Creative Writing Calendar 2024–25: See all the upcoming dates

New Course

Voting has closed: sign up to find out the winning course.

Thank you to everyone who voted for the new course! Voting closed at the end of 1 November 2024 and the winning course will be open to all for booking from Tuesday 12 November.

To find out the result sooner and get priority booking, sign up for the newsletter. You can also read more about the new course options below.

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About the New Course

The new 8-week course will join the course rotation alongside Story Elements, Imaginary Worlds, Starting Points, Meddling with Poetry, and Writing in Style.

The choices to vote on were...

The Core Elements

Dive deeper into the most core topics from Story Elements, which underpin any story: Plot, Story mapping, Character, and Description. This course will use three existing workshops: Page Turners, Writing in Scenes, and A Sense of Place; plus new course material on Characters.

Note: Since 2016, I’ve kept workshop and courses separate with no materials overlap – but that was my own decision, and this was specifically requested, so I’ll let you decide!

Comedy

Explore the different types of comedy in fiction (satire, parody, farce, dark comedy, romantic comedy) and ways to approach them, plus a raft of techniques to be funny on the page, whether you’re going for full comedy or just including touches of humour.

The Fabulous

These are the imaginary genres that don’t use fantasy and sci-fi’s meticulous internal consistency: magical realism, tall tales, the Gothic, fables and fairytales, surrealism. Swim into their wild invention with a shrug for explanation and the willing suspension of disbelief, from playful to profound, light-hearted to dark.

Time To Write

You want to write, so what’s stopping you? Most commonly: time, self doubt, feeling we don’t deserve to, creative crisis points, assorted forms of writer’s block, unhelpful beliefs, and lack of support. This course will help you start peeling away what’s stopping you and nurturing what helps, though gentle activities and discoveries. It’ll also give you time to write, in two 30–40 minute chunks every class. With support on tap.

Note: The majority of class time will be writing time, with me available to help, bookended by reflection and shorter activities to help you clear away the obstacles.

To find out which one won, and get first dibs on booking, join the newsletter.

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