Tag Archives: creative writing

Copy and learn

This week’s prompt by Jude

There’s a bookshop of remainders in Park Street, Bristol where someone has drawn pictures of authors on paper bags, which are all pinned up behind the counter.

The drawings pictured here show the great writers,Raymond Carver and Kurt Vonnegut. Find stories by them online and write out the first paragraph. Now write another paragraph in your own words, but use the same length of sentences and a similar  style. See where it takes you.

If you want to write in the company of others in fun and friendly groups, there’s just one place on our four week series beginning on 21st September and there are five places on our Art as Inspiration group.

Art as Inspiration

A creative writing workshop with Alex and Jude in the Pavilion room at  Hall and Woodhouse  in Bath

10.30 – 12.30, Tuesday 3rd October

SOLD OUT   Contact us  if you want to go on waiting list.

Maximum 12 people

Paintings have always inspired writers. The Girl with the Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier is one example. The author saw the painting by Johannes Vermeer when she was nineteen years old. ‘The Goldfinch’, by Donna Tartt is another celebrated novel inspired by Carel Fabritius’s painting of the same name. ‘In Sunlight or in Shadow’ is a collection of seventeen short stories inspired by the paintings of Edward Hopper,by well known authors including Stephen King, Joyce Carole Oates and Robert Olen Butler.

In this workshop we will use paintings as prompts, not only to spark ideas for fiction, but to think about how to look more carefully into paintings and  ‘read’ them.

Suitable for both beginners and experienced writers, this workshop will get you writing.

Check out our booking terms and conditions here and contact us for other payment methods.

Bill and Coo

This week’s prompt by Jude.

The pigeons in our garden have been amorously inclined all week.  For this week’s fast draft, write down all your associations to pigeons.  Memories, likes/dislikes, Trafalgar Square,  sounds etc. Now write a piece where pigeons feature as a backdrop for another kind of relationship. Probably between humans. You could even call your characters Bill and Coo.

 

What does an editor do?

Alex and Jude with Guest Speaker, James Ellis

Thursday July 6th.  10.30-12.30pm

Hall and Woodhouse, Bath.     

Have you ever wondered what an editor actually does? Do you know what is the difference is between a structural edit and a copy edit? What suggestions might an editor make? This workshop is for anyone who writes and wants to know more about the editing process. As Ernest Hemingway said, ‘the only kind of writing is rewriting.’

If you are self-editing, you’ll get tips on the best way to approach your work in order to get it into tip-top shape before sending to an agent, or for self-publishing.  James Elli  has worked at an Oxford-based literary agency as a submissions reader, offers a portfolio of editorial services and is an author himself.  Alex and Jude will start the workshop with some simple editing exercises.  James recently ran a popular session for us on publishing his novel The Wrong Story with the innovative crowd-funding publishing house, Unbound