Creative Writing Workshop with Jen Thorpe - Place

This four hour writing workshop will focus on writing place.

In August we’ll be doing some writing exercises on:

1. Micro and macro worldbuilding — great for those of you who are writing fantasy, speculative fiction, magical realism, or anything slightly different from the world as you know it. These exercises are useful too for anyone writing more realist fiction because they make you consider your assumptions about setting and place, and what it means for your story and characters.
2. How to use your senses to make your story setting come alive — great for you if you’re writing scenes that are unfamiliar to your protagonists, or if you’re hoping to make your writing a bit richer. Also great if you’re writing non-fiction, and want to convey to the reader how it feels to inhabit a particular place.
3. Using place to rub up against your characters and to see how it moulds their actions — great if you’re feeling stuck with a character, or your character is feeling stuck. For those of you who have attended in July, you can work on characters you’ve already built, or on creating some new ones.
4. How setting and place can create an atmosphere and mood for your story — sometimes our setting can become a character in itself, and it can help to create dramatic tension.

By the end of the workshop you’ll have some new fresh writing, and you’ll be more alert to what the setting of your story is doing for the rest of your project.