Creative Writing Course
Creative writing. Express yourself with the written word.
Designed to give you the practical skills to approach your creative writing projects with confidence, this creative writing course is built around particular topics integral to the writing process such as: voice, place evocation, characterisation, structure, sentence-craft and editing. Using exercises to get started, we will look at the basic elements of creative writing (fiction, nonfiction and poetry) and at ways to develop your work. This creative writing course is an invaluable way to find your voice as a writer.
Outcomes
By the end of this course, you should be able to:
- write prose or poetry with more elegance
- express both self and place more authentically
- craft writing that tells your stories in your own voices
- avoid cliché and coin original turns of phrase and shapely sentences
- practise the rules of good style embodied in the best writing
- plan and structure memorable tales
- know the difference between your best writing and your second best
- edit and trim your writing for more impact and readability.
Content
What's writing for?
- Introduction
- How we will work together
- The nature of creative writing - how it happens, how it works on a reader
- How writing is talking, heightened by art, and set down on paper
- What works and what doesn't
- Fiction and non-fiction; poetry and prose
- Voice and self, music and place
- The art of indirection
From a deep place
- Writing what we don't know about what we do
- Writing from the very centre of ourselves, out of everything we are and everywhere we've been and whom we've been there with
- The necessary strangeness of one's own perception, mind and voice
- Writing from now for all time
Style is substance
- Why less is generally more
- Plain and fancy style
- How fashionable writing, by definition, goes out of fashion, but stylish writing never does
- The art of the sentence
- Verbs
- Rationing your modifiers
Tools and techniques
- The secrets of plot and pace and place and speech and character
- Some prose and poetry forms
Wild mind, tidy mind
- Why form and structure count and how they help
- Getting started
- Keeping going
- Knowing when you're done
- The Tao of the long-distance writer
The finish
- The draft and the many edits
- Editing yourself and being edited
- Making the work ready to publish
- How and where and why (and why not) to get published
Intended audience
This workshop targets beginning writers of fiction, creative non-fiction and poetry. It will also help experienced writers rediscover their creativity and improve their technique.
Delivery modes
- Face-to-face, presenter-taught workshop
- Online workshop via the platform Zoom
Delivery style
The workshop marries informally delivered pedagogy with inspirational ideas and practical tips from an experienced professional writer. It models great writing through a selection of fine readings across all genres; and it invites you to write each week and receive tutelage and feedback from the facilitator and fellow participants.
Materials
Course notes are distributed electronically
Recommended reading
Dillard, A 1989, The Writing Life, Harper Collins, New York.
Le Guin, U 1998, Steering the Craft, Eight Mountain Press, Portland.
Strunk, W and White, EB 2000, The Elements of Style, 4th edition, Allyn & Bacon, Boston.
Zinsser, W 1998, On Writing Well, 6th edition, Harper Collins, New York.
Features
- Expert trainers
- Central locations
- Free, expert advice
- Course materials – yours to keep
- CCE Statement of Completion
Overview
Sessions:
Location:
Price:
Class schedule
<p>{block name:"Course Tagline - Creative Writing"}</p>
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<p>Designed to give you the practical skills to approach your creative writing projects with
...Thu 8 Feb 2024
6pm - 9pm (UTC+11:00)
Thu 15 Feb 2024
6pm - 9pm (UTC+11:00)
Thu 22 Feb 2024
6pm - 9pm (UTC+11:00)
Thu 29 Feb 2024
6pm - 9pm (UTC+11:00)
<p>{block name:"Course Tagline - Creative Writing"}</p>
<p>{block name:"Block - COVID 19 updates"}</p>
<p>Designed to give you the practical skills to approach your creative writing projects with
...Tue 9 Apr 2024
6pm - 9pm (UTC+10:00)
Tue 16 Apr 2024
6pm - 9pm (UTC+10:00)
Tue 23 Apr 2024
6pm - 9pm (UTC+10:00)
Tue 30 Apr 2024
6pm - 9pm (UTC+10:00)
<p>{block name:"Course Tagline - Creative Writing"}</p>
<p>{block name:"Block - COVID 19 updates"}</p>
<p>Designed to give you the practical skills to approach your creative writing projects with
...Thu 7 Mar 2024
6pm - 9pm (UTC+11:00)
Thu 14 Mar 2024
6pm - 9pm (UTC+11:00)
Thu 21 Mar 2024
6pm - 9pm (UTC+11:00)
Thu 28 Mar 2024
6pm - 9pm (UTC+11:00)
<p>{block name:"Course Tagline - Creative Writing"}</p>
<p>{block name:"Block - COVID 19 updates"}</p>
<p>Designed to give you the practical skills to approach your creative writing projects with
...Tue 14 May 2024
6pm - 9pm (UTC+10:00)
Tue 21 May 2024
6pm - 9pm (UTC+10:00)
Tue 28 May 2024
6pm - 9pm (UTC+10:00)
Tue 4 Jun 2024
6pm - 9pm (UTC+10:00)
If there isn't a class to suit your preferred time or delivery format, please JOIN the waiting list.
Featured facilitators
Mark Tredinnick
Mark Tredinnick, winner of the Montreal Poetry Prize (2011) and the Cardiff Poetry Prize (2012), is the author of The Blue Plateau, Fire Diary, and nine other acclaimed works of poetry and prose....
What others say
The course has an excellent teacher. I recommend this course to anyone who wants to write beautiful sentences.
- Ruth Howard
The presenter runs a superb course. I have gained much from the experience. I found the course life changing as well as life affirming... but maybe that's just me.
- Nicholas Harrington
I was impressed and inspired by this tutor's teaching, which was clear, diligent, skilled, kind, constructive, and spirited. I am already reading and writing with more mindfulness and appreciation of the craft.
- Mee Hee Douglas