Manchester Digital Laboratory

Short Story

Title: Short Story Writing Workshop
Location: MadLab
Description: This course is about the short story.
Date: 11-09-2012
Start Time: 19:00
End Time: 21:00
Bookings: Sign up here

This course is held on Tuesday evenings (11 Sept, 9th Oct, 6th Nov, 11th Dec, 8th Jan, 12th Feb)

Over the course of six workshops you’ll get a handle on the predominant narrative structures used by short story writers, and learn how to implement them in your own work. Completing set writing tasks between workshops – and receiving structured, peer-driven feedback – you’ll develop three short stories to completion. You’ll receive tailored advice on how to shape the story and how to improve characterisation, dialogue and narrative voice. Comma Press, one of the UK’s leading publishers of short fiction, is currently looking for new authors for its Reveal anthology and it’s hoped that this course will unearth and develop contenders for this showcase.

What you need to be familiar with

You don’t necessarily need any practical experience of writing stories, nor of supervised creative writing of any kind, but it’s important that you have an interest in – and enthusiasm for – the short story form. To get the most from the course you should be prepared do some background reading, undertake writing tasks between sessions, read the work of others on the course prior to each session, offer tactful – yet frank – feedback and receive constructive criticism on your own work. The course isn’t geared towards any particular sub-genre within the short story form – be it literary fiction, sci-fi or horror – though we’ll be looking at techniques applicable to all these genres.

This isn’t a course devised to help you write a novel, a novella, poetry, micro-fiction or biography – it’s all about the short story, which presents its own specific demands and opportunities to writers. Short stories typically weigh-in at somewhere between 1500 and 8000 words long – for the purpose of this course we will be looking at stories up to 5,000 words long.

Equipment you’ll need

• Something to write with during sessions – pen and paper will do
• Computer with internet access – to upload your work-in-progress to the online Dropbox or email the group
• If you prefer to print out other people’s work to read prior to sessions (rather than reading from a screen), you’ll need to do so at your own expense

Recommended reading list

To prepare for the course, please read these short stories. All the stories are available online one way or another, so it is not required to purchase them.
Short Story Writing Workshop reading list

Further information

Short Story Writing Workshop course syllabus

Costs and times

£150 for six evening sessions over a six-month month period, held on Tuesday evenings (11 Sept, 9th Oct, 6th Nov, 11th Dec, 8th Jan, 12th Feb).

Tutor biography

Zoe Lambert is a Manchester-based short story writer. Her critically acclaimed collection, The War Tour, was published by Comma Press in 2011 and was shortlisted for the Edge Hill Prize for the Short Story. She has a PhD from Manchester Metropolitan University and has lectured in creative writing for a number of years.

Tags: Omniversity, Omniversity of Manchester, Short Story Writing Workshop