London Writers' Salon
#169: Adele Parks — Writing 25 Bestsellers in 25 Years: Discipline, Voice, and Long-Term Success in Commercial Fiction
Episode Summary
Bestselling novelist Adele Parks on her writing life, routines and techniques, character work, and creative strategies that have kept her stories fresh and her readership devoted for over two decades.
Episode Notes
Bestselling novelist Adele Parks on her writing life, routines and techniques, character work, and creative strategies that have kept her stories fresh and her readership devoted for over two decades.
You'll learn:
- How Adele moved from imitating other writers to trusting her own voice and background.
- How loss and adversity can shape resilience and urgency in writing.
- Why Adele treats discipline as a secret weapon and uses daily word targets to deliver a book a year.
- How to test ideas and use character interviews to build stories.
- How Adele outlines chapters, tracks point of view balance, and keeps multiple narrators emotionally coherent.
- The truth about plot in commercial fiction and what to do if you feel like “nothing happens” in your writing.
- How to handle criticism and reviews while still writing primarily to fulfil yourself.
- Why Adele writes to connect with readers, what “adding to the sum of happiness” means to her, and how she stays grounded around money and success.
Resources and Links:
About Adele Parks
Adele Parks is the author of 25 bestselling novels, including the Sunday Times number one hits Lies Lies Lies and Just My Luck; over six million English editions of her books have been sold, and her work has been translated into 31 languages. She is an ambassador for the National Literacy Trust and the Reading Agency in the UK, and in 2022 she was awarded an MBE for services to literature.