Writing Basics

Level 1 courses

Choose a course to help you to brush up on the basics that underpin every type of writing, from screenplays and novels to works of non-fiction.

Each course offers a lecture from a Professional Writing tutor, tips from well-known authors, practical writing exercises and an opportunity to assess your work.

Cost: £25 per course; fee includes entry to the members room.

Finding inspiration: where ideas come from and how to stimulate them.

Storytelling: the building blocks you need to tell compelling tales.

Sentence structure: the dos and don'ts of good grammar.

Critiquing: how to review your work, self-edit and respond to others.

Assessing commercial viability: the advantage of knowing your market and ways to get started.

Finding Inspiration ..It’s not even an urge to tell people. It’s like a saucepan overflowing, it bubbles over and you’ve got to do something with it, because it seems too big to contain in oneself, the vessel isn’t big enough... Philip Marsden, travel writer and novelist Writing Basics Read more	Assessing Commercial Viability People who are very successful have a good idea of what they want. Lynne Truss, bestselling author Writing Basics Read more
Sentence Structure Decide what sort of writing you like best, and what it is you like best about this sort of writing: is it the structure, the style, or the subject? Philip Marsden, travel writer and novelist Writing Basics Read more	Critiquing your Work ... writing prose is not a process of magical inspiration so much as fanatical polishing. Hemingway wrote 63 versions of the final chapter of Farewell to Arms and it’s one of the most perfect endings of any book I know… William Dalrymple, historian and travel writer Writing Basics Read more
Storytelling ...in a nutshell, a story is what a character does to achieve something, and drama comes out of conflict. Jeremy Mortimer, BBC Radio Drama Executive Producer Writing Basics Read more