A welcoming online home for all creative writers
Introduction to Creative Writing
Introduction to Creative Writing – exploring, practising and progressing
with Alison Chandler
Whether you’re starting out, coming back after a pause or looking to fill some gaps in your writer’s toolbox, making progress is so much easier with a support network. Our twelve-week Introduction to Creative Writing will help you master the fundamentals of writing fiction or memoir in an environment designed to grow your confidence and nurture your ability to tell the stories you want to tell.
Over our twelve weeks together we’ll explore the foundations of storytelling before moving on to the elements that give a piece depth and richness, looking at examples of great writing to illustrate each week’s theme. We’ll also try out what we’ve learned in a range of different exercises. You’ll be encouraged to notice what appeals and resonates with you, to help you work out the kind of writer you are and there will be opportunities to share short pieces of writing along the way.
In Week 6 we’ll discuss writing workshops and how both giving and receiving feedback can enhance our work. Then in Week 12 you’ll have the opportunity to participate in a mini workshop.
At the end of the course you’ll feel well-prepared to progress your writing, and we’re always happy to help you plan your next steps.
Week 1) Character-building.
Week 2) Setting – where am I?
Week 3) Dialogue – talk to me.
Week 4) Point of view – whose eyes am I looking through?
Week 5) Plot versus story. Structure.
Week 6) Beginnings and endings. Thinking about writing workshops.
One-week break for half term
Week 7) What kind of writer am I? A look at genre.
Week 8) Character relationships – friends and enemies.
Week 9) Themes and motifs.
Week 10) Flash/short story/novella – thinking about form.
Week 11) Fiction and life-writing, fiction in life-writing.
Week 12) Me and my reader. Final mini workshop.
Live and interactive on Zoom in a group of max 12 students
Cost £296
12 week course
(Paying in installments is possible)
Summer 2024 course is underway
Autumn 2024
- Wednesdays 6.30-9pm
- Sept 18, 25, Oct 2, 9, 16, 23, (break for half term), Nov 6, 13, 20, 27, Dec 4, 11
- ZOOM delivery
Spring 2025
- Wednesdays 6.30-9pm
- Jan-March with break for half term. Dates TBC
- ZOOM delivery
EXCELLENT CLASS
“Each excellent class gave me an insight into specific aspects of creative writing. And whilst there was quite rightly some topic overlap week to week, each class felt like a separate unit. I found the course very informative and inspiring.”
Caroline
Intro to Creative Writing
STIMULATING SESSIONS
“Thank you for the stimulating sessions. Alison was very well organised, and encouraging. It has been very interesting to experience different approaches. It has made this undisciplined scribbler produce stuff that's halfway readable!”
Bev
Intro to Creative Writing
Our tutor Alison says...
It’s all about removing the mystery – and releasing the magic! Sometimes creative writing can feel like something other people know how to do. It’s wonderful seeing writers on our Introduction course pick up writing ‘tools’ and make them their own.
Alison Chandler
Alison has been working with creative writers since 2010. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Birkbeck and a Level 3 Award in Education and Training from WM College in Camden, and believes passionately that everyone should have access to lifelong learning. Alison arrived at Writing Room working on her own creative development as a poetry student in 2014 and immediately felt she’d come home. She designed and developed our Prioritise Your Writing and Introduction to Creative Writing courses to support writers at all stages of their own creative journey. Alison has published poems, short stories and creative non-fiction, and that novel project will eventually see the light of day too! She lives in Kentish Town with her two nearly grown up boys and a grumpy cat. In her spare time you’ll find her back home in South Wales, walking the Gower and Pembrokeshire coast paths and trying to write how that feels.
Writing Room is a registered Community Interest Company: a non-profit arts organisation committed to serving the interests of our diverse community of creative writers.
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Photography © Ruth Guthrie unless stated