Back then my working life was divided into two separate processes – newsgathering….and writing it up. I started in newspapers and ended up fronting a BBC TV news programme for fifteen years. I think it may stem from my decades as a journalist.

(Believe me, I’ve tried!) The best way I can describe it is that this plot-making part of my brain is like an app which works brilliantly in the background but if I open it and confront it demanding action, it simply freezes.

They feel like entirely different people and I simply can’t force make-it-up Teresa to the desk. Make-it-up Teresa and write-it-up Teresa. You see my brain seems to be split entirely in two when I write fiction. (I had enough rejection in my early years to know it’s pointless writing a novel unless it’s a book with a hook!) So this is when my process becomes infuriating and I just have to wait. I liked the idea of putting the two together – troubled Hannah and an idyllic cottage that suddenly turns very dark.īut I knew I needed a strong premise next. This gorgeous cottage for a time (until I pulled myself together!) felt alien. Suddenly I was listening out for every creak of the floorboard at night. But then one night, I noticed a reference in the visitor book to a ghost and I’m embarrassed to say it completely threw me. This particular cottage had owls hooting in the nearby woods and I adored it. We used to have a lot of bucket-and-spade holidays on The Lizard in Cornwall when the children were small. I started to think a lot about an idyllic cottage in Cornwall that I’d stayed in with my family twice. The problem? For quite a long time, I had no idea what current story to put her in. For Tell Me Lies it was troubled Hannah – still so haunted by a childhood trauma – who first stepped into my writing room.

So this is how it goes when I’m starting a new book…Ĭharacters always come first for me. It’s not ideal and I often wish I could work a different way but I can’t and so I’ve finally made peace with it. Sadly, I’m not one of those authors who can give my editor a list of five ideas and say – pick one.īetween us, my process is a bit strange and in my writing life, it has to feel as if the story has picked me. Ideas for books always take time in my world. | Reply More Inspiration behind Tell Me Lies, the sixth psychological thriller by two million copy bestselling author Teresa Driscoll

Teresa driscoll her perfect family