Every year the Fellowship of Australian Writers WA (FAWWA)  runs a mini-series of workshops about how to write and publish a story. It’s a mini-series because each workshop runs for just three hours over seven Saturday afternoons in late winter and early spring. The material in the workshops is especially suitable for newly emerging writers who want to understand the nuts and bolts of how to write a story.

Because the sessions are short they are also inexpensive; especially if you are a member of FAWWA or any recognised writing group in WA. Membership of FAWWA can be a tremendous help to anyone interested in writing and if you are not a member this is a great time to join because you will save more than the cost of annual membership by booking all seven sessions at the discounted FAWWA rate. As always at my workshops, there will be plenty of handouts to take away and quite a few fun writing exercises.

The dates and session titles are:

Aug 9     How to Devise a Great Plot
Aug 16   How to Create Vivid, Believable Characters
Aug 23   How to Write Dramatic Dialogue
Sept 20  How to Show, not Tell – the Trick of Exposition
Sept 27  How to Structure the Narrative: Combining the elements
Oct 18     How to Find and Develop Great Story Ideas
Oct 25    What Can You Do To Get Published?

Go to the FAWWA website for more details

If you are interested go to book your place HERE  but you will need to hurry as there’s limited room at the wonderfully atmospheric Mattie Furphey House.

The new course I am running for UWA Extension, ‘ASSESSING AND EDITING YOUR MANUSCRIPT’ has proved to be really popular; in fact, it’s a sell-out. Hopefully, we will be putting it on again next year. In the meantime, the full–day, in-depth writing courses I am running on behalf of UWA Extension  over the rest of this calendar year are:

Sept 13    SHOW DON’T TELL details the subtle art of exposition: what the writer can do to show the story rather than tell it.

Oct 11      NARRATIVE STRUCTURE is about making the best choices for your novel: how to restructure your narrative to give it more pace, more depth and make it more interesting

Nov 22    DEVELOPING YOUR WRITING STYLE it’s said that ‘there are no good writers, only writers who are trying to get better’. This whole day is devoted to what you can do to develop your style and your ‘voice’ and how to adopt the appropriate tone for your novel.

All the courses are listed on my website. By clicking on a title you will be taken to the UWA Extension page which provides more detail and enables you to book the course.

Finally, for anyone wishing to improve their professionally written English, their grammar and punctuation, or their ability to make public presentations, you might like to know that I facilitate workshops for the Institute of Professional Administration WA (IPAA WA)

As these are professional, work-related events, you probably need to persuade your organisation, company or department to send you on one of the workshops.

The dates are:

28 Aug  Executive Writing Skills
17 Oct  Brushing up on your Grammar and Punctuation
4 Dec   Presenting to Influence and Persuade with Confidence
10 Dec  Executive Writing Skills

I hope I may see you at one or more of the upcoming courses and workshops but in the meantime — good luck with your writing. Keep at it. All of us get better by just doing it.

Best wishes

John