Saturday Sessions
'Susanna's artful teaching method helps you get the words down with no pain or shame. Inspriring!'
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Madeleine C.
These one-off creative writing workshops and retreats take place on Saturday mornings, once or twice a month.
We take some aspect of writing or craft and work through exercises and discussions giving you new techniques and ideas to use in your work. The sessions are pitched at various levels. Our aim is to help you develop your voice and to give you the confidence and skills to find your way forward.
Saturday 15th January, 9.30–11.30am, £22.
Tutor: Susanna Jones
Online
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UNFINISHED AND ABANDONED NOVELS WORKSHOP
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Perhaps you've got a novel you once loved writing but you lost confidence or life got in the way and you never finished it. Perhaps you did finish your novel but you didn't find an agent or negative feedback made you lose faith in it.
Cobwebs soon form over an untouched draft. The loss of confidence or motivation that follows can make it hard either to go back or move forward, or to know which is better to do. In this workshop we're going to blow the cobwebs off and go back in. We'll go gently and with a sense of fun.
Bring a coffee or tea, your dreaded manuscript and a pen and paper for fresh work. Through prompts, exercises and discussion, we'll try to breathe new life into your work. We'll find ways back in so that you can see clearly what you've got and how you feel about it.
By the end of the session you will, hopefully, have a good idea as to whether you want to revive the novel or leave it behind and start something new. Perhaps you'll find that inside the old novel there's a new, slightly different book, ready to be written. We'll help you find the confidence to get going again and to keep going.
You won't have to read anything aloud during the class but there will be some discussion in pairs/small groups.
You can turn your camera off while we're writing but please keep it on for the rest of the workshop.
Maximum 20 participants.
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Participants in this workshop will get a £10 discount on a follow-up one--to-one session with Susanna Jones looking at 5,000 words of your novel with plan/synopsis. The session will be held on Zoom, Skype or telephone, whichever you prefer. To be used within three months.
Saturday 5th February, 9.30–11.30am, £22.
Tutor: Susanna Jones
Online
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UNRELIABLE NARRATORS WORKSHOP
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We're all unreliable narrators. Even when we're sure we're being truthful, we can't tell our stories without our own blind spots, prejudices or wanting to be understood in a particular way. We're over-sharers, under-sharers, boastful, modest, too polite, or some combination of these, depending on why we're telling our story and for whom. We exaggerate, hide behind humour, forget details, fixate on details, misunderstand others' intentions, have motives we don't always understand, are weighed down by past experience or just miss the point of what happened. Sometimes we're delusional or up to no good. In fiction, this subjectivity and ambiguity can lead to a complex and thrilling relationship between writer and reader, and thrilling stories.
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In this session we'll work with first person narration and experiment with what is called 'unreliability' but really has more to do with character and voice. Susanna will provide materials and prompts for the session but you can also apply the exercises and activities to something you're already working on, if you prefer.
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You won't have to read anything aloud during the class but there will be some discussion in pairs/small groups.
You can turn your camera off while we're writing but please keep it on for the rest of the workshop.
Maximum 20 participants.
​
Participants in this workshop will get a £10 discount on a follow-up one--to-one session with Susanna Jones looking at 5,000 words of your novel with plan/synopsis. The session will be held on Zoom, Skype or telephone, whichever you prefer. To be used within three months.