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Irish Writers Centre Online Course: Write Your First Short Story with Jan Carson

Non-Members - €155.00 EUR Members - €140.00 EUR ADD TO CART

Starts: Tues 12 Jan 2021
Time: 6.30pm - 8.30pm
Duration: 4 weeks
Cost: €155/€140 members

Course Level: Beginner

All Irish Writers Centre remote courses take place on Irish Standard Time (GMT+1)

This interactive and informative four-week course is aimed at absolute beginner writers. If you’ve been thinking about writing fiction and have no idea where to start, this course will give you all the tools you require to write your first short story. In this innovative course format, each participant will have an individual scheduled online Zoom chat with the course facilitator to discuss your written piece and discover ways to develop and sustain your writing practice. You will receive helpful, written feedback on your story also. The course will be fun, full of practical help and really accessible for absolute beginners. No previous writing experience required.

Established short story writer, Jan Carson will guide you through techniques, writing exercises, hints and tips as you work together to write and submit a complete short story.

Course Outline: 

Over the course of four weeks the workshops will focus on key elements of short story writing such as character, plot, pacing, editing, dialogue, endings and beginnings. Each two hour online session will involve an element of teaching, plenty of room for structured discussion and an opportunity to take part in specially crafted writing exercises. Homework will involve reading a weekly short story which illustrates the topics covered in class. Participants will work towards the development of an original short story which they’ll submit to the course facilitator two weeks after the final workshop.

Course Outcomes: 

All participants will write a short story over the duration of the course and will receive written and face to face feedback on their work from the course tutor.

Jan Carson is a writer and community arts facilitator based in Belfast. 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 (forthcoming from 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 was shortlisted for the BBC National Story Prize 2020.

Booking and info here


Earlier Event: January 10
The Last Resort