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Want me to run a specific workshop? Gather together some writing friends and let me know!
I always let people vote for which five workshops run in the summer – but sometimes people's favourites don't make the top five, or they can't make that date, or they're too far from Oxford to join the in-person workshops, or it's September and next summer is way too far away. So if that happens, I can run them online instead. The Magical Realism online workshop (Winter 2021), Poetry as Gifts online workshop (Spring 2023), and first Getting Romantic online workshop (Feb 2024) all ran at the request of my students, who offered to organise the minimum number of students in return for me running the workshop they chose. There's no Secret Handshake required to do this: anyone is welcome to!
What to do
- Choose which workshop and format you and your writing friends would like from the suggestions below. To run a workshop by request, I need a minimum of six students.
- Let me know what you'd like and I'll give you possible dates.
- You and your writing friends pick the date.
- Once the minimum number of students is confirmed, I'll take over to advertise the remaining places OR you can book it for just your group as a private workshop.
Possible formats
The workshops below are all full-day workshops, but they can be split in half or shortened to suit you. Some possible formats are:
- Two half-day workshops, eg over a weekend (either mornings, 10–12:30, or afternoons, 1:30–4:00)
- One full-day workshop (10–4 with an hour's break for lunch)
- One half-day workshop in the morning, afternoon, or evening
Practical details
- On Zoom: All online workshops are held on Zoom and can be booked from anywhere in the world.
- Prices for open workshops: If I'm advertising the remaining places, prices per person are £55 for a half-day or £95 for a full day / two half-days. Bookings made a month or more before the deadline get the early-bird price of £40 for a half-day or £70 for a full day / two half-days.
- Prices for private workshops: If you want a workshop for just your group, it's £640 total for a half-day or £1120 total for a full day / two half-days.
- Numbers: minimum six students, maximum sixteen
- All levels welcome: all my courses and workshops cater for a range of experience, from beginners to published writers
Read on for the possible workshops or email me if you're ready to discuss what you'd like.
Possible workshops
The writing process
Playful challenging activities based on top research to create new ideas and explore the creative process
Hands-on practical strategies to manage the process of planning a novel, whether you’re starting from scratch or reworking raw draft
Once your first draft is done, what do you do? Practical tips on how to redraft, refine, and edit your story or novel
How to present your writing for publication: where to send it, sort your layout, write synopses and cover letters, and get published
Aspects of craft
Explore a range of ways to write characters unlike yourself and vary a story's cast, while you develop new characters to take home with you
Everything from developing your characters’ voices and natural speech to layout and seamless attribution
Writing with fresh angles, new voices, unusual points of view, experimental structures and different styles
Explore what makes quality prose, from Angela Carter’s richness to Margaret Atwood’s restraint, and hone your own style
Create stories through multiple perspectives, hone their points of view, and use shifts to delight the reader
Use a character’s voice to narrate the story, play with their limits, and keep the story vivid
Move your characters and the reader easily in time & place, and deal deftly with exposition and back story
How to keep the reader reading – whether you’re writing literary fiction or a pot-boiler thriller
How to choose powerful locations, create action from the setting, write description with strong narrative purpose, and enhance your descriptive writing
Using tropes and archetypes effectively, avoiding cliché, and the fun of subversion
How to balance the different ingredients of a scene and ways of approaching the “big scenes” in your story
Genres and forms
Strategies and technques for creating powerful short stories of any genre, and extreme economy in storytelling
How to create convincing romantic relationships that matter to the plot and to the reader
Explore the haunted tropes and high drama of the Gothic genres and ways to put your own unique spin on them
Explore magical realism’s features, whip up reams of ideas, and start writing your own magical realist pieces
Explore the essentials of poetry through the liberating lens of poems as gifts
Tell stories through poems, use musicality to make them memorable, and keep them lively, for children, teens, and adults
How to balance suspense, secrets, and clues in thrillers, mysteries, and crime/detective fiction
Email me at megan@thewritersgreenhouse.co.uk to request a workshop.
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