Fiction Writing Fundamentals (Online)

There are twelve elements of fiction writing. All are fundamental to storytelling with heft, but how well do you understand their function, what they do for readers and how they're operate in your stories?

I think of storytelling in terms of mechanics. If you don't understand your parts, how they work, what they do inside a story, then you'll struggle to recognise a problem when one of the parts isn't functioning as it should; it has failed, broken away, fallen off, combusted etc. I'm labouring the metaphor but writers are artists, creators and dreamers but we are also technicians who build, meld and weave people, scenarios and dilemmas with language. We should know our parts and how to recognise why our story has broken down. As an editor, I'm the storytelling AA (ha!) and I want you to be too.

I've created a short, but intense, online course of four sessions that covers every element and how they can be integrated into any fiction writing. This course is ideal for beginner writers who've not had any formal training (creative writing MA) or more confident writers who want to sense-check how much they already understand about these fiction writing fundamentals.

If you've ever asked, why isn't this bit working?! It's probably easily seen and fixed once you know the culprits that underly most problems. I've noticed very confident writers could use more understanding of the technical elements and every writer deserves access to the professional language, techniques and terminology without having to pay for an expensive creative writing degree.

I propose a biweekly online session on a Wednesday evening, where we will break down developing a story from scratch using the elements. We'll workshop together in the sessions so you don't need to prepare anything. Each element is needed in every story but some must work harder than others, or carry more of the load, according to genre expectations.

Course Dates: Wednesday evening online every two weeks on February 4th, February 18th, March 4th and March 18th
Course Sessions:
Session 1: Character, POV & voice (Feb 4)
Session 2: Conflict, Structure & Pace (Feb 18)
Session 3: Place, World-Building, Theme (Mar 4)
Session 4: Style, Language & Tone (Mar 18)

This Session: Character, Point-of-View (POV) & Voice
Character - whose story is it?
POV - who will tell us of the story?
Voice - how and when will they tell us?

Level: Aimed at writers of all levels and abilities but new(ish) writers who feel they don't know enough about the basics of fiction writing will likely gain the most from this course.

Timing: Wednesdays from 7:00pm to 9:15pm online. The bulk of the session will be 7:00pm to 9:15pm with Q&A and open discussion in the last 15mins.

Cost: £12.00 per session. You can attend all four sessions or only the session that interests you. I'm doing this first course as a starter to see how it works for writers (and me) so I'm not charging my full rate. Once you sign up, you'll be able to see the link to the virtual room to join each week (it'll be the same one each time). I use Google Meet to host my online meetings. It can be opened in any browser but works best with Chrome.

Sessions will be recorded for archiving.

Any questions, please post a comment below or send me a DM.