Image courtesy Ahhyeah

Allaboutwriting runs online courses for people passionate about writing. We have a couple of new additions

Business Writing - Now available as a flexible seven to ten module course. Mix and match the modules to suit your needs. Learn  to write reports, press releases and other business correspondence that stands above the rest, that will get you noticed at work – and for all the right reasons.   We’ll give you writing exercises designed to make you think like a writer, and feedback that will spur you on to greater things.

The Essential Journalism package contains everything a journalist needs in their writing tool kit, from traditional news writing, through advanced news and alternative story structures, to the more complex skills of feature writing and narrative journalism, in which factual story-telling borrows from the techniques of fiction writing.

Basic Newswriting – Basic newswriting introduces you to the skills of writing for the news media.  Backed up with many examples and a lot of practice, we show you how to write a traditional news story for print or online.

Advanced Newswriting – Advanced newswriting gets creative with news stories. It shows how newswriting has borrowed from features.

Feature Writing – Feature Writing offers a comprehensive approach to the more creative side of journalism, with clear instruction and personal feedback on how to write dynamic feature stories.

Narrative - This course explores the narrative skills that have added creativity to feature writing and narrative non-fiction and shows how they can be used to transform your writing.

Our Character Course devised by novelist Jo-Anne Richards, scriptwriter Richard Beynon and psychologist Pierre Brouard is now available online. This unique course blends psychology and writing to create a one-day plunge into the process of creating memorable and larger-than-life characters. It looks at the skills and insights needed to make these characters leap off the page and is suitable for writers of fiction, creative non-fiction and for scriptwriters.

Our popular Creative Writing and Romance courses are of course still available.

Creative Writing Course – Our flagship 10-module Creative Writing Course, run by novelist Jo-Anne Richards and scriptwriter Richard Beynon, stimulates creativity and allows each writer to find their own individual voice. The course provides writers with a range of skills and techniques to translate their vision into publishable manuscripts.

Power of Writing - This short four module creative writing course encourages students to express themselves confidently by mastering the essential skills of creative writing. This course is an ideal introduction to any of our other courses.

Romance Writing -  Enroll on our 12 module foundation course, The Guide to Writing Romance, and learn the skills of writing romance. By the time you’re done with the course, you’ll be equipped to write your first novel, either under your own steam, or with the support of our Write a Romance – our Step-by-Step Programme.

The Guide to Writing Sex Scenes - This four-module short guide looks at how to write sex well – whatever genre you are writing. It looks at how sex can advance the plot and develop characters.

Learn the skills to turn your passion into print.

Click on the links for more information or email admin@allaboutwritingcourses.com. Sign up for one of Allaboutwriting’s online courses. 

Online Creative Writing Course – On going, start when it suits you and work at your own pace.

Online Business Writing – On going, start when it suits you

Creative Writing Course – Starts 28 September and continues for 10 weeks. Sessions held on Wednesdays from 7 to 9.30pm in Parkview, Johannesburg.

Junior Writers’ Course – 3 to 6 October, 9 to 12.30, Parkview, Johannesburg

Self Publishing Workshop – evening of 6 October, Parkview, Johannesburg

Growing Through Writing – 15 October, 9am to 5pm, Parkview, Johannesburg

Booker Prize evening at Love Books, Melville, Johannesburg

Publishing Workshop – 1 December, Parkview, Johannesburg

Power Of Writing – TBC Newtown, Johannesburg

Creative Writing Weekend, TBC, McGregor, Western Cape

Dynamic Language Skills – COMING SOON!

Please click on the links or email trishurquhart@gmail.com to book your place for further information.

The Benefits of our Course:

• Start when it suits you, work at your own pace.

• Learn the skills to write both fiction and non-fiction.

• Writing practice in every module.

• Full one-on-one feedback on assignments in every module.

• We promise to be honest, but kind.

• Enjoy on-going support in our online writers’ group.

• We have an association with three publishers: Pan Macmillan, Penguin and Jacana, who will give particular consideration to manuscripts we recommend.

Who we are:

Allaboutwriting is a partnership between novelist Jo-Anne Richards and screen-writer, Richard Beynon. Jo-Anne is the author of four novels, including the best-selling The Innocence of Roast Chicken (Headline UK) and, most recently, My Brother’s Book (Picador Africa). Richard is an award-winning screen and television writer, responsible for hundreds of scripts in the genres of drama, soap and comedy.

What our students say:

I found Allaboutwriting’s writing course expansive in style, educative in content and entertaining in delivery. Jo-Anne and Richard present a full gamut of learning and insight on creative writing seemingly effortlessly,
with the welcome addition of real verve and wit. It was pure pleasure to participate. Tim Cohen, journalist.

I could feel my confidence blooming and it showed in the writing, so I’m hoping that I’ll take that with me into my next novel. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the whole course – wish I’d discovered it years ago!! The feedback has been so practical, constructive and helpful that I’ve seen immediately where I was losing my way. Judy Croome, novelist.

For more information about the Allaboutwriting Creative Writing Course please click here or for details on how to sign up please contact Trish at trishurquhart@gmail.com

What’s on the agenda this month? We’ve got news of four courses – three of them fresh-out-of-the-box. The fourth is the latest iteration of our flagship – the 10-week face-to-face Creative Writing programme – which begins on April 6.

Our new kids’ course, for Grades 7+, will keep your children off the streets and out of the opium dens for four mornings of the Easter holidays. They’ll be given a creative run for their (or your) money they’ve never experienced before.

Besides that, we have news of a creative weekend away and news of our new online writing course.

Don’t forget to try this month’s creative writing exercise. And as usual, there’s a prize for the best entry. And see what Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours, has to say about writing.

Autumn Creative Writing Course Kicks off in April

Whether you’re a novelist in the making, have your eye on an extended piece of creative non-fiction, or more simply, want to flex your creative muscles, our ten-week Creative Writing course (which begins on April 6 in Johannesburg) has been designed to get (and keep) you going.

Not only will you work in the company of like-minded people, you’ll develop all the skills you need to tackle that project that’s been languishing at the bottom of your To Do list for longer than you’d care to admit.

Every week targets a separate skill – and practical writing exercises firmly cement each new competence in place. These are fun to tackle and give each person the chance to receive (kind but honest) feedback. We also give time to any projects our participants may want feedback on.

Not only will we stimulate your imagination, we’ll also satisfy the grosser appetites: food and wine (and conversation) are a staple of every Wednesday evening session.

The course runs from our premises in Parkview, Johannesburg, from 19h00 to 21h30+, every Wednesday evening from April 6 for ten weeks. If you’re compelled by circumstance to miss a session, we’ll catch you up with the online version of the module you have missed. You’ll find more about our online version of the Creative Writing Course below.

Fuel for Creative Sparks

Unlock your child’s imagination with an introduction to creative writing – a four-day holiday course that gets to grips with the four pillars of narrative storytelling as well as plenty of fun and “get out of your chair” exercises.

Individual attention will ensure stimulation combined with theory, craft combined with creativity.

The course has been designed for kids in Grade 7 and upwards.

Course dates: 28-31 March 2011 (incl.) and 11-14 April (incl.)

Time: 09h00 to 12h30 each day.

Course fees: R1 500.

Venue: Parkview.

Course facilitators: Helen Webster and Mandy Collins.

If you’re looking for creative ways to occupy your child/ren during the upcoming holidays, call Mandy at 082 551 3421 or email her at mcollins@icon.co.za; or phone Helen at 082 940 6012, or email her at helen@crestgordon.co.za.
Weekend Course in the Eastern Free State

Allaboutwriting, in co-operation with Creative Escapes, are holding a combined writing/photographic weekend in the picturesque Eastern Free State town of Fouriesberg on March 25, 26 and 27.

While some of the participants will be off capturing images of the cosmos-carpeted landscape, we wordsmiths will be exploring the elements of writing that draw readers into a story – and hold them as the narrative unfolds.

Conflict flares, characters collide, tension builds to a climactic finale from which a satisfying resolution emerges.

Jo-Anne and I will lead participants through a series of writing exercises designed to expand creativity and illuminate the secrets to great writing.

This two day creative writing course is designed to be provocative and fun. The exercises will allow you to explore your world in a new way.

The course will inspire fiction and non-fiction writers, film and television writers, anyone who is interested in trying their hand at writing, as well as active readers who are interested in expanding their reading pleasure.

Cost of the weekend – board and lodging included – is R2 500 per person, sharing. A deposit of R1 000 secures your booking.

Call Anne-Marie of Creative Escapes at 083 266 5821, email her to make your booking now.

Creative Writing Online

For some months now we’ve been running our Creative Writing Online course under the radar. We’re satisfied that the cogs and wheels are all turning satisfactorily, and feel ready to promote the programme to a much wider audience.

The ten-module course is an expanded version of our face-to-face programme. It stimulates creativity and allows each writer to find his or her own individual voice. The course provides writers with a range of skills and techniques to translate their vision into publishable manuscripts.

The modules are designed to be completed one per week, but you are free to work at your own pace. Each module will cover an essential writing skill and includes at least one exercise. You will receive personal and speedy feedback from Richard and Jo-Anne.

It is, we believe, the most comprehensive on-line course available in South Africa – with the most practical and useful feedback in the business. We will also gladly give feedback on any on-going projects.

Writing Exercises

Congratulations to Daniel Ronald Bogogolela for his honest and sensitive description of his father Johannes. He wins a R200 book voucher.

Win a book voucher while you sharpen your writing skills

And finally here’s our monthly exercise, with a prize of a book voucher worth a couple of hundred bucks, to be redeemed at Boekehuis in Jo’burg, or the Book Lounge in Cape Town.

A husband and wife are meeting in a restaurant to finalise the terms of their impending divorce. Write the scene from the point of view of the assistant manager who him-(or her-)self is preoccupied with a personal problem: his/her son has just confessed he’s a drug addict or, he/she has just learned that his/her partner is involved in an affair.

This is an exercise in writing from the point of view of a single character, who, as he/she works the various tables and sees to the various customers in the restaurant, only hears snatches of the conversation between the estranged couple – and even that must be reflected through the prism of his/her own preoccupations.

Limit yourself to five or six hundred words.

And have fun!

Send your pieces to richb@worldonline.co.za by Monday, March 21 at noon.

A cathedral full of fire – or just a book?

“Like my hero Virginia Woolf, I do lack confidence. I always find that the novel I’m finishing, even if it’s turned out fairly well, is not the novel I had in my mind. I think a lot of writers must negotiate this, and if they don’t admit it, they’re not being honest. You have started the book with this bubble over your head that contains a cathedral full of fire – that contains a novel so vast and great and penetrating and bright and dark that it will put all other novels ever written to shame. And then, as you get towards the end, you begin to realise, no, it’s just this book. And it has its strengths, it has its virtues, but there’s nothing about the Crimean war, there’s nothing about interstellar travel. It says what it says and that’s it. And it joins all the other books in the world.”

Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours and, most recently, By Nightfall.

And lastly

Congratulations to local writer Lauren Beukes whose sci-fi novel, Zoo City, has been short-listed for the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award. The winner will be announced on a date auspicious for every South African: April 27.

A Writers’ Guide to Reading

Richard and Jo-Anne will be giving their talk, A Writers’ Guide to Reading, on Saturday 7 August at 1.00pm. For those of you who missed our mid-winter soup and sherry evening in the library at the Rand Cub, this is a chance to hear what by all accounts is a stimulating and provocative presentation.

Launch of three new courses

We’ll be launching three new courses at the Fair –

The Power of Writing course, a one-day introduction to creative writing

The Key to Creative Writing, a two-day, stripped down, lean and mean course, low on theory and high on the practical challenges of writing effectively, and

The Travel Writing Course, by Fred de Vries, renowned both for his travel journalism, and his interviews with both celebrities and the not-so-celebrated.

Not one, not two, not three – but five prizes!

Visit us at our stand (with or without the proverbial friend) and you could win one of five free passes to our new, dynamic Power of Writing Course.

Discounts
And if all that’s not enough to tempt you to the Fair, then how about this: anyone booking a place on a course at the Fair, will qualify for a twenty per cent discount.

So, come one, come all. This is the Jozi Book Fair’s second year, and already there are some fifty exhibitors – including an anthology of small publishers for those of you eager to explore both conventional and on-line publishing opportunities – so there’s likely to be lots to interest you beyond the goodies at Allaboutwriting.

Where: Museum Africa, Mary Fitzgerald Square, Newton. When: August 7, 8 and 9, from 09.00am to 6.00pm daily. How much: R10 entrance fee.

We think of them as real people. Why? Because Ian Rankin knows a thing or two about building unforgettable characters from the ground up. Shakespeare knew his audience loved complex characters full of apparent contradiction. And David Chase wasn’t afraid to create a sympathetic Mafia boss.

Join two writers and a psychologist on Saturday, February 27, to learn what makes great characters tick. Jo-Anne Richards, Richard Beynon and Pierre Brouard have joined forces to help screen-writers, novelists and television writers create characters that leap to life from page or screen.

Interested? Read more about our Johannesburg Character Course or email us at allaboutwriting@worldonline.co.za or phone Trish on 082 652 4643

To get you in the mood to write romance why not try our free module. We have posted a completely new and much more exciting free module so if you have not yet done yet done it or would like to try it again please click here.

If you live in Johannesburg and would prefer to do a face-to-face romance writing course we have one starting on 3 March.

For advice and motivation why not read one of our blogs:
A Romance Writer’s World – Alissa Baxter shares her thoughts about writing romance and real-life relationships

Writing Tips and Quips – Jo-Anne Richards passes on the lessons she’s learned to make your writing better and muses on the challenges and excitement of a writer’s life.

And remember if you are busy writing at the moment or planning to write and need advice as far as motivation and you characters go please make use of our free service – Characters on the Couch. Gabriel St Claire our resident shrink turns his attention to solving the problems and exploring the motivations of your fictional characters. Want to find out what makes you character tick? Email Gabriel today at info@allaboutlove.net

Watch a Novel Grow – Richard Beynon offers a peek over his shoulder as he wrestles with the problems and shares the exhilaration of crafting a romance novel from the ground up.

Why not join us on facebook for regular updates and links to interesting articles.

Happy writing and happy Valentines Day
Jo-Anne and Richard

http://www.allaboutlove.net/

His characters were beautifully drawn and tugged us into a poignant memoir. But he had always longed to write a novel. I couldn’t wait to see it.

When he showed me a draft, I couldn’t believe it. The characters were cardboard stereotypes.

“But where are the kind of characters you had in your first book?” I asked.

“But that was non-fiction. This is a novel. I have to make them up.”

But you see, you don’t. You can, but you don’t have to. If you work from real life, think of a real character and lie. Change them to suit your story.

That is important. Real life is fine as inspiration. But don’t stick so closely to the real model that you lose sight of the dramatic imperatives of your story.

If you make a character up from scratch, don’t think of them merely as “the tough game ranger” or the “prostitute with the heart of gold”. Everyone has quirks, inconsistencies and contrasts. Everyone has hopes and dreams, fears and heartaches.

Characters don’t exist in isolation. They are the sum of their history, experiences and personality.

You need to work out far more about a character than will ever actually appear on the page. If you don’t know how someone grew up and what relationship they had with their parents and siblings, you’ll never know how they’ll react to older men, younger women – in fact, to anything at all.

You need to work out how someone appears to others – what they look like, what they do, their work, hobbies and everything else that make up their public self. But everyone has internal characteristics too. You need to know how they feel, what makes them tick, their likes, dislikes, fears and favours.

Don’t forget what they look like and how they feel about themselves.

You need to be able to see and hear your character – to know intuitively how they’ll react. If you say to yourself: “Hmm, what should I make this character say now, they’ll never sound real.
For more about characters and lifting them beyond the cardboard, join our one day Character Development Course on 24 October 2009 in Parkview, Johannesburg.

Jo-Anne Richards is the author of four novels. Her latest is My Brother’s Book, published by Picador.

She lectures in journalism and writing skills at Wits University, besides running workshops in literary skills, narrative journalism and Romance writing. She supervises Masters students in the Creative Writing Masters programme at Wits.

She is co-founder of allaboutlove.net. The site runs interactive online writing courses in romance writing.

Collections of erotic fiction are suddenly everywhere. And people are no longer ashamed of enjoying it. The ‘90s, it seems, was the decade of chick lit, while the noughties have apparently been well named.

This is a genre populated mainly by women writers, who have moved from under the counter to the literary mainstream.

Louise France wrote in The Observer: “As a publishing trend it might best be summed up thus – from big knickers to no knickers. Ten years ago the bestseller lists were topped by the frustrated Bridget Jones, a fictional creation less interested in sex than in the cigarette she could smoke afterwards. Part of her popularity – and that of the clones that followed – was that she was far too neurotic to be good in bed. It was romance, not lust, which made her pulse beat faster.

“A decade on and chick lit now seems curiously chaste, as lascivious as a warm mug of Horlicks. But a new kind of explicit bedside reading, both fictional and autobiographical, means the three-for-two counter in Waterstone’s now displays the kind of X-rated material more traditionally found in a cornershop in Soho…

“True, some of these books have been risible, a publisher’s idea of a quick buck. Others have seemed absurdly opportunistic. Want to complain about your husband’s poor performance in bed? Write a book! But the best of the titles means that a new kind of graphic literature, written from a woman’s point of view, is reaching a mainstream readership. Whereas previous generations might have been uneasy about the distinctions between erotica and pornography, for many of these authors the debate is redundant. They argue that good erotic fiction explores women’s fantasies and shows them to be acceptable – what’s so wrong with that?”

It’s popular. Besides being great fun to write, there’s clearly a market for it. Why not give it a try? Karlita Diamond will get you on track with her erotic fiction course, and we can get you writing sex that won’t make it onto the Bad Sex List. You can find both these courses under the Erotic and Sensual section on allaboutlove.net.

Click here for more details or email us at allaboutwriting@worldonline.co.za or call Trish on 0826524643.