Books are made of people and places: no story can live without them. This one-day course is ideal for writers who want to make characters as vivid on the page as they are in life, and who need to create believable settings. Through a mixture of tuition, practical exercises and fieldwork, you'll learn how to convey ideas, depth and truth through telling detail and description, enabling you to capture the essence of any place or person with economy and elegance.
Led by novelist, memoirist and travel writer Horatio Clare, whose prose has been acclaimed for its vivid imagery and skillful characterisation, you'll explore the key skills of good descriptive writing – observation and interpretation. This course is suitable for writers of fiction, and will be of most benefit to those working on a memoir, travelogue or other work of narrative non-fiction, helping you to both enhance authenticity and make your prose as readable as a novel.
This course is for you if...
- You're currently writing or planning a memoir, biography, or travel book and want to produce more readable and effective descriptive prose
- You're a fiction writer aiming to improve your grasp of describing the essentials of locations and characters
Course description
This intensive event mixes classroom tuition with practical workshops and outdoor fieldwork, giving attendees the opportunity to try out new techniques and experiment with new approaches to imagery and metaphor. Topics covered include:
- How to bring people to life on the page: telling details, traits and idiosyncrasies
- Dialogue and conflict: keys to compelling characters
- Place and setting: what to put in, and what to leave out
- Landscape: how to make a place real to the reader
- Tips and tricks: what makes a great and necessary descriptive passage
- Capturing essences: achieving the greatest impact with the fewest words
- Narrative drive: what pulls a reader through your story
Tutor profile
Horatio Clare is the author of two bestsellers, the memoir Running for the Hills and travelogue Down to the Sea in Ships. His other books include Truant, Sicily Through Writers' Eyes, a novella – The Prince's Pen – and the travel book A Single Swallow. Horatio has been listed for many prizes, and is a winner of the Somerset Maugham Award and Foreign Press Association Travel Writer of the Year. He writes regularly on nature, travel and literature for the national and international press.
Book now
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Details
Date: Saturday 1 November 2014
Times: 10am-4pm. Check-in begins 30 minutes before the start time.
Location: The Guardian, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU
Price: £249 (includes VAT, booking fee, lunch and refreshments)
Event capacity: 16
Dress code: There is no dress code for Masterclasses. Please dress however you feel comfortable.
To contact us, click here. Terms and conditions can be found here.
Returns policy
Tickets may be refunded if you contact us at least 14 days before the course start date. Please see our terms and conditions for more information on our refund policy.
