas and you're in line for a brilliant |
| 1:46.1 | new year as well. It's an interesting one this week with Richard Armitage for a few reasons. |
| 1:52.5 | It's always a bit annoying to have to immediately prace at episode with excuses, but just bear with. |
| 2:02.4 | You'll have noticed that the length of this episode is a tad shorter than normal that's for a few reasons uh you'll note from the state of |
... |
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