One of our members, Anna, kindly offered to run some generative writing workshops for the Manchester Speculative Fiction writing group this year, and the sessions have been very popular!
What Is a Writing Workshop?
In a writing workshop, the members write at the meetings, as opposed to submitting their writing for critique. See What is a Writing Group for more explanation.
Manchester Speculative Fiction is primarily a writing critique group, but we also run writing workshops like the ones below.
August Writing Workshop: Specificity
First up was a workshop on specificity in August.
Over the course of the two-hour session, we got the chance to consider what truly makes our writing uniquely ours by exploring concepts or devices that we return to again and again in our writing. Character archetypes, themes, or perhaps even settings that are our ‘obsessions’. As Anna pointed out, it’s a great way to narrow down some ideas for what we care about most in prose and can help us compile a list of our favoured topics that may be useful when writing an author bio.
By the end of the session, we’d generated and shared a short piece of writing from a prompt that pushed us to explore the in-betweens of our obsessions.
October Writing Workshop: Microfiction
Our October workshop explored writing microfiction.
We discussed what microfiction was and was not to us; what a beginning, middle, and end can look like in under 250 words; and tried out one of two different ways to build a piece of microfiction – one more formulaic than the other.
Most of the writers who attended focus on writing novels or short stories, and many of us enjoy taking our time world building in our pieces, so getting a sense of place across in so few words was a wonderful foray into what seemed like the impossible!
November Writing Workshop: Cutting Words
November’s writing workshop will turn the tables from generative writing to serious editing by considering how we can cut words by removing the water weight from our writing to help meet word limits and make every word count.
We’ve been warned there’s a good chance we’ll be sick of hearing the term ‘compound verb’ by the end of the session, but I’m sure we’ll have added a few tricks up our sleeves to help us keep our prose clear and focused!
Join Our Writing Workshops!
The writing workshops are free and open to all active Manchester Speculative Fiction members, so if you’re interested, consider joining us!
