Creative Writing Course: Craft and Technique of Storytelling
Course Overview
Want to learn more about the craft and technique of storytelling?
In this 7-week course, you will deepen your understanding of the purpose of your characters, the pace of your plot and how conflict is necessary for building tension and creating good drama.
Whether you are a regular or emerging writer, each week you will be writing, so bring your pen, notebook and imagination for fun, inclusive sessions.
Course weekly overview:
Write your story
- Understand why you are writing
- Learn the structural foundations of a story
- Develop visual settings in time and place
Know your characters
- Understand the roles of your protagonist and antagonist
- Establish desires and needs
- Learn how to make your protagonist change
Create an authentic voice
- Establish your narrator and point of view
- Deepen your characterisation
- Create a balance between narration and dialogue
Recognise conflict and drama
- Develop the dramatic arc
- Discover language and pacing
- Identify action versus tension
Effective Scene writing
- Purpose and place
- Written dialogue versus spoken
- Reactions and resolution
Deepen characterisation
- Create credible characters
- Push your characters to do more
- Kill your darlings
Embrace drafts and revisions
- First drafts are complete
- Self-editing tools
- Workshopping
What to Bring
- Notebook and pen – no laptops.
- Ideas and an open mind.
- Commitment to 7 x 2-hour sessions (max 12 per class).
Expected outcomes
Some short readings will be given each week for discussion the following week.
- Each session includes topic discussion, short readings and active writing
- Completed self-set goal.
- Improved confidence and future plan.
This course does not specifically cover speculative fiction, romance, horror, historical fiction or crime/thriller genres but covers creative approaches for all types of prose writing.
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Helen Connealy
Helen Connealy is a storyteller, writer, experienced CEO, executive coach
and workshop facilitator. She holds a Master of Arts in Creative Writing from the Seamus Heaney Centre, Queens University Belfast and is currently working on a poetry project and a short story collection.
Helen is a Board Director with the Irish Writers Centre, a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (GAICD), an accredited Strengths Profiler and a Certified Yoga Teacher. An advocate for women, writers and creativity, she is passionate about philanthropy, literature, healthcare and building social impact.
