Short story masterclass with AL Kennedy: how to plan your prose
- 30th April 2021
“Plan. Don’t be afraid of it, it won’t be boring.” AL Kennedy on how and why to make a plan for your short stories
How to write short stories: Lucy Caldwell on using a second-person narrator in fiction
- 26th March 2021
"The second-person narrator, when done badly, is the form of narrator that irritates me the most": Lucy Caldwell on how to use "you" in fiction
How to write short stories: Jacob Ross on 'escalation' in fiction
- 26th February 2021
"Things get increasingly worse": the author Jacob Ross on how to build action and tension in fiction
How to write short stories: Adam Marek on enticing opening lines in fiction
- 29th January 2021
The author Adam Marek on how to great your readers' attentions with powerful first sentences in your short stories
Short story masterclass: characterisation, with Leone Ross
- 27th November 2020
The author Leone Ross on creating convincing and believable people on the page, also known as characterisation
Kate Clanchy writing masterclass: how to create memorable imagery in your short stories
- 30th October 2020
“In a short story, the images can be the plot and be the characters”: Kate Clanchy shares her secrets for building powerful images in your writing
Time to be ruthless: edit your story so every word counts, with Cynan Jones
- 25th September 2020
“Chances are, there’s material in your story that simply needs to be hacked away”: Cynan Jones reveals the secrets of editing fiction and how to apply it to your own short stories
How to write a short story... good dialogue and bad dialogue – how to get it right, with Louise Kennedy
- 28th August 2020
"You learn from writing, from reading, from listening": Louise Kennedy reveals the secrets of great dialogue in fiction and how to apply it to your own short stories
How to write a short story... looking at geometry with Yiyun Li
- 31st July 2020
"A short story can be as big, as epic, as symphonic, as a novel": Yiyun Li explains how to use geometrical variations to add depth and width within the limit of a story
How to write a short story... generating ideas with Joe Dunthorne
- 5th July 2020
“Where do you get your ideas from?” Joe Dunthorne leads a masterclass in how to generate ideas for the perfect short story