The Writers Bureau

Week 1: Generating short story ideas – In the first session, you’ll take a brief look at the short story market and the importance of researching the market you’re writing for. Esther will then show you lots of fun ways to ensure you’re never short of ideas.

Week 2: How to open your short story with an enticing hook – Now you have some ideas for short stories, Esther will show you different ways of making sure you grab your reader’s interest right from the start. There will be some exercises for you complete so you’ll get the chance to work on your own story openings.

Week 3: Creating compelling characters – In this session, you’ll be working on your characters. You’ll learn how to make them believable so your reader can share your character’s journey, seeing and experiencing everything as they do. There will be some exercises to work through so you can start bringing your own characters to life.

Week 4: Location, location, location – Here, you’ll learn about how to create a vivid picture in your reader’s mind and to take them right to the scene. You’ll learn how to use the five senses (sight, sound, smell, touch and taste) effectively and then you’ll have the opportunity of working on your own scenes.

Week 5: Mastering the art of ‘show, not tell’ – As writers, most of us have heard the three words ‘show, not tell’ and been told how important it is to ‘show’, rather than ‘tell’. In this session, we’ll look at what it means, how you can achieve it in your writing and when it’s okay to ‘tell’. There will be some exercises for you to work through to build on your ‘showing’ skills.

Week 6: The importance of tension and obstacles – If there isn’t tension in a story, essentially there’s no story. There have to be stakes at play, obstacles in the way of your character achieving their goal. If there aren’t any of those things, there’s no tension. There will be some exercises during the session to help you add tension to your stories.

Week 7: Bringing your story to a satisfying ending – A short story can be brilliant, hooking your reader’s attention right from the start and then holding it there all the way through, with a compelling storyline, well-drawn characters and scenes they feel part of. But all that can fall by the wayside if the ending falls flat. Esther will show you lots of different ways to end your short story so your reader is left thinking, what a great ending to a great story! You’ll have the opportunity of taking some of your story ideas and trying out different endings.

Week 8: Common grammar and punctuation issues – It’s very easy to become so immersed in writing your story that the basics fall by the wayside, meaning dialogue punctuation isn’t set out properly, semi-colons spring up where they shouldn’t, tenses take on a life of their own and so on. You may have a masterpiece of a story, but if it’s full of mistakes, you’re likely to find your story rejected. Our final session looks at the importance of making sure your manuscript is as error-free as possible.

After the final session you will be invited to submit a story up to 2000 words to be assessed by workshop leader, Esther Chilton.