Continuing the Mythic Journey:
Throughout time, myths and legends have explained events that might otherwise seem inexplicable.
For early civilizations, Persephone’s journey to the underworld for six months each year – and her subsequent return – paralleled the changing of the seasons, and made sense of their world.
On a more personal level, Icarus’s melted wings acted as warning to those who flew too high, too close to the sun.
Still today, our stories and poems are often described as attempts to understand the world in which we live, through the characters and narratives we create. And we often do this by using the precepts of the mythic journey – mostly without knowing it!
Joseph Campbell wrote his major work The Hero with a Thousand Faces over 50 years ago, but his exploration of the Hero’s Journey through the mythic arcs still holds good today.
Course Agenda:
This workshop is designed to use discussion and practical exercises to explore all aspects of the mythic journey.
It will consider the narrative arc and its counterpart the emotional arc. Participants will discover how these can be used to aid their own writing to create a story that satisfies our basic human need for answers – however tenuous these answers might be!
Suitable for: writers struggling with the problem of creating a psychologically satisfying storyline.
Struck by lightning:
Where do stories come from? Why do we want them? Why do we keep on writing them?
We might have a brilliant idea, but all too often it remains just that – a brilliant idea. You’ve all heard the saying that everyone has one novel in them. Okay, where are all these unwritten novels? How do we bridge the yawning chasm between an idea and its possibilities?
The term “writing flow” is common enough, but how many writers nurture an environment that allows them the dreaming time necessary to become hard copy?
Pablo Neruda beautifully captured the elusive spirit of creativity in his poem titled Poetry, which contains the following lines: ‘And it was at that age… Poetry arrived in search of me. I don’t know where it came from, from winter or a river…’
Course Agenda:
This workshop is designed to determine how to best access creative energy – and see its potential as the source for writing.
This class consists of writing exercises to kick-start ideas, and class workshops to begin to develop these further.
Participants will learn how best to respect their creativity and make space in their lives to write.
Participants will explore what inspires them – which for each writer is different.
Suitable for: all genres
How to deal with your characters emotional lives:
Our characters have emotional lives too, and we often overlook the depth and complexity of these lives to the detriment of our writing.
These characters with which writers are destined to spend considerable time – sometimes years in the case of a novel – need to be more than simply a name.
In her novel, Unless, Carol Shields commented that characters ‘need to be supplied with a childhood of some sort, with parents at the very least, sometimes even grandparents.’ Characters need this genealogy, but they must also have an emotional consistency and development that makes them believable human beings – and this applies to both saint and psychopath!
Course Agenda:
In this workshop participants will work with mythic narrative and emotional arcs to create characters that we can recognize as real people, not two-dimensional cut-outs.
Participants will learn through practical exercises how to make compelling characters that live on in the reader’s mind long after they have put down their books.
Suitable for: Writers of short fiction, novellas and novels.
Bring along: Bring along a piece of writing where you have begun to develop a character. 500 words max.
To plot or not to plot that is the question:
Are you a plotter, or do you like a more organic approach?
Do you need to know where your writing is going, or are you happy working into the great unknown, trusting that your intuition will get you there in the end?
Do you often begin a piece of work with a particular genre in mind, only to find that your writing has other ideas?
Whichever method of writing piques your interest – or seems to work best for you – it is prudent to heed the words of E.M.Forster from Aspects of the Novel: ‘ Curiosity by itself takes us a very little way, nor does it take us far into the novel – only as far as the story. If we would grasp the plot we must add intelligence and memory.’
Course Agenda:
This workshop is designed to determine the pros and cons of writing approaches, and explore how different genres often require different methods.
Participants will discuss the conventions of short stories, novellas and novels.
Participants will be able to workshop their own pieces of work, as well as take part in set exercises aimed to bring their own work to its full potential.
Using the mythic narrative and emotional arcs as guiding principles, participants will learn how to combine creative freedom and intelligence to fully develop their projects.
Suitable for: Writers of short fiction, novellas and novels.
Bring along: a sustained piece of writing of approx. 900 words, which you wish to develop further.
Shaping Life into Life Writing:
It’s an old saying that fact is stranger than fiction. In truth, many of the coincidences and revelations in real life often stretch our imaginations to the limit. Despite this, the genres of biography, autobiography and memoir involve people who are not made-up characters, and care and judgment is needed when deciding what to include in your writing.
The key word is “story”, for while not being a fiction narrative, the writing must still satisfy the human need for a story with shape. Drusilla Modjeska in Timepieces writes: ‘Narrative makes structural demands that life doesn’t make – or give – and the intellectual puzzle of marrying these…is one of writing’s labours.’ We will also explore how best to make our reader feel as well as see the events of everyday life.
Course Agenda
In this workshop participants will discuss the similarities and differences, and the conventions and limitations of biography, autobiography and memoir.
Through practical exercises participants will learn how to impose order on experience through characterization, plot, point of view and other elements of the writing craft.
Participants will learn how to recollect and imagine the stuff of our everyday lives into scenes and stories that leave the reader wanting to know more.
Suitable for: Writers wishing to explore the genre of Life Writing.
Bring along: a short but sustained piece of life writing of approx. 500 words, which you wish to develop further.
Just when you thought you were finished:
There is no substitute for the feeling a writer gets when the last word is typed.
But is it the last word?
Most often it isn’t, and there will be numerous re-drafts to be worked through to bring out the best in a piece of writing.
Is the structure all you could hope for? Are there sections that need to be further developed? Have you have left your reader on the edge of an emotional cliff, and simply gone on with another section of your story? Are the chapters in the best order they could be?
Have you checked to be sure the voice in your work is the right one – and consistent? And what about the pace? Many early drafts speed up as they go along, with the story overtaking time for reflection or vice versa, both of which unbalance the work in progress.
Course Agenda:
In this workshop participants will ask themselves all of the questions above… and more.
Participants are encouraged to bring along their completed short or long works with a prepared list of concerns and questions, to be workshopped in class.
Suitable for: Writers of short fiction, novellas, novels and life writing.
Bring along: a sample of work which you regard as close to finished. 2000 words max.