A nine-week course + individual feedback to help you develop your idea for a novel and make a really good start on your first draft. The supportive class is limited to nine participants and includes writing exercises, establishing an everyday writing practice and discussions of key elements of fiction.

What happens when characters get stuck? What makes them stuck and how does it feel? Why is it so hard to face up to change? How can we write about stasis? How does it manifest physically and in our relationships?

Exploring what happens when characters experience self-doubt. How can hesitation and nerves play a role in a story, and how do characters find their way. What happens in a character’s mind that helps them decide where to go?

All about characters’ powers of observation. What do our characters see? How do they interpret it? This workshop will touch on perspective. What happens when we warp their powers of observation and expose them to a misunderstanding? Or they see part of something but don’t appreciate the whole?

What happens when characters try to heal themselves? And what might the consequences be of trying to heal others. Is meddling, support, or even love, always welcome? Both when we receive it and when we try to deliver it.

Writing all about the storms that rage within characters. What happens when we abandon reason and completely lose control. Give in to our most violent and compulsive instincts, throw a tantrum, indulge our rage and frustration.

Weather can be a fantastic way into a story, especially if landscape is going to play a key part in your work. Whether you want to write a hurricane, a deluge, high winds or a sand storm, your characters will have to struggle to survive.

Putting on a brave face, concealing our true emotions and intentions; the best characters are duplicitous. In the final session before Christmas we’ll have a play with masks and disguises, secrets and revelations.

Entrances and exits can be key moments in fiction. Doors can reveal secrets and provide escape, we can listen behind them, peer through cracks in them and even use them to slip between dimensions.

From spy novels to romance a bridge can be both practical and symbolic. A writing workshop to explore building bridges and making connections.

Secrets, lies, misunderstandings, malicious gossip and manipulation; stories often benefit from the worst of human nature. Dare to sip some metaphorical poison.

A sea of ideas, an ocean of despair, the high seas and the open sea, lost at sea, running away to sea, come and dip your toes into the ocean.

Ladders, mirrors, wood, cracks, pennies, horseshoes, humans can be irrational in many stupid ways. Come and explore what your characters are be afraid of and when they might lose all reason.

A writing workshop for people with a project on the go. Whether you’re working on a play, a novel, a film, short story collection or audio drama, these structured workshops will help you get words on the page.

All fictional characters have a powerful relationship with home, whether it’s a place they want to escape from or are desperate to return to.

Whether it’s your grandfather’s watch or a birthday gift, one ring to rule them all or the shoes you bought to celebrate a breakup; objects have power. Explore how recurring objects can add depth to your stories and insight into your theme.