Find Your Voice (September 2023)
We are really excited that you'll be joining us for our upcoming course: 'Find Your Voice'. We will be circulating the joining link via email prior to the class. We will also be setting up a Slack channel which you'll be able to use to discuss with each other during the course and build a community as writers.
During the course we will be sending out short stories and extracts from longer works for you to read and reflect on. All reading materials will be provided, however if you'd like to read the full version of the novels and short story collections the tutors will be referencing, you can find the reading list here: https://www.writersandartists.co.uk/advice/find-your-voice-2023-reading-list-confirmed
A reminder of the course details are below. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to contact the Writers & Artists team via events@writersandartists.com
OverviewExplore the craft of creative writing by paying attention to voice. We will discover how to find and develop our voices as writers and what it means to have the confidence to speak, as ourselves, on the page.
With help from a diverse list of contemporary authors including Toni Morrison, Elizabeth Strout, Guy Gunarante, Claire-Louise Bennett, Owen Sheers, Yann Martel, Stephen King and Ocean Vuong, authors and creative tutors Natalie Young and Alex Hammond, invite you on a journey in search of your own identity as a writer, and will encourage you to shape that identity on the page.
Find Your Voice has been designed to offer creative support and is suitable for writers of fiction and creative non-fiction. All participants will be provided with a collaborative space in which to develop individual writing styles and book ideas, with the course therefore perfect for writers either in the embryonic stages of a writing journey, or for those with a completed draft but aware of the need to further interrogate their work and/or regain creative momentum.
Participants can expect to join a group with a maximum of 20 students, and no previous formal writing experience is required to sign up.
Across the six weeks, students will be encouraged to write as much as they can, both in the form of free-writing and also through structured writing tasks to be used as a starting point for further workshop discussion.
Each evening session will run from 7-9pm, making it ideal for those with full-time jobs and other commitments.
- 12 hours of advice from an experienced author and creative writing tutor
- Practical sessions with hands-on exercises designed for you to revolve around your ideas
- Guest speaker to be confirmed
- Course materials available to view ahead of each session, plus catch-up audio recordings
- Broad range of contemporary authors included in workshop discussions
- Your group will consist of a maximum of 20 students
- Exclusive opportunity of a follow-up one-to-one consultation with your course leader
- Discounts on W&A products including editing services and books
- Each week, sessions will combine tutorials with practical exercises, discussion and feedback.
Optional Extra: Bespoke Feedback. All course participants will have the exclusive opportunity to submit 1500 words (plus working synopsis/chapter outline) to their course leader ahead of a 30-minute one-to-one consultation. This is entirely optional and comes at an additional cost of £50, with details to be circulated ahead of Week 5.
Course OutlineThroughout the course students will be writing and submitting work, as well as reading other people's work and providing feedback.
WEEK 1
MAKING CLAY - In our first session we will discuss what we mean by voice. We will then have a series of fun and informal exercises towards what we call ‘making clay’ so that we have some initial material to work with. Our reading material will focus on the process of writing with a range of extracts to demonstrate a range of approaches and techniques.
MEMORY, SENSES and VOICE - In the second half of our first session we will explore techniques for accessing and representing memories and senses, capturing fleeting impressions and character quirks and start to consider how these raw elements will contribute to your writing and characters.
WEEK 2
DIALOGUE and VOICE - How do we use dialogue to enhance and carry a piece of writing? What can we learn from a selection of examples about how best to write dialogue and when and where to use and not use it?
WEEK 3
YOUR VOICE and OTHER VOICES – Reading and slowly examining other voices is as important for your writing as actually sitting there and putting the words on the page. How does spending time with our favourite authors and tuning into their work allow us to piggy-back until we are ready to jump off and write? At what point do we need to stop reading others in order to focus on our work?
WEEK 4 and 5
SHAPING THE CLAY – Workshopping becomes more intense as each student brings in 1000 words for feedback by the group. This session follows a live demonstration of writing in real time with feedback response between the two course tutors with the idea that the writing discussed will be used as a springboard for a longer more considered piece to be presented in WEEK 6. Participants will then be reading out their work in the second part of this session and in the following week. This part of the course is designed to encourage a critical and professional distance between the writer and their work.
WEEK 6
WHAT’S THE STORY?
In this concluding workshop participants receive more detailed feedback on work submitted to the discussion board in advance. We will discuss how voice and story combine to give the reader an emotional response to the work. Finding your voice is just the beginning. Turning your voice towards a story is the next step. A whistle stop tour of the fundamentals of storytelling will be included as well as suggestions for how to move your story forward.
Joining instructions will also be emailed to you ahead of the first course session.
Joining Instructions
Prep
Ahead of the first session, you’re welcome to start taking a look at the texts on the reading list, which you can find here: Find Your Voice 2023 - Reading List Confirmed | Writers & Artists (writersandartists.co.uk). Some of these are available free online or via BorrowBox so do check that out. However, please note, there’s no obligation to make a start on any of this reading until the course starts and tutors will be providing the extracts you’ll be focusing on as reading materials for each session. So it’s just if you want a wider picture of the work.
To this email I’ve attached a questionnaire that we’d appreciate you filling in and sending back to us ahead of the class. It’s just to give the tutors a bit more of a sense of where you are at, what projects you are working on etc so they can tailor the course to your needs.
Natalie and Alex have also asked that you bring pen/ pencil and paper to the session. They encourage you to write directly on paper if you can. Using old fashioned pencil/pen generates a different kind of rhythm and helps to loosen you up, relax into the flow of writing and get out beyond that pesky inner critic.
Details
The key details of the course are below, as well as the link you’ll need to join each session.
When: 11th September 2023 7:00pm to 16th October 2023 9:00pm (UK Time)
Where: Online
You can download Teams free on your computer, or join via the web: https://www.microsoft.com/en-ww/microsoft-teams/download-app
Slack
Finally, we will be using Slack during the course, which is a free, easy-to-use platform that enables everything related to the course to be stored in one place. Please click on the below link to gain access to the Slack workspace that we’ve created for this course:
https://join.slack.com/t/slack-vv37289/shared_invite/zt-22h4pejhd-y_C_azCsWEkTKHZ0ZFkBRQ
When you arrive in Slack you’ll see the workspace is called ‘Find Your Voice Sept23’, with several channels within that workspace. A quick bit of guidance on how these different channels will work:
- Course Etiquette: We’ve put together some course etiquette guidelines. Please have a read and comment to confirm that you’ve seen them.
- General: This is a general discussion board. Natalie, Alex, James and myself will all have access but it’s not something we’re going to get involved in. This is for you guys to chat amongst yourselves, discuss, share advice and book recommendations! A great way to start would be to introduce yourselves, share info about your writing journey's so far and let the rest of the group know what you’re working on and why you’re here.
- Recordings: We will be recording every class and will post the links to these recordings here.
- Writing Course: We will be sharing the homework in here each week for your reference.
Everyone involved in the course will have access to all channels by default. It’s therefore important to make Slack work for you, so please take a bit of time to manage your notifications. You can do this by right-clicking on the channel and then selecting ‘Change notifications’.
We will also be sharing recordings of each session and homework by email, but this is a space for you guys to connect with each other and build your writing community. Myself and James will also be available via email so if you’d prefer to reach out to us via email then please do get in touch.
