Do you have a story to tell based on your own life or family history? How can you capture these moments and bring them vividly to life?
Facilitated by Rosemary Stevens, this popular six-week course offers an intimate, safe and relaxed environment in which to begin, or reinvigorate, your life story – all online! What form will the story take? How should you tell it? Where to begin and end? These questions are some of the threads that will be teased out and woven into the unique pattern that is your story. We will start with small, manageable details accessed through the five senses, and combine creative imagination with memory and research to unlock character, narrative and theme.
The course will run online via Zoom from 10am on each Saturday between 5 February – 19 March.
Participants will receive their Zoom link on Friday 4 February prior to starting their first class on Saturday 5 February. For inquires about this online course, please email info@centreforstories.com
Program:
5 February – Week 1: The value of sensuous detail. Exercises to demonstrate the use of all 5 senses. This helps access memories more fully, leading to vivid writing.
12 February – Week 2: Storytelling: Scene, summary and reflection. How to integrate these three essential elements to tell a good story, whether memoir, biography or family history.
19 February – Week 3: Brainstorming: Through the use of simple techniques we will discover connections between fragments of information and memory, turning them into coherent stories.
Break for one week.
5 March – Week 4: Sketching a scene. Using old photographs and memorabilia, we will recreate the past, exploring the fine line between fact and fiction as we use our imagination to bring places and people to life.
12 March – Week 5: Character: Exercises for the authentic portrayal of character; one of the most important aspects of your story, whose relationships and actions create narrative drive.
19 March – Week 6: An introduction to structure. Exercises to demonstrate the many ways of shaping a story: where to begin and how to end. Review and previews: bringing it all together.
Please note, we cannot offer ticket refunds.
