Creative Writing Course: Masterclass

Creative writing. Express yourself with the written word.

COVID-19 update: arrangement of our courses

We are now delivering courses online and in-person. Please check the delivery format of each class before enrolling.

Please note that course materials (excluding prescribed texts) are shared electronically within 48 hours of course commencement. Printing is not available.

This practical and inspiring course is for anyone who wants to kick-start, or deepen, their writing. Take a break to share daily writing exercises in the company of other apprentice writers and hear some bright ideas about writing beautifully.

This week-long workshop is open to writers of all levels. Although it focuses mostly on fiction, it looks at creative writing of all kinds, including memoir and poetry. The program introduces some ideas about creativity, composition, style, plotting, planning, editing and publishing. You will have a chance to share pieces of writing you’ve composed, thoughts about your writing progress and your responses to the daily readings. Each session, we will work on writing exercises. Some of these will take the group outside, into the grounds of the University of Sydney.

Outcomes

By the end of this course, you should be able to:

• grow beginnings toward completed works of literary art
• employ more sophisticated understandings of syntax, rhythm, metaphor and prosody
• target your writing to meet the demands of different genres and markets
• finish pieces of poetry and prose toward a level suitable for publication
• develop a sustainable creative writing practice.

Content

The Self escaping onto the page

• How to write the work that only you can
• How to tell your readers secrets
• How to write what you have to say the way it’s never been written before
• How to dramatise – not summarise
• How to write with narrative flow and lyric flourish
• How to use the disciplines of style to lead you deeper into your unique self and out into the inner life of the actual world beyond the self
• How to tell it start to finish and years later

Xing – the voice and the place

• How to write the world of the self and the self of the world
• Place literacy and self-literacy
• The power of rhythm
• Wisdom and metaphor
• Imagery – how to make it sing
• How to foreground the background

Craft and style

• The art of the impossible
• The musical arrangement of passionate fact
• Crowding and leaping
• The real book is what you leave out
• The art of slowness
• The 3 Ds of literature: data, deal, devices of creative writing
• Freeing language from writing
• More talk; less chat

Order and disorder

• Literature forgives us for being human. It writes the contradictions
• Write your affections, afflictions, addictions
• The power of form
• The uses of the mind-map
• Discovering what you need to write by writing

What now?

• Some tips on getting finished, getting help and getting published
• Discovering a writing practice that fits your life
• Writing resilience

Intended audience

Designed for writers in all creative genres who are already at work on a book or writing project. It also caters for early stage writers who have undertaken an entry-level workshop or writing program.

Delivery modes

• Face-to-face, presenter-taught workshop
• Online workshop via the platform Zoom

Delivery style

This workshop uses the approach of the masterclass, making a close reading of pieces of writing you have already embarked upon, as well as prose or poetry you make in response to prompts from the facilitator. It combines discussion of advanced writing techniques, with insightful analysis and editing of student writing, led by the facilitator, an award-winning poet and prose writer, of student writing.

Materials

Course notes are distributed electronically

Recommended reading

Dillard, A 1989, The Writing Life, Harper Collins, New York.

Le Guin, U 1998, Steering the Craft, Eight Mountain Press, Portland.

Orr, G 2002, Poetry as Survival.

Strunk, W & White, E B 2000, The Elements of Style, 4th edition, Allyn & Bacon, Boston.

Zinsser, W 1998, On Writing Well, 6th edition, Harper Collins, New York.