New: Craft and Technique Sessions (online).
Mondays, 2 or 3 times a month (see initial dates below).
7.15–8.15pm.
£9 per session.
'In just a few sessions I found myself thinking very differently about what I was writing, what I could be writing, and why.'
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Jo O.
Monday evenings are back but with a difference! In each session we'll take a different aspect of craft or technique for an hour of writing and discussion.
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The first ones are scheduled below. If there's a particular area of writing that you'd like to focus on in a later session, get in touch. If other people are interested in the same topic, it should be possible to arrange a session on it.
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These sessions are for writers of all levels and experience. Beginners are very welcome. You can use the exercises and prompts to start new work to develop work in progress. They're aimed mainly at writers of prose but may also be of use to scriptwriters and poets.
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You'll have the opportunity to share what you're writing, discuss ideas and ask questions. However, there is no pressure to read anything aloud. Our priority is to get the words down on the page and to do so in an engaging and supportive environment.
25 July 2022
Point of View
Where does the consciousness of your story lie? Through whose lens are we watching?
We'll look at ways of using and playing with point of view and how it relates to voice and structure.
8 August 2022
Developing an Idea
You've got your idea – or you thought you had – but now you're stuck or it just seems a bit thin. The story won't seem to grow or move forward as you'd hoped. Where do you go from here?
We'll try out some playful ways of developing ideas, of bringing in new ones and adding depth and complexity to an initial idea.
22 August 2022
Atmosphere
You know exactly what the world of your story or chapter feels like but how do you make your reader feel it too?
We'll experiment with place, character, sensory experience and voice. We'll also consider ways you can shape your sentences and paragraphs to heighten atmosphere.
5 September 2022
Backstory
Your character has a past and, unless it's a story about someone who doesn't remember anything (and isn't going to find out during your story) the past is always going to be part of the present.
We'll look at ways of exploring the lives of your characters before the story begins and how you can move between past and present – in big structural shifts, or in subtle brush-stroke details – to allow the past to inform and enrich the present.
19 September: this is now a bank holiday so the session planned has been moved to 17 October.
3 October 2022
Interior Worlds
So you know what your character wears, how she speaks and interacts. You know her favourite food, her birthday and what happened on her first day at school. But have you been inside her imagination? Do you know her daydreams, deepest desires and darkest fears?
We'll explore the interior worlds of character as a means of character development and of adding layers of depth to your stories.
17 October 2022
Everyday Objects
Everyday objects carry their own stories. An object dropped into a scene can enhance atmosphere, provide information about characters, place and time, and give you new ideas for plot and stories. You can introduce a surprise object into a scene to see how the characters react or interact with it, to find out more about your characters and to find new depths or directions in your story.
