The Complete Creative Writing Course Blog

Goodbye and Hello

Maggie Hamand — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 16:14:37 +0000

After nearly five years teaching on the CCWC, Shaun Levin is sadly leaving us. Shaun’s teaching has been nothing short of inspirational and both the teaching team and the students will miss his knowledge, dedication, and his constructive and sensitive feedback. We wish Shaun all the very best for the future.

Naomi Wood

We are lucky to have joining us Naomi Wood, author of debut novel The Godless Boys (Picador, 2011). Naomi’s first steps into fiction writing were taken on our original course in April 2006 and she was so inspired she went on to take the famous Creative Writing Masters at the University of East Anglia, where she now teaches and is working for a PhD. Naomi will be teaching an advanced workshop on Monday evenings from the autumn and also on our original course on Saturday afternoons.

New writing anthology for 2012

Maggie Hamand — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 15:24:50 +0000

Following on from the success of our last Complete Creative Writing Course anthology, “Words Made Flesh, “we have decided to produce a new one for 2012. The deadline for entries by people who have taken at least one of our courses is 31 March. Pieces should be short stories or excerpts which work as a stand-alone piece, of between 2,000 and 3,000 words.
Our last anthology, “Words Made Flesh”, was distributed to 100 independent publishers and literary agents, and has sold nearly 400 copies. The authors all experienced what it was like to be professionally edited, and had the pleasure of seeing their work in print in book form.
Shaun and I are looking forward very much to reading the submissions and to choosing a title for the new anthology.

Favourite Things and a New Short Story Course

Shaun Levin — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 00:51:24 +0000

It’s been a busy term and, I’m ashamed to say, almost three months since the last post. Not that we weren’t devising exercises and coming up with writing ideas! But you get so caught up in one thing (teaching), that other things get a bit neglected. That’s often what happens with writing in general… with all our good intentions, something (life!) gets in the way and we land up forgetting about one of the things we love doing. It was nice to suddenly remember… ah, it’s time to put up a new post, think up a new exercise.

Our characters, too, will have things that they love doing. Have you character rediscover something that they used to love doing more often. Fishing, perhaps. Or just reading a book in a cafe in the middle of the day. It might be a good boogie that they haven’t had in a long time. Write about them rediscovering and doing this thing that they love. They might have come across it by accident, or perhaps someone encouraged them to do it. Think about how this thing – hiking, playing the guitar, baking bread – is also linked to a memory from another time in their life. Surprise yourself. Discover something new about your character.

And talking about new things… we’ll be running a Short Story Course this coming term. It’ll be on Monday evenings, and we’ll be exploring traditional and experimental stories, as well as looking at where best to send your stories.

In the meantime, have a wonderful festive season. Eat. Write. Rest.

Make Accidents Happen: Finding a Perspective

Shaun Levin — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 15:01:17 +0000

Something happens and everything changes. You break a leg, someone you love disappears, you win a major prize, and what you thought was your story – your life! – is turned upside down. On a recent holiday to Amsterdam, I broke a bone in my foot, and what was meant to be a week of fun in Holland, turned out to be two weeks on the sofa with a plaster cast in a strange flat. I finally got to watch Rear Window, and got to thinking how some stories rely on an accident, or some dreadful news, or some wonderful stroke of luck. For the purposes of this post, let’s call all these occurrences “accidents”.

THE EXERCISE: This exercise works best with a story you’ve already written. Take a story (or even a whole novel – one that you’ve abandoned, preferably) that you’ve had in your drawer for a while, a story you’ve been struggling with, perhaps even given up on. Now give the character an “accident” to deal with. Maybe they’ve been in an accident, or someone they know has been in an accident, or they’ve just won an award, or someone they love has been arrested. Write about how they deal with this new reality in their life. Think about Stephen King’s Misery; revisit Rear Window.

Besides the possibility that your story may need new drama, it could also be that what you’ve written so far is just you getting to know the character, and the accident is the point where the real story can really begin. This doesn’t mean that you have to scrap everything you’ve written so far; maybe now everything will be seen in light of this new “accident”. The accident may also provide you with the point of view you’ve been looking for. Take the story of the quiet, small-town middle-aged woman that you’ve already written… now tell it from her perspective after she has won a major TV talent show. Take the story you’ve already written about the couple who is breaking up, now tell it from the point of view of one of them after the other has disappeared without a trace.

This is an exercise in adding drama to a story, but more than that, it is an exercise in finding the right point in time from which to tell a story.

Thinking Back, Linking Back

Shaun Levin — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 12:22:21 +0000

We’ve just come to the end of two summer intensive workshops. A week of focused writing and thinking about writing, exploring character and dialogue and metaphors and the more abstract questions of “Why I Write”. (Cue George Orwell’s brilliant essay.) Often during an intense time of work, we don’t get the opportunity to figure out what we’ve learnt, or even how we feel about the experience, and it can take weeks for the experience to be absorbed into our system.

Put your character at the end of a concentrated time of work, maybe a painter at the end of a painting, a host at the end of a dinner party. Or if you’re writing memoir, think about a time when you completed a period of focused work – a project, a relationship, a course, a trip. Then have your character looking back at what they did, what they learnt, what they remember.

Even if your story is told in the present tense, your character will also be looking back now and then. If this is the case, such an exercise would be a way to move out of the present tense, to create more variety, more movement in time in the narrative. This may also be a more interesting way to tell the story of the dinner party, the retreat, the painting. A character reviewing an experience when it is still fresh in their mind, not necessarily with too much hindsight. The emotional impact will still be fresh, the different people involved in the experience still very much present in the character’s thoughts.

You could also write about how this experience triggers a memory of a similar experience in the character’s past (or your past), or evokes a similar feeling in the character, maybe something they’ve forgotten until now. A narrative likes layers, so thinking about how one experience links to others, can only be a good thing!