Masterclasses
Get stuck in with our
weekend long courses.
Scroll down to see range of courses available.
Sat 13th October and Sunday 14th October
Crime
Writing with Michelle Spring
Get your finger on the pulse of crime fiction.
If you fancy a life of crime -- writing, that is -- this is the
workshop for you. Michelle Spring, award-winning crime novelist,
will share the secrets of writing successful crime fiction.
The workshop will explore: how to capture ideas and develop them
through research; how to create compelling characters and
convincing settings; how to accomplish seam-free plotting; and how
to generate suspense. Novice crime writers are also welcome, as are
writers who need some inspiration to spark a partly-worked story
into life.
Participants are invited to send in beforehand 6-10
typed double-spaced pages of writing in the genre. This could
be a chapter of a book, a short story, or even a synopsis for a
novel. There will be one-to-one feedback during the weekend for any
submissions that reach New Writing Partnerships by October
1st.
Michelle Spring
Michelle turned to crime writing after she and her family were
tormented by a stalker. In her first standalone suspense novel, The
Night Lawyer, she draws on this experience, tracing the fate of two
people from opposing cultures whose increasingly edgy relationship
offers a unique and surprising twist on stalking and survival. In
the Midnight Hour, the fifth book in her Laura Principal series,
was chosen by the Crime Writers of Canada as Best Novel of the
Year. Michelle is a Royal Literary Fellow at Newnham College,
Cambridge, and a founding member of Mystery Women and of the
Unusual Suspects, a group of five award-winning crime writers who
often appear together to inform and entertain (www.unusual
suspects.co.uk).
The Maids Head Hotel
9:30pm – 5:30/6:00pm, with breaks for coffee & lunch
£98 (£76 concessions)
DEAL: take two masterclasses for £175
BOOKING
Sat Oct 13th & Sun Oct 14th
Prose
Fiction Masterclass with Toby Litt
Try something different.
Don’t just keep it simple and write what you know. That is the
approach I will be taking towards prose fiction during our weekend.
Hoping to encourage and enthuse you, whether you are just beginning
or vastly experienced. Aiming to help you develop and explore your
own unique approach to words and all the amazing things they can
do. There will be a special focus on dialogue.
As part of the course, participants who submit
manuscripts to NWP of up to 2,500 words by Oct 1st will be given
one-to-one feedback.
Toby Litt
A graduate of Malcolm Bradbury’s Creative Writing M.A. at the
University of East Anglia, he is the author of two books of short
stories, Adventures in Capitalism and Exhibitionism, and six
novels, Beatniks, Corpsing, deadkidsongs, Finding Myself, Ghost
Story and Hospital. He edited Henry James’s last novel The Outcry
for Penguin Modern Classics. He was also the co-editor, with Ali
Smith, of the British Council/Picador New Writing 13 anthology. He
is a Granta Best of Young British Novelist. His website can be
found at www.tobylitt.com.
The Maids Head Hotel
9:30pm – 5:30/6:00pm, with breaks for coffee & lunch
£98 (£76 concession)
DEAL: take two masterclasses for £175
BOOKING
Saturday 23rd November and Sunday 24th November
Writing for
Radio with Jonathan Myerson SOLD
OUT
Radio is a viable and valuable opportunity for all writers.
There are hundreds of radio plays commissioned every year by the
BBC alone for their afternoon, saturday and sunday slots; it pays
well and there is a constant hunger for new writing.
Any story can be a radio play: short stories, novels, stage
plays, all can be re-written for the airwaves, but how?
Oscar-nominated Jonathan Myerson will show you the tools and tricks
of the trade.
Those wishing to take part must, if they don’t
already (which they should!) listen to radio plays for at least two
or three months beforehand, as this will be important for the
discussion elements of the course.
Included in the course price, there will be
20-minute one-to-one sessions available to all participants. Please
submit a script or story for adaptation of a maximum of 2,000 words
(anything beyond this to be summarised in a synopsis). Manuscripts
to be submitted to NWP in advance, by 9th
November.
There will be further tutorials available beyond this course, to
arrange privately with Jonathan at a specially reduced rate.
Promising work will also be forwarded to BBC Writers Room for
further consideration and feedback.
Jonathan Myerson
He has written over 20 original plays for radio as well as many
episodes for Citizens and Westway, which he also briefly
produced. His recent radio work includes a dramatisation of
William Hogarth’s engravings of A Harlot’s Progress, and Male
Order, a series of short plays about the mail order bride business.
He is currently working on the first radio dramatisation of Doctor
Zhivago and a new series, Number10, for Radio Four, to be aired
this Autumn. Jonathan has written screenplays for film and
television and episodes for The Bill, EastEnders, Medics and Holby
City. The Canterbury Tales was his first animated film as
writer and director – he was nominated for an Oscar and went on to
win a BAFTA, four Primetime EMMYs and many other awards all over
the world. Prior to The Canterbury Tales, he wrote the scripts for
two of S4C’s Animated Testament series – Daniel and David and
Saul. He has also written two novels (Noise and Your Father),
both published by Headline Review. Until the last election, he
wrote a column in The Guardian about his experiences as a local
councillor in Lambeth.
The King of Hearts
9:30pm – 5:30/6:00pm, with breaks for coffee & lunch
£98 (£76 concession)
DEAL: take two masterclasses for £175
BOOKING
Saturday 23rd November and Sunday 24th November
Prose
Fiction Masterclass with Susan Elderkin SOLD
OUT
The art of showing, or letting a story speak for itself.
The single most transformative technique you can discover as a
writer is to learn how to show instead of tell. But what does ‘show
don’t tell’ mean exactly, and how do you tell if you are telling?
This two-day workshop with Susan Elderkin will tackle this pesky
issue head-on, and in the process inject your writing with greater
immediacy, energy and drama. You won’t look back!
Please submit a story, max 2,000-2,500 words by 09th
November.
Susan Elderkin
Her first novel, Sunset over Chocolate Mountains (4th
Estate, 2000), is a surreal and haunting fairytale about a
maladjusted Englishman, Theobald Moon, who brings up his daughter
in an isolated part of the Arizona desert. Begun while she was a
student on the MA in creative writing at UEA, it went on to win a
Betty Trask prize for first novels and was published in nine
languages. Her second, The Voices (4th Estate, 2003), is
set in the similarly remote landscape of Western Australia and
tells the story of a white boy who is “sung up” by an Aboriginal
girl, and made to love her for ever. Praised for its evocation of
place, The Voices was shortlisted for the Ondaatje prize,
and in the same year she was named by Granta as one of the 20 best
young British novelists of the decade. Susan is a regular
tutor of residential and weekend writing courses, as well as
tutoring on the MA programmes at Goldsmiths and City University in
London. A critic and travel writer for the FT, she is currently
working on her third novel, the screenplay of Sunset over
Chocolate Mountains, and a travel book set in the UK.
The King of Hearts
9:30pm – 5:30/6:00pm, with breaks for coffee & lunch
£98 (£76 concession)
DEAL: take two masterclasses for £175
BOOKING
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