Develop your story-building and creative writing skills over twelve weeks in a collaborative, supportive group, through creative games and activities that create and extend stories in class, plus feedback on your writing. Book by 23 April.
Explore the 12 key elements of story-building through hands-on activities and real writing processes, in lively workshop-style classes.
The course uses games, activities, discussions, and quick snippets of writing to explore the elements of building stories. You'll create collaborative stories in small groups in class, adding them to a shared Plot Bank. In later lessons, you'll pull existing stories from the Plot Bank to work on further. All the story creation happens in class, and we explore lots of different genres. At the end, the Plot Bank gets divvied up between everyone, so everyone goes away with a sheaf of story ideas, usually 2–3 quite well developed, a couple in between, right down to the scraps and bin-ends of random plot ideas! You'll also practise writing synopses, summaries, and cover blurbs, to help keep track of what's in the Plot Bank. Through this, you'll try out all the aspects of story-building on actual stories, rather than just the theory.
You don't need to have a story in progress or even an idea for a story: we'll create heaps of those in class. If you do have a work in progress, each session gives you ideas, principles, and activities to apply to your own writing, and the summary booklet for each class includes ideas on how to do that.
I also read your writing: you get personal written feedback on three pieces across the course. These can be your own story or one of the group stories we've been creating. These assignments always come after sessions which have generated scenes which you can write, and you start writing in class. My approach to feedback is supportive and constructive: I tell you what's working well in that piece of writing and give suggestions for how you could improve it.
Dates: In-person course: Tuesdays at 7pm–9:30pm, 30 April – 16 July 2024 OR Live online course: Thursdays at 7pm–9:30pm, 24 May – 18 July 2024. Booking deadline: 23 April 2024.
Location: Two parallel courses: one in Oxford; one live online (with posted materials) open to bookings across the UK
Cost: £395 (payable in instalments)
Further info and to book here
Contact details: Megan Kerr, megan@thewritersgreenhouse.co.uk