It took Sophia ten years to get her first contract. If you’re writing your own stories, these conversations are designed to help you avoid all the mistakes she made. We look at themes such as plotting, creating compelling characters and what a publisher is thinking when they come to consider your book. You can hear our favourite tips, learn from our writing gurus, and listen to us disagree about what works as we explore the highs and lows of writing a book.

This series focuses on the world of children’s books, but almost all the ideas we discuss apply to writing fiction generally. So whatever you’re working on, settle in to listen to some serious talk about writing.

Before she started writing crime as SJ Bennett, Sophia was the author of ten books for teens, including 'Threads', which won the Times/Chicken House Fiction Competition in 2009, and 'Love Song', which won the RoNA Romantic Novel of the Year in 2017. She’s a visiting lecturer in Writing for Children, a Patron of Reading, and a Consultant Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund. Her latest book, written for Tate Publishing, is 'The Bigger Picture: Women Who Changed the Art World'. You can find her on Twitter https://twitter.com/sophiabennett, Instagram https://www.instagram.com/sophiabennett_writer/  and her very own website http://sophiabennett.com. 

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