Swanwick Writers' Summer School - Day 2
Aug. 12th, 2015 12:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
clhollandwriterOn Sunday I was awake early and not happy about it. There is no good reason to be awake at quarter to six in the morning, especially at the weekend.
The courses kicked off with the first part of the four-part specialist courses. The choices this year were Novel Writing, Scriptwriting, Writing for Children, Poetry, and Succeeding on Purpose. I did a lot of motivational courses last year, so decided to focus on writing this year. It was a choice between the novel and poetry courses, and I went for the novel as I'd done a lot of poetry courses in recent years.
The tutor was Simon Hall, author of the TV Detective novels who also works for the BBC. He started with the importance of voice, and then of an opening line that grabs. Ideally these two are linked and the opening line will also give an idea of the attitude and character as well as what the book's about.
For the short course I picked CSI: Investigative Techniques for Writers, a course about crime scene investigation by Kate Bendelow, a writer who's also a SOCO. It was a fascinating course, and she clearly loves her job. I don't write crime fiction, but was aiming to take a course to learn and this didn't disappoint.
As I did last year, I skipped the workshop session to catch up on sleep. It's very hard-going if you try to do everything.
The evening speaker was Mario Reading, author of historical fiction and metaphysical non-fiction. I'd been interested to see him since I have an interest in all things metaphysical, and afterwards picked up a book of his translations and interpretation of some of Nostradamus' prophecies. He discussed why he feels agents are a must, the disadvantages of being a bestseller, and why it's sometimes better to accept a smaller advance rather than fail to earn out a larger one.
After the speaker I gathered with some friends and we spent the rest of the evening playing Exploding Kittens.
The courses kicked off with the first part of the four-part specialist courses. The choices this year were Novel Writing, Scriptwriting, Writing for Children, Poetry, and Succeeding on Purpose. I did a lot of motivational courses last year, so decided to focus on writing this year. It was a choice between the novel and poetry courses, and I went for the novel as I'd done a lot of poetry courses in recent years.
The tutor was Simon Hall, author of the TV Detective novels who also works for the BBC. He started with the importance of voice, and then of an opening line that grabs. Ideally these two are linked and the opening line will also give an idea of the attitude and character as well as what the book's about.
For the short course I picked CSI: Investigative Techniques for Writers, a course about crime scene investigation by Kate Bendelow, a writer who's also a SOCO. It was a fascinating course, and she clearly loves her job. I don't write crime fiction, but was aiming to take a course to learn and this didn't disappoint.
As I did last year, I skipped the workshop session to catch up on sleep. It's very hard-going if you try to do everything.
The evening speaker was Mario Reading, author of historical fiction and metaphysical non-fiction. I'd been interested to see him since I have an interest in all things metaphysical, and afterwards picked up a book of his translations and interpretation of some of Nostradamus' prophecies. He discussed why he feels agents are a must, the disadvantages of being a bestseller, and why it's sometimes better to accept a smaller advance rather than fail to earn out a larger one.
After the speaker I gathered with some friends and we spent the rest of the evening playing Exploding Kittens.
