Stella Whitelaw:
'Writing short stories that sell'
"Inspirational"
"Excellent. Well organized and packed with useful information"
"Loved all the courses, especially Stella's"
"Brilliant!"
"The best course leader I have ever been to."
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previous
courses
Louise Jordan:
'Writing for children's publishers'
"Excellent, knew her stuff, up-to-date info, warm and encouraging"
"Well structured, informative and up to the minute. ====
previous
courses
Peter Lyons:
'"All the world's a stage"
"I appreciated the Drama course - Peter Lyons is always helpful."
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previous
courses
Kenneth Steven:
'Catching dragons - writing, crafting and publishing poetry'
"I thoroughly enjoyed Kenneth's course"
"Excellent"
"Loved Kenneth Steven's poetry evening - more please!"
"Very good indeed"
"Outstanding as a poet and course leader. His input was worth the
cost of the week alone!"
====
previous
courses
Roy Devereux: 'Make money from magazines'
"Excellent, Roy put a great deal of work into his
course and has inspired me to succeed"
2009courses
Adaptation
for film and televisionhere Autobiography here Copywriting
for writershere
Crime here The
Dramatist's Way here
Non fiction here
Poetry here
Presentationhere
Scifi, horror here
Short Stories here
Short story to novel here
Writing for younger childrenhere
Gwyneth
Box Poetry
- the art of patterning
Poetry makes use of patterns; rhythmic devices
and rhyme schemes; repetition and variation, mirroring and echoing of
sounds and ideas; organization and arrangement of structure and layout.
All these techniques combine to create a landscape for the reader to visit
and explore.
Whether you're an experienced poet hoping for a new approach to familiar
terrain, a beginner looking for waymarkers at the early stages of the
journey, or a reader just setting out along the path, this course is designed
to help you better understand and enjoy the world of modern poetry.
Gwyneth first came to Swanwick as winner of the Writers' News/Swanwick
Poetry competition, 2007. Her work has won a number of awards and has
appeared in anthologies and magazines. Gwyneth has lived in Spain for
the past 20 years. Her interest in translation led her to explore the
techniques of English poetry with a view to understanding how each element
contributes to the overall effect.
Della
Galton Short story to Novel
make the transition easily
The aim of this course is to help writers who are struggling to make the
transition from short fiction to longer fiction. The four sessions will
look at how you do that.
We
will cover :
1. First page and beyond. Pace and making a scene of it.
2. Settings and plot
3. Characters, viewpoint and dialogue,
4. Marketing, agents, publishers, the covering letter and synopsis.
This is an interactive course with workshops.
Come along, learn, be inspired and have fun along the way.
Della sold more than a thousand short stories to magazines and has had
two novels published. Her first non fiction book, How to Write and
Sell Short Stories, was scheduled for publication in October 2008
by Accent Press.
John Jarrold Scifi, Horror course
details to be confirmed
As an editor
and editorial director specializing in SF and Fantasy with Macdonald Futura,
Random House and Simon & Schuster, he published the bestselling novelists:
Iain Banks, Terry Brooks, Robert Jordan, Arthur C Clarke and Michael Moorcock,
amongst others.
John
has had a varied background in the worlds of research, engineering, management
and body therapy, among a few other things. He writes a bit, but his first
love is speaking. He gets plenty of opportunity to do this, both in his
role as lecturer and when delivering motivational presentations. He thoroughly
enjoys after dinner speaking too, but doesn’t count this as real
work because of all the good feeding and watering involved.
Speaking
in public can be the way to sell your books, add to your income, entertain
the troops and impress your friends. This practical course gives you the
skills and confidence to do just that.
Gerald Ford
said: ‘Nothing is more important in life than the ability to communicate
effectively.’
As writers we know this is true and that’s what this course is all
about - developing effective communication skills in public speaking.
It will cover
essential techniques on how to build our own and the audience’s
confidence, plan and organise the speech and then look at how we can deliver
a powerful, entertaining performance – anytime, every time!.
Oh…. and
there will be plenty of opportunity for interaction, participation and
a bit of fun.
This course follows last year's workshop focused on writing for
children and getting published. We will explore four aspects more deeply,
allowing time for questions, exercises and discussion:
Age
groupings and levels, genre: ethical Issues
Plots,
themes, style, character and dialogue Getting
published. Markets, unique selling points, writing for education/schools Self
publishing. Sharing my own experience and exploring individual plans/work
in progress
Mal
is Emeritus Professor in Education at the University of Nottingham. She
has published numerous academic books and papers in philosophy and education
and eight collections of children's stories with Routledge and Jessica
Kingsley.
Her Special Stories featuring disabled children was shortlisted for the
TES/Nasson Teaching and Learning Award.
With her partner she has set up her own small publishing press (Inky Fingers)
and has published the first four in a series of children's books based
on vintage cars. These have received excellent reviews and are selling
well.
more
courses here Peter Lyons The Dramatist's Way becoming
a playwright
The
course will consist of 4 interlinked participative workshops.
But, each workshop will also stand alone. During the course we will learn
how to see the world as dramatists, work up storylines, find ways and
means of adapting existing stories into dramatic material, and look at
nuts and bolts such as dialogue and characterisation. The aim being to
equip participants with the tools for playmaking in every way. All that’s
required is pen, paper, an open mind, and a sense of fun.
Peter Lyons has had five plays performed professionally, in varied venues
ranging from Cheltenham to Stornoway, open streets in gale force winds
to studio theatres with a maximum audience of 50. However the nearest
he’s got to the West End is Fulham. He recently judged the Scottish
Association of Writers One Act Play competition.
The course will look at non-fiction writing in its various forms.
It will cover the importance and joy of editing your work and what to
include or leave out; what you as an individual can write about; feature
writing including preparing for and carrying out interviews; markets.
Active participation will be rewarded with a large smile of appreciation.
Sharon
has been a journalist since January 2006 and spent more than two years
working full-time for a weekly community newspaper.
She now works freelance and has completed a non-fiction book which she
is in the process of placing with a publisher. She first attended Swanwick
in 2005. Sharon has been a member of Strathkelvin Writers in Glasgow for
many years and has run workshops and given talks.
She was the winner of the school's
Diamond Anniversary Jill
Dick Memorial Competition.
more
courses here Jean Saunders Magazine short stories
Come
to learn, and come to enjoy. The Short Story course will be part
lecture, part audience participation, part fun. Think of it as an introduction
for those wanting to write magazine short stories for the first time,
and a refresher course for old hands. The course will include:
Finding ideas
Constructing your story
Sharp beginnings and satisfactory endings
Putting in the style; conflict and pace
Bringing characters to life and realistic dialogue
Where to send it when you’ve written it!
Competitions
Jean Saunders is the
prolific author of more than 100 novels under various pen-names, including
Rowena Summers and Rachel Moore. She has had more than 600 short stories
published, many articles, and six How-To books for writers. She lectures
widely in Britain and on cruise ships. She was Chairman of the Romantic
Novelists’ Association for two years, and has been involved with
Swanwick since 1973, including being Vice Chairman, committee member,
main speaker twice, course leader on various occasions, and sometime revue
and panto warbler.
Sell not Tell!
If you've ever struggled to write about yourself or your work, then this
is the ideal workshop for you. With an ever increasing number of ways
to communicate to potential readers (as well as publishers and agents),
it becomes crucial for all writers to be able to express themselves clearly
and effectively. Most fiction writers will know the phrase "show
not tell": in this workshop we will explore how to "sell not
tell"; how to write to promote ourselves and to become our own copywriter.
Benjamin
has worked in advertising as an account manager and as a copywriter.
He is co-author of Turn Your Degree into a Career (How to Books)
and editor of a short story anthology Undercurrents (Gatehouse
Press).
He is a regional co-ordinator of the Society of Children’s Book
Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) and reviews regularly for Carousel
Magazine.
If
you can write you can adapt. Anything can be adapted. The
course will consist of talks and handouts on adaptation as well as practical
exercises. The exercises will include:
• Turning prose into script
• Adapting familiar fairy stories and fables.
• How to stick to the story as written and how to adapt
a story into a totally new work by changing the point of view, setting,
character or time period.
is course might just give you the inspiration and
the tools to adapt your own When
C4’s Richard & Judy needed a writing coach to appear on the
show Ruth was the perfect choice. Lively and fun,
an experienced teacher, a published author of numerous books, as well
as being a TV scriptwriter, Ruth has personal experience of adapting her
own work and that of others for screen, stage and radio.
Jonathan
Taylor is the author of the memoir, "Take Me Home: Parkinson's,
My Father, Myself," published by Granta Books in 2007. He is
Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at De Montfort University. His stories,
reviews and articles have been published in Guardian Family, Guardian
Education, Times Higher, Times Literary Supplement, Granta, Stand, Staple,
Coffee House and many others. Jonathan is co-founder and co-director of
arts organisation Crystal Clear Creators.
"Many things
that I would not care to tell any individual man I tell to the public"
(Montaigne).
This course will
explore the strange and paradoxical world of memoir-writing. It will confront
some of the central challenges which face the memoir-writer, such as how
to imbue real-life experiences with meaning, how to engage a reader with
those experiences, and how to find significance in apparently 'trivial'
memories. The course will take moments and memories - some trivial, some
life-changing - as raw material, and restructure them in different ways
into shaped prose.
more
courses here Stella Whitelaw The Classic Private Eye
Crime
is the fastest selling genre on the market now.
Create a private eye who is invisible, magnetic, dynamic and entertaining.
Forget the stereotype PI in a raincoat and dark glasses.
Readers need new detectives who will capture their imagination.
These
four lectures will explore new characters, new settings, new twists and
surprising close encounters. We will comb Swanwick for clues, invent red
herrings, but no murders in the conservatory please.
STELLA
WHITELAW has been a writer since the age of nine, first as a London newspaper
reporter, then as an author.
Hooked on writing, Stella has more than 42 books published, including
11 crime. More than 275 short stories published.
Overseas sales uncounted.
A day
is not complete without writing ... a writer’s second sight makes
living a joy.
Courses
are offered in four parts of an hour.
Two blocks of courses are offered, one at the beginning of the week, the
other from mid-week on. Members chose a course from each block.
Advance booking of a particular course is not necessary. No prior knowledge
of the subject matter is required to enjoy the courses.
Poetry makes use of patterns; rhythmic devices
and rhyme schemes; repetition and variation, mirroring and echoing of
sounds and ideas; organization and arrangement of structure and layout.
All these techniques combine to create a landscape for the reader to visit
and explore.
John
has had a varied background in the worlds of research, engineering, management
and body therapy, among a few other things. He writes a bit, but his first
love is speaking. He gets plenty of opportunity to do this, both in his
role as lecturer and when delivering motivational presentations. He thoroughly
enjoys after dinner speaking too, but doesn’t count this as real
work because of all the good feeding and watering involved.
Mal
is Emeritus Professor in Education at the University of Nottingham. She
has published numerous academic books and papers in philosophy and education
and eight collections of children's stories with Routledge and Jessica
Kingsley. 
Sharon
has been a journalist since January 2006 and spent more than two years
working full-time for a weekly community newspaper. 
Come
to learn, and come to enjoy. The Short Story course will be part
lecture, part audience participation, part fun. Think of it as an introduction
for those wanting to write magazine short stories for the first time,
and a refresher course for old hands. The course will include:
Benjamin
has worked in advertising as an account manager and as a copywriter. 
If
you can write you can adapt. Anything can be adapted. The
course will consist of talks and handouts on adaptation as well as practical
exercises. The exercises will include: 
Jonathan
Taylor is the author of the memoir, "Take Me Home: Parkinson's,
My Father, Myself," published by Granta Books in 2007. He is
Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at De Montfort University. His stories,
reviews and articles have been published in Guardian Family, Guardian
Education, Times Higher, Times Literary Supplement, Granta, Stand, Staple,
Coffee House and many others. Jonathan is co-founder and co-director of
arts organisation Crystal Clear Creators. 
STELLA
WHITELAW has been a writer since the age of nine, first as a London newspaper
reporter, then as an author. 
