ONLINE 5-week Short Course: Introduction to Writing Crime Fiction

With Charlotte Baker

Thursdays, 7-9pm, live teaching via Zoom Online Meeting

Starting 30 September, then 7, 14, 21, 28 October 2021

This course is ideal for beginners and those with a basic outline or idea of a novel that they’d like to develop.

We will examine why crime is the most popular selling genre and try to establish the pleasure of the text for the readers. Alongside this, we will look at the power of your voice, character development, plot structure and setting.

We will then utilise this information for our own projects through key tasks and feedback provided each week.

Week 1: What is crime?

In this session, we will examine what crime fiction entails, common tropes, modern subversions of these and why this is relevant to our own work.

Week 2: Find your voice

In this session, we will look at what our ‘voice’ is, why it is important along with many tasks which will strengthen this aspect.

Week 3: Setting, Characters and Dialogue

In this session, the use of setting, character and dialogue will be looked at through various examples. We will approach these texts critically in order to understand what we can learn from them.

Week 4: Plot, Structure and Story

In this session, our focus is going to be on the narrative, structure and storytelling techniques. These are all vital to help you tell your story in the most effective manner, leaving readers desperate to know more.

Week 5: Moving the story forward: What are my next steps?

In this session, look at the question – ‘what next’? We will look at the processes of writing, redrafting, editing and finally submission.

Biography:

Charlotte Baker is an Author, Associate Lecturer, PhD Student and Tutor.

Please note: you must sign up for the full course even if you do not complete the course. No partial course ticket is available.

Online and in-person Short Courses are for over 18s. If you are a young writer, you can sign up for our Spark Young Writers Programme.