These extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures as my plans to visit universities and schools around the world to help teachers and lecturers with their creative writing courses have had to be understandably abandoned. And a general awareness that things are unlikely to change in the foreseeable future called for a complete rethink. I therefore began to look at ways to move everything online and, so far, it has been really successful. I would never have imagined that creative writing could be taught any other way than face to face, but the first few bookings have worked really well over Zoom and through Microsoft Teams.
A number of schools and universities have already asked for sessions next year and workshops that have been booked so far include:
Writing comedy
General screenwriting
Narrative structure
Developing characters
Adaptation (based on the work I did for the BBC 3 series The Fear)
Dramatic tension
Animation
Short Film
Getting work in the industry
And there are many, many more areas that I am able to help with, whether it be for Creative Writing degrees, English Language A levels or I.B. Film. I am even in discussion with a number of drama teachers with a view to helping out on their devising theatre programmes.
And in a brand new departure I will also be offering one to one and small group sessions with aspiring screen and scriptwriters. This can be in the form of general writing master classes, for those attempting their very first script, right through to full on script consolations for the more experienced writer looking for feedback on their drafts.
And everything can be tailored for different budgets, needs and constraints so please do get in touch if you have any questions and hopefully I can be of assistance whether you are a teacher, lecturer or individual writer. I am very much here to help.