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My Writing Life: Deborah Frances-White

Deborah Frances-White is a screenwriter, playwright, podcaster and author. Her books include The Improv Handbook, co-written with Tom Salinsky, and Off The Mic, co-written with Marsha Shandur, which was nominated for a 2016 Chortle Award. The Guilty Feminist, which was published in 2018, was a Sunday Times best-seller and led to the creation of her hit podcast of the same name. Her new book, Six Conversations We’re Scared to Have, was published in April 2025.

1. What book should every writer read?

Impro, Improvisation and The Theatre by Keith Johnstone. It is largely about Keith’s time directing and teaching at The Royal Court Theatre and RADA in the 1950s and 60s. He posits that grown-ups are atrophied children and relates how he regained his creativity by doing the opposite of what his school teachers had told him to do. He then developed those skills into a practice for his students. Writing is essentially improvising alone with your keyboard, so allowing yourself to trust your ideas and follow them down the rabbit hole is invaluable. If you only read one chapter of it, make it Notes On Myself. There are exercises in there you can do on your own, which will turn your brain on.

2. What is your typical writing day like?

Either hyper-focus or hyper-hopeless. I am all or nothing. The trick is to be ‘all’ often enough that the ‘nothing’ days don’t count. When I’m obsessed, there’s nothing else. I still wake up dreaming about writing my latest book, Six Conversations We’re Scared To Have, even though it’s out now (published by Virago Press and in all good bookshops and some mediocre ones).

3. Who has been an influential figure in your writing career?

I’m writing a novel set in the 1920s at the moment, so this week the answer is Evelyn Waugh.

4. What is the one think you wish someone had told you before you started your career as a professional writer?

Trying your hardest is not your best strategy. Your ‘obvious’ is your talent. Trust it. You can train your brain for story by reading lots and writing lots of drafts – but you have to risk being derivative to find your original voice. Keith Johnstone did tell me this, actually, but it can take a long time to internalise it.

5. What is the best advice you’ve ever received about your writing?

Cut unnecessary words.

6. What has been the proudest moment of your career so far?

Winning a Writers’ Guild Award for my BBC Radio 4 show, Deborah Frances-White Rolls the Dice. Or maybe making it onto the Sunday Times Bestseller List. I like to be reassured I’m not a fantasist from time to time, and there’s nothing like an establishment metric for success to make you feel you’re not in the wrong job.

7. What are you reading right now?

The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden and I’m rereading Brideshead Revisited.

8. Are you a bookmarker or a page-folder?

Page-folder. I can only apologise.

This article originally appeared on our Substack.

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