Introducing Character Study with Freya Bromley

Sarvat Hasin: Passage Reading – Strange Girls

Novelist Sarvat Hasin reads from the second chapter of her novel Strange Girls — the beginning of Alia's story. Sarvat and Freya talk about how the two narrators of Strange Girls arrived in different voices and tenses: Ava, bold and certain, who could only ever be written in first person, and Alia, quieter, rendered in a storybook third-person past. They discuss the novels woven through the book — Donna Tartt's The Secret History and Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence — and why an ambiguous relationship that's never named or declared can still change a person completely. Along the way, a conversation about what it means for writing to feel alive: raw, uncertain, and true to life, even when only a few stories have ever really been told. This is a conversation about voice, ambiguity, and the books that live inside the books we write. 🎥 WATCH the full episode HERE [https://youtu.be/3993BmiwN7U] 📘 Buy Sarvat Hasin's Strange Girls [https://uk.bookshop.org/a/11327/9780349703114] and Freya's novel: A Real Piece of Work [https://www.foyles.co.uk/book/a-real-piece-of-work/freya-bromley/9781529155433] 💛 Follow @freybromley [https://www.instagram.com/freybromley/] on Instagram for updates and to ask your questions 📚 Join Freya's newsletter at freyabromley.substack.com [http://www.freyabromley.substack.com/] for behind the scenes thoughts 🎙️ And hit subscribe [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/character-study/id1896655831] wherever you get your podcasts ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

Sarvat Hasin: When a Friendship Falls Apart

Novelist Sarvat Hasin, author of This Wide Night, You Can't Go Home Again and The Giant Dark , joins Freya to talk about her latest novel Strange Girls a novel that explores the relationship of two former friends forced to reunite at a hen party after a decade apart. She’s written many other award-winning books and is also in a workshop group with Freya, sharing early drafts with one another, which they talk about in this episode. They also discuss why friendship breakups are so much harder to talk about than romantic ones, what theatre taught Sarvat about structure and why she romanticises the mundane moments of her own life (and how that feeds directly into her writing). A funny, honest conversation between two friends about the creative process and everything it touches. 🎥 WATCH [https://youtu.be/NmFePvB8_SY] the full episode 📘 Buy Sarvat Hasin's Strange Girls [https://uk.bookshop.org/a/11327/9780349703114] and Freya's novel: A Real Piece of Work [https://www.foyles.co.uk/book/a-real-piece-of-work/freya-bromley/9781529155433] 💛 Follow @freybromley [https://www.instagram.com/freybromley/] on Instagram for updates and to ask your questions 📚 Join Freya's newsletter at freyabromley.substack.com [http://www.freyabromley.substack.com/] for behind the scenes thoughts 🎙️ And hit subscribe [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/character-study/id1896655831] wherever you get your podcasts ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

Lucas Oakeley – Listener Q+A

Author and Boys Book Club co-founder Lucas Oakeley answers listener questions in this Q&A episode of Character Study. Listeners ask Lucas where his creative spark comes from, whether he has a way of dealing with people who interrupt his energy (he doesn't, he thinks friction is good for you), and how he gets back into his novel each time he sits down to write. His tip: never stop writing when you have nothing left to say, stop when you know what comes next, so you always sit down with momentum. He also shares his niche Wikipedia rabbit hole hack for kickstarting creativity, and tells the story of spending a day visiting four London bookshops trying to find his own debut novel on the shelves, and not finding it in a single one. This is a conversation about the writing life and why, by bookshop four, he was absolutely fuming. 🎥 Watch [https://youtu.be/Mtq9_xvkpDE] on YouTube 📘 Nearly Departed [https://www.waterstones.com/book/nearly-departed/lucas-oakeley/9781835012949]by Lucas Oakeley 📘 Buy Freya's novel: A Real Piece of Work [https://www.foyles.co.uk/book/a-real-piece-of-work/freya-bromley/9781529155433] 💛 Follow @freybromley [https://www.instagram.com/freybromley/] on Instagram for updates and to ask your questions 📚 Join Freya's newsletter at freyabromley.substack.com [http://www.freyabromley.substack.com/] for behind the scenes thoughts 🎙️ And hit subscribe [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/character-study/id1896655831] wherever you get your podcasts ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

Lucas Oakeley: Passage Reading – Nearly Departed

Author and Boys Book Club co-founder Lucas Oakeley reads from his debut novel Nearly Departed in this passage episode of Character Study. Lucas reads the chapter What Dreams May Come, in which grief-stricken Joel describes a recurring dream to his therapist: a woman on the opposite platform at a train station, both reading the same edition of Wuthering Heights, their eyes meeting across the tracks just as the trains pull in opposite directions. Then he wakes up and does it all over again. Freya and Lucas then talk about why he always tries to make his therapist laugh, what happens when they don't, and how he edits his drafts — removing three or four jokes per paragraph until the ones that remain land harder for the space around them. This is a conversation about grief, dreams and why you're allowed to be funny and sincere at the same time. 🎥 Watch [Watch] on YouTube 🎥 Watch [https://youtu.be/WsWbINIrcao]the full conversation 📘 Nearly Departed [https://www.waterstones.com/book/nearly-departed/lucas-oakeley/9781835012949]by Lucas Oakeley 📘 Buy Freya's novel: A Real Piece of Work [https://www.foyles.co.uk/book/a-real-piece-of-work/freya-bromley/9781529155433] 💛 Follow @freybromley [https://www.instagram.com/freybromley/] on Instagram for updates and to ask your questions 📚 Join Freya's newsletter at freyabromley.substack.com [http://www.freyabromley.substack.com/] for behind the scenes thoughts 🎙️ And hit subscribe [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/character-study/id1896655831] wherever you get your podcasts ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

Lucas Oakeley: Why I Wrote a Rom Com About Grief

Lucas Oakeley is the author of Nearly Departed, a debut novel about a man navigating grief and love three years after losing someone close — a rom com that somehow manages to be genuinely funny. He's also the co-founder of Boys Book Club, a community built around the radical idea that men can just read books for pleasure, and a journalist whose bylines span Vogue, GQ, and Esquire. In this episode, he joins Freya to talk about the writer he always wanted to be versus the writer he actually is, and why those two things aren't always the same. They discuss what it means to write emotionally open fiction from a male perspective — and why an early agent told him nobody would want to read a rom com written by a man. Lucas talks about writing grief that's "fuzzy rather than sharp": the kind that happens three years on, when the emails still need answering and rent still needs paying. He and Freya also get into the strange intimacy of writing characters who are, essentially, all versions of yourself; what Boys Book Club is really for (it's not a men's mental health initiative); the moment he knew his book was real — a stranger in a falafel queue; and why social media is basically professional wrestling. A warm, funny, honest conversation about finding your voice, learning to let go of the book you thought you were going to write, and the small happy ending Lucas is currently hoping for. 🎥 Watch [https://youtu.be/WsWbINIrcao] on YouTube 📘 Nearly Departed [https://www.waterstones.com/book/nearly-departed/lucas-oakeley/9781835012949]by Lucas Oakeley 📘 Buy Freya's novel: A Real Piece of Work [https://www.foyles.co.uk/book/a-real-piece-of-work/freya-bromley/9781529155433] 💛 Follow @freybromley [https://www.instagram.com/freybromley/] on Instagram for updates and to ask your questions 📚 Join Freya's newsletter at freyabromley.substack.com [http://www.freyabromley.substack.com/] for behind the scenes thoughts 🎙️ And hit subscribe [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/character-study/id1896655831] wherever you get your podcasts ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.