Courses are selling fast as the start of term approaches for Frome Community Education on 12th January. This term, there are a wide range of new creative writing and literature courses.
In addition to Dawn Gorman’s popular 10-week ‘Positive Adventures in Creative Writing’ courses, local author and tutor Harriet Derioz has introduced a one-day ‘Flash Fiction Workshop’. In one morning, Harriet will take you through the process of writing ‘in miniature’, teach you how to create a 600-word short story and you will leave the course with your very own piece of flash fiction.
If you would like to devote a little more time to your creative endeavours, you could also try ‘Telling Stories: Learn How to Write an Engaging Short Story’, again with Harriet, but spread over 10-weeks. Each week you will focus on one aspect of the craft such as character, dialogue, flashback and structure before working through some writers’ exercises and then spending some quiet time writing. Finally, you will share your work and give constructive feedback to others. At the end of the 10 weeks you will have planned, drafted, edited and polished a short story.
If you prefer discussing literature to creating it, then new tutor Lydia Massey may have the perfect course for you. In ‘The Topless Towers Of Ilium – Timeless Themes in Literature,’ you will examine Homer’s Iliad and the literature it has inspired, from Greek tragedy through Chaucer and Shakespeare and on to contemporary writing such as Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls, and Natalie Haynes’ A Thousand Ships. This is a story not just of war but of the full range of human emotions, which is why its legacy has lasted unwaveringly for so very long.
Alternatively, what about ‘Class, The Charleston, Capitalism and Cufflinks?’ Read a modern literary classic with Harriet Derioz, exploring the influences and backdrop to the novel that was a commercial failure on its publication. You will explore the themes, language, symbols and context of the novel, the writer himself and the fascinating times in which it was written. Cufflinks made of human teeth, anyone?
For more information and to book on these and other classes with Frome Community Education, visit www.fromecommed.org or visit the Box Office at the Cheese & Grain.
