The companion to my first writing handbook, NOVEL, Telling Tales is again based on one of my Cardiff Unicourses and the title is, I hope, self-explanatory… Herewith the blurb;
The passing on of stories is as old as mankind, and the urge to tell them, for many of us, runs deep. Those of us who find ourselves afflicted by what many writers liken to a disease, will know only too well that the true writer can’t NOT write – many of us tend to do so compulsively. And even if we’re not all scribbling furiously in cafes, a la the fabled J K Rowling, then we’re often to be found, miles away, staring into space, while engaged in doing likewise in our heads.
This step-by-step course on creating sensational short fiction is for everyone. Written by bestselling author Lynne Barrett-Lee, and based on her face-to-face course of the same name, Telling Tales will guide you through the whole writing process, from the basics – where to start, how to create characters, how to plot and to write sparkling dialogue – to the business of polishing and editing your fiction, before taking the next step – getting it out there in the world. It assumes nothing: it doesn’t matter whether you already have some experience or are a complete novice, because writing fiction, at any level, requires just three vital things: a desire to create stories (that disease mentioned earlier), an imagination (if it’s rusty, no matter; it will be nurtured) and most of all, a sense of adventure. In other words, nothing the average person can’t muster, if telling tales looks like becoming an affliction for you too…