Dates: Course begins Wednesday 2 March 2016
Course fee: £2,000
Historical fiction is currently enjoying a Golden Age. From Vikings to Tudors and beyond, stories by authors as diverse as Hilary Mantel and Bernard Cornwell are winning prizes, topping the bestseller lists, and being successfully adapted for the screen. Historical novels have, in many cases, colonised our collective imaginations as fact. Think, for example, about how much our collective imagination of the First World War has been shaped by Sebastian Faulks’ Birdsong or Pat Barker’s Restoration trilogy.
Led by Justin Hill, award-winning novelist of Passing Under Heaven and Shieldwall (a Sunday Times Book of the Year) this inspirational and practical course will help you focus your ideas, populate and build your historical setting, and to guide you over the hump of starting a historical novel.
As well as exploring the wider context of historical fiction, we will also focus on the practical skills of writing from the level of the sentence to the chapter. Through workshopping we will give you hands-on experience of how a reader is reading your work. We will look at wider questions of authenticity, the relationship between the historian and the historical novelist, the purpose of the historical novel (to illuminate, investigate, to entertain); and how to use research effectively to bring the past into vivid reality. Through feedback and generative exercises we will help you find your voice, and to find new ways into you story, characters and their world
By the end of this course you will have a core set of skills; the foundations of a novel (with characters, setting, story plan, and first chapter) as well as the techniques, inspiration and ideas you need to keep you writing about the past. Crucially, you will have also developed key critical and editorial skills, and built up a confidence in yourself and your writing, and your ability to go further.
If you’re interested in signing up for How to write historical fiction and would like more information please email masterclasses.support@theguardian.com or contact us on +44 (0) 20 3353 3099 between 9.30am and 5.30pm, Monday to Friday. If you’d like us to contact you, please click here and tell us what time works best for you.
Course content
- Fun and informative introduction to a range of practical skills and techniques to help you write better
- Creating characters that are empathetic, realistic and compelling enough to engage your interest and carry your story forward
- Inspirational exercises designed to help you find your voice, and to find new ways into your story, your characters and their world
- When to stop researching? Examining some of the traps of historical fiction, where the plot has been written, and might be known by the reader.
- Setting realistic goals and expectations for yourself to help you keep writing
- Where do I go next? Before students finish the course they will be given feedback that is designed to give them the necessary impetus to keep going
- Extensive opportunity for peer and tutor feedback on work carried out during the class
- Q&A
Course programme
Week 1: Introductions - Wednesday 2 March
The main focus of this session will be on creating a collaborative and supportive group environment and helping you focus your ideas more sharply. We will share writing and reading experiences to date, as well as expectations of the course. We will discuss the affects and attributes of a selection of historical writers and warm-up exercises will get you writing.
We will also look at The Writing Habit, and how you can make it work for you. We will talk about setting goals for yourself, overcoming difficulties and establishing a schedule that will suit you, as well as practical exercises that will help you achieve those goals.
We will also discuss wider issues of the historical novel: the importance of notes and research (how much is too much?), and practical ways of bringing research to the page.
Homework: write the cover blurb for your proposed novel.
Week 2: Up Close and Personal – world creating and populating your story - Wednesday 9 March
Compelling and believable characters and are central to any story. This session will look at ways of creating historical characters for all the functions you need, from lead to bit-part players, and help you develop convincing leads around which you can build a story. We will build characters that are empathetic, realistic and compelling enough to engage your interest and that of the reader forward.
With historical novels the setting itself is a character. The historical reality of the period imposes restrictions and pressures on the people who live within it. We will look at ways of building a convincing historical setting – both within the character’s heads and in the wider world they inhabit.
We’ll look at a range of narratives, from present to past tense, first person and third person narratives. As well as historical novels, we will also look ‘abroad’ at short excerpts from George RR Martin’s Game of Thrones, which, though a fantasy novel, has a strict historical reality to the world and see how he manages a vast set of characters through his story.
Homework: to investigate your characters and setting with some short pieces about them and their world.
Week 3: Turning the Screws: making your characters squeal - Wednesday 16 March
Conflict of some kind is at the heart of any story. We will look at the many kinds of conflicts apparent in the daily lives of people within your chosen period. We’ll focus in particular on the use of dialogue in creating conflict; the idea of linguistic authenticity, and what kind of speech is appropriate for historical characters to be using.
Homework: putting conflict into your character’s lives, especially with an idea of how your first chapter will start.
Week 4: Bricks, Wattle and Mortar: structuring your story and Hindsight Bias - Wednesday 23 March
One of the problems with historical narratives is that the plot has already happened. We look back at the past with ‘hindsight bias’ – the sense that things were always going to happen that way – the sense that this was how it was meant to be. We forget the role of luck and chance in shaping the past, and we forget that characters have no more idea of what will happen in their futures, as we do in ours.
In thinking about structure we’ll look at ways of bringing spontaneity and uncertainty into your story. We’ll start plotting your novel into paragraphs, sections and chapter, and how to respond when your story feels stuck or predictable.
Homework: a rough plan of where the story is going. What difficulties will your character(s) face? What are the issues concerning them at this moment? What do they want, and will they get it? You will also attempt to put two scenes together, and see how sections of a novel interconnect.
Please note there will be no class on Wednesday 30 March
Week 5: The First Chapter: how and where to start your story - Wednesday 6 April
We will read a number of first chapters, and discuss how they start the story going. We will look at questions such as: how is the story engaging my interest? Why does the story start here? And why does the first chapter end as it does?
We will focus on your own first chapter: thinking about how your novel should start, what it should focus on, what it should cover, and where it should end.
Homework: bringing together what we have done so far, this week will focus on producing a sustained piece of writing of a thousand plus words.
Weeks 6, 7, 8 & 9: Workshop - Wednesdays 13, 20, 27 April & 4 May
Writing involves two key skills: generating your first draft and then editing it to sift the best from it. The best way of getting the editing skills you need is through workshopping each other’s work and seeing how the story from each of the class is progressing.
In a supportive, positive and helpful environment, the tutor will lead discussion of each student’s work: giving the class hands on and practical experience of each other’s writing. Student will have the chance not only to hear how their story is being understood by other students, but also to develop key editorial skills which will be invaluable going forward with their own story.
The workshop time will be a productive and organic setting where we will be able to highlight questions and priorities within the group as they progress on their stories. Each student will also receive extensive individual feedback on their writing from the course tutor which they can feed into future workshops.
Homework: reading each other’s writing, revising work on the basis of feedback and also on the basis of insights gained while workshopping other people’s writing.
Weeks 10 & 11: One to One Tutorials - Wednesdays 11 & 18 May
These sessions will be given over to individual tutorials. Each student will have a chance to talk through any specific questions they have, as well as for them to receive feedback from the tutor on the novel they are working on.
Week 12: Beyond the First Chapter - Wednesday 25 May
In this, our last session, we will consolidate what you have learnt so far. The focus will be on looking at ways for each student to go forward and achieve the goals they have set out for themselves. There will be extensive Q & A where we will cover all the many areas of successfully completing a novel.
Profile of the course tutor
Justin Hill’s fiction spans eras as distant from one another as Anglo Saxon England, in Shieldwall, to Tang Dynasty, China, in Passing Under Heaven. His work has won numerous awards, including the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Somerset Maugham Award, a Betty Trask Award, as well as being both the Sunday Times and the Washington Post Books of the Year. In 2014 he was selected to write the sequel to the Oscar winning film,Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, due for release in 2016.
An engaging and inspiring teacher, Justin helped set up the MFA in Creative Writing at City University of Hong Kong, and ran the undergraduate Creative Writing programme there from 2012-2015. His work also has the rare honour of being banned by the Chinese government. For links, interviews and podcasts, visit his website.
Assessment
Writers who successfully complete the course will receive a successful completion certificate from UEA, which will be made on the basis of ongoing assessment and a final submission of at least 3,000 words.
Timings and specifics
The course will have places for 12 participants who will meet for one three-hour session per week (6.30pm - 9.30pm) for a period of three months at the Guardian Building, 90 York Way, Kings Cross, London N1 9GU.
Refunds
Refunds will not be given to students who miss sessions or drop out of the course once the full fee has been paid.
More information
If you would like more information about the course or have any questions please email masterclasses.support@theguardian.com or contact us on +44 (0) 20 3353 3099 between 9.30am and 5.30pm, Monday to Friday. If you’d like us to contact you, please click here and tell us what time works best for you.
