Find Your Voice (January 2024)

Overview

Explore the craft of creative writing by paying attention to voice. We will discover how to find and develop our voices as writers and what it means to have the confidence to speak, as ourselves, on the page.

With help from a diverse list of contemporary authors including Toni Morrison, Elizabeth Strout, Guy Gunarante, Claire-Louise Bennett, Owen Sheers, Yann Martel, Stephen King and Ocean Vuong, author and creative tutor Natalie Young invites you on a journey in search of your own identity as a writer, and will encourage you to shape that identity on the page. 

Find Your Voice has been designed to offer creative support and is suitable for writers of fiction and creative non-fiction. All participants will be provided with a collaborative space in which to develop individual writing styles and book ideas, with the course therefore perfect for writers either in the embryonic stages of a writing journey, or for those with a completed draft but aware of the need to further interrogate their work and/or regain creative momentum.

Participants can expect to join a group with a maximum of 20 students, and no previous formal writing experience is required to sign up.

Across the six weeks, students will be encouraged to write as much as they can, both in the form of free-writing and also through structured writing tasks to be used as a starting point for further workshop discussion. 

Each evening session will run from 7-9pm, making it ideal for those with full-time jobs and other commitments.

Course Benefits

• 12 hours of advice from an experienced author and creative writing tutor
• Practical sessions with hands-on exercises designed for you to revolve around your ideas
• Guest speaker to be confirmed
• Course materials available to view ahead of each session, plus catch-up audio recordings
• Broad range of contemporary authors included in workshop discussions
• Your group will consist of a maximum of 20 students
• Exclusive opportunity of a follow-up one-to-one consultation with your course leader
• Discounts on W&A products including editing services and books
• Each week, sessions will combine tutorials with practical exercises, discussion and feedback.

Optional Extra: Bespoke Feedback. All course participants will have the exclusive opportunity to submit 1500 words (plus working synopsis/chapter outline) to their course leader ahead of a 30-minute one-to-one consultation. This is entirely optional and comes at an additional cost of £50, with details to be circulated ahead of Week 5.

Course Outline

Throughout the course students will be writing and submitting work, as well as reading other people's work and providing feedback.

WEEK 1

MAKING CLAY - In our first session we will discuss what we mean by voice. We will then have a series of fun and informal exercises towards what we call ‘making clay’ so that we have some initial material to work with. Our reading material will focus on the process of writing with a range of extracts to demonstrate a range of approaches and techniques.

MEMORY, SENSES and VOICE - In the second half of our first session we will explore techniques for accessing and representing memories and senses, capturing fleeting impressions and character quirks and start to consider how these raw elements will contribute to your writing and characters.

WEEK 2

DIALOGUE and VOICE - How do we use dialogue to enhance and carry a piece of writing? What can we learn from a selection of examples about how best to write dialogue and when and where to use and not use it?

WEEK 3

YOUR VOICE and OTHER VOICES – Reading and slowly examining other voices is as important for your writing as actually sitting there and putting the words on the page. How does spending time with our favourite authors and tuning into their work allow us to piggy-back until we are ready to jump off and write? At what point do we need to stop reading others in order to focus on our work?

WEEK 4 and 5

SHAPING THE CLAY – Workshopping becomes more intense as each student brings in 1000 words for feedback by the group. This session follows a live demonstration of writing in real time with feedback response between the two course tutors with the idea that the writing discussed will be used as a springboard for a longer more considered piece to be presented in WEEK 6. Participants will then be reading out their work in the second part of this session and in the following week. This part of the course is designed to encourage a critical and professional distance between the writer and their work.

WEEK 6

WHAT’S THE STORY?

In this concluding workshop participants receive more detailed feedback on work submitted to the discussion board in advance. We will discuss how voice and story combine to give the reader an emotional response to the work. Finding your voice is just the beginning. Turning your voice towards a story is the next step. A whistle stop tour of the fundamentals of storytelling will be included as well as suggestions for how to move your story forward.

Testimonials

"I loved FYV. Alex and Natalie were a great team [...] They made me feel like I could do this! I have come away feeling encouraged as a writer." Diane Woodrow

"Very useful. The exercises have driven a number of new pieces and the expertise and experience of the tutors was invaluable." Tony Black

"The feedback environment was beneficial and generous of spirit. Great atmosphere to develop our writing and share with others taking part." Janine Meston

"I absolutely loved it. I felt heard and respected and loved the feedback and seeing how it improved my work." Fiona Houston

"Really enjoyed it - forced me to both read and write - helped me think about voice, technique, dialogue etc." Sam Davis

"Excellent, very useful indeed. Perfect to gain confidence with finding my writing voice." Laurence Pinturault