Triona Campbell, author of 'The Traitor in the Game' - Young Adult writer talks moving countries to write, moving from TV to novels, and moving obstacles
Writer's Routine
Dan Simpson
4.9 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 15 March 2024
⏱️ 65 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Triona Campbell worked as a TV producer and writer, creating many dramas and comedies for teens, and picking up 3 Emmy nominations. Through Lockdown (capital L?) she started writing a novel for teens... thus, a whole career change.
Her debut, 'A Game of Life and Death' went down very well, and she's followed it up with 'The Traitor in the Game'. It's about Asha, who enters an eSports tournament in New York, when it becomes harder to keep the game under control.
Triona has written radio plays too, and we discuss moving between mediums... what you gain, what you lose, what you learn and what you miss. She has recently moved with her whole family to Portugal, simply to write a novel - we discuss how this has helped and what life is like for her now.
You can hear about moving from TV to novels, why writing is all about the obstacles, and why it's hard to get the voice and tone right when writing for teens.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome along to writer's routine. This week we're chatting to Triona Campbell. Her new |
| 0:14.3 | novel is Y.A. Young Adult. It's called The Traitor in the Game. We talk about writing for teens |
| 0:20.6 | and getting the voice right. |
| 0:21.8 | It's incredibly tough to pitch that well. |
| 0:24.8 | Also, how she's written across different forms of mediums, radio and telly and now novels, |
| 0:31.7 | what has she learned? |
| 0:32.5 | What's the same? |
| 0:33.3 | What's changed throughout those? |
| 0:35.6 | And you can hear why an incredibly boring tone of voice |
| 0:40.0 | really helps. And at the end of the day, I will, normally, there's this button on Microsoft |
| 0:45.8 | Word where you can hit read aloud and I will put it into the most boring tone of voice |
| 0:51.7 | that I can find and read whatever I've written during the day, |
| 0:54.8 | get it read back to me. So you can listen to the words and realize, you know, |
| 0:59.8 | what words you've maybe used too often in the sentence and paragraph and start to like |
| 1:04.3 | fine tune in it a bit more and see what the cadence of it is and how it would flow. |
| 1:08.2 | There is more with Triona Campbell in this week's writer's routine. Yes, welcome along. This is Writers Routine where we take a look through |
| 1:22.4 | an author's working day. We see how they get stuff done, where they work, how they work, |
| 1:27.2 | how they plan their life, |
| 1:28.7 | their job, their families and their ideas to give them the best chance of getting things down |
| 1:33.7 | on the page. |
| 1:34.8 | This week we are sponsored by the new true crime podcast. |
| 1:38.5 | It's called Who is the Cheese Wire Killer? |
... |
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