Anatomy Of A Scandal author Sarah Vaughan: How creative coaching helped me write again

Author Sarah Vaughan recalls that late last year she sought ‘creative coaching’ for a touch of writer’s block, possibly brought on by her worries that she would not be able to produce another book matching the success of her third novel, Anatomy Of A Scandal, which became an instant bestseller, followed by a hit Netflix series starring Sienna Miller.

“I had a couple of sessions with a creative coach,” she explains. “He talked about things like, ‘Do you worry that you’ll never write anything as good as Anatomy?’ I think I have the luxury that I’m not having to write two books a year, or writing a book a year. I had got a bit stuck on the new book,” she explains.

She has now changed her routine, writing the book she’s currently working on in longhand.

“I write much faster and, having written some successful books, I have this burden I put on myself, this expectation that everything I write is going to be better.

“I really worked well as a journalist when I had a deadline, particularly working in the lobby when I would sometimes write five stories a day.

“But when you haven’t got that and you have 100,000 words to write, it can feel quite daunting, so I started writing by hand.”

The author, whose 2020 novel Little Disasters was made into a TV adaptation starring Diane Kruger and whose 2022 book Reputation is now in development, has always written from home, but is considering venturing to cafes, taking her noise-cancelling headphones and writing her prose in a notebook for a couple of hours before returning home to type it up.

The former Press Association trainee and Guardian political correspondent, who read English at Oxford and whose first two books were not successful, is well versed in the corridors of power at Westminster and covering high-profile trials.

Her books have delved into privilege, consent and social media bullying among young girls – the latter of which plays a big part in Reputation. She has also drawn on past experiences for her novels.

She says she was the victim of a sexual assault in her 20s, which she was able to draw on for Anatomy Of A Scandal, published in 2018. The story is about a high-flying MP accused of rape and the impact on the women involved as the trial follows and his wife navigates the scandal. The book, which had been snapped up for a six-figure sum by the publishers at auction, was an instant bestseller.

“It was published three months after the (Harvey) Weinstein allegations so it was obviously very topical,” she recalls.

The TV adaptation in 2022, starring Sienna Miller, Michelle Dockery and Rupert Friend, became a worldwide number one Netflix limited series, watched for 200 million hours in its first month alone.

Vaughan admits that she worries that she’ll never be able to top Anatomy Of A Scandal in terms of success.

“But my lovely friend (bestselling mystery writer) Eve Chase said to me, ‘But you’ve had that’. I might not get another Netflix show and a number four bestseller again, but I’ve had it. But equally, how do you define ‘topping it’?

“It might be that my writing gets better because there are still things in Anatomy that I think if I were writing it now, I would alter. Hopefully, I will write a better book.

“I don’t think I’ll ever necessarily be so ‘zeitgeisty’ because I kind of predicted it before it happened.”

Vaughan has been executive producer on all the adaptations of her novels.

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While she acknowledges that executive producer can be a “vanity title”, she was keen to get involved.

“I’m quite conscientious and possibly controlling, so I took it quite seriously. Giving notes on someone else’s scripts is easier than writing a novel. I really learned so much from it.”

She went onto the set of a mock-up of the Old Bailey for Anatomy and did feel a little starstruck, she admits.

“I walked in the back of where the judge was, and I saw Sienna up in the public gallery knitting between takes, and Michelle was being a lawyer, and Rupert was in the dock being cross-examined. And this lovely voice from above said ‘Sarah!’ and waved – and it was Sienna.

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“I went to the premiere, to the after party in Sienna’s penthouse suite. I thought we’re going to be BFFs. But obviously she’s had two more babies since then. They were all lovely, so bright and engaged with the subject.”

She learned from scriptwriter David E Kelley, who had worked on the TV adaptations of The Lincoln Lawyer and Big Little Lies, how to write shorter scenes and cliffhangers, she remembers.

Eight years after Anatomy was published, Vaughan’s sixth novel, Based On A True Story, is still twisty, but slightly lighter than her previous bestsellers. Not yet optioned for screen adaptation, Vaughan wants to wait until the book takes off.

The story begins with the discovery of a body on a beach – and then rewinds to the run-up to fictional famous children’s author Dame Eleanor Kingman’s 70th birthday party at her new clifftop Cornish home.

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As her three very different daughters and many friends gather and a TV crew sets up to film a documentary about her life, there are some murky goings-on in the background, namely she is being sent sinister emails threatening to reveal her real past at the party.

There are plenty of shadowy characters, dodgy partners and much sibling jostling, as her daughters battle their own demons.

She drew on the tight bond which exists between sisters and mothers, she says. Vaughan, daughter of a solicitor and an English teacher, was brought up in Devon with her younger sister.

Her father left when she was 13 and while they remain close, she says: “My mum, my sister and I were quite a strong trio.”

“I’m a woman, and I probably write female characters better,” she continues. “I was keen to write about a feminised King Lear with a strong matriarch who’s been very successful, a bit of a boomer, but she’s kind of managed, through education, to defy quite humble beginnings. And because of that, she’s quite prickly, scared of losing her wealth and losing her status, because she’s fought so hard to get it.”

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How has the success of the TV adaptations changed Vaughan’s life?

“I suppose it meant that we could move house,” she reflects. She and her husband, a doctor, and two children, aged 20 and 18, live just outside Cambridge.

What is more telling and certainly thrilling, she says, is when booksellers know her name when Anatomy Of A Scandal is mentioned.

She’s already working on her next novel, which she describes as a “closed room mystery/psychological drama” that complements Based On A True Story, about a group of people meeting for a reunion.

She’s also working on a pilot script, which she’s finding quite refreshing, and a different style of writing.

But Vaughan says she doesn’t write her novels with a TV series in mind.

“I wrote Based On A True Story knowing that everybody needed something that felt a bit less gritty,” she says. “I wanted to write about a beautiful house and had a lot of fun looking on Rightmove. We all want a bit of escapism.”

Based On A True Story by Sarah Vaughan is published in hardback by Simon & Schuster, priced £16.99. Available now.