Online workshop led by Jan Carson
ONLINE VIA ZOOM
Date: Saturday 13 November 2021
Time: 10.00 – 13.00 IST/GMT
Cost: €50
Who the workshop is for
This interactive half day workshop is aimed at writers who’ve begun to explore their ideas on the page and are looking for some guidance and practical tips on how to get their work to a publishable standard and hone the skills necessary to write fiction well.
What the workshop covers
Through a mixture of discussion, short talks and writing exercises the workshop will cover all the fundamental elements of writing fiction. The format will be equally applicable to those working on short stories, novels and shorter pieces of prose fiction and will cover topics such as structure, pacing, character development, dialogue, beginnings, endings and editing. Participants will also have ample opportunity to ask questions related to their own works in progress and the issues their struggling with in their writing. All attendees who wish to read up on the subject after the workshop ends will be given a list of useful books on the subject of craft and process in writing fiction.
Enrol on the workshop and save your place here
What you can expect
Over the course of the workshop you’ll be lead through fun, interactive and useful writing excerises which will help you to develop your writing craft. We’ll work together to develop a story from genesis to first draft stage and leave plenty of room for questions, discussions and useful tips and tricks from Jan. The atmosphere will be laid back and engaging with an emphasis on learning together in a safe, encouraging way. Attendees are expected to come to the workshop prepared to write. Several short stories will also be circulated prior to the workshop as useful reading material in preparation.
Workshop Leader – Jan Carson
Jan Carson is a writer and community arts facilitator based in Belfast, Northern Ireland. She has a novel, Malcolm Orange Disappears and short story collection, Children’s Children, (Liberties Press), two micro-fiction collections, Postcard Stories 1 and 2 (Emma Press) and a short story collection, The Last Resort (Doubleday). Her novel The Fire Starters (Doubleday) won the EU Prize for Literature for Ireland 2019, the Kitschies Prize for Speculative Fiction 2020 and was shortlisted for the Dalkey Book Prize 2020. Jan won the Harper’s Bazaar short story competition in 2016 and has been shortlisted for the BBC National Story Prize and Sean O’Faolain Short Story Prize. She was the inaugural Irish Writers Centre Roaming Writer in Residence on the trains of Ireland in 2019 and the Open Book Scotland Writer in Lockdown during 2020. She is currently writer in residence on an AHRC-funded research project at Queen’s University Belfast exploring the depiction of dementia in contemporary fiction and will be editing a collection of newly commissioned short stories exploring the dementia experience to be published in September 2022. Jan’s third novel, The Raptures is forthcoming from Doubleday in spring 2022.