Mentoring Programme – lite

Description

Here’s a summary of the programme:

• You can submit up to 2500 words of your developing manuscript per month or a total of 15000/30000 words to which we will respond with detailed notes.
• Alternatively, in any given month you can request a brainstorm instead of submitting 2500 words (for accounting purposes 2500 words = 1 hour); or
• One-on-one help with developing character, story, or the structure of your narrative.
• Or a combination of the above – a half hour brainstorm with either Richard or Jo-Anne and a submission of 1250 words.
• In addition, we hold a group discussion each month, during which you are entitled to discuss your project – both our feedback and your next steps – for half an hour.
• And, we offer a monthly two-hour “write-in” session in which writers on the mentorship programme are invited to work together (virtually) and discuss with us any writing problems they’re having.
• Your credit expires after six or twelve months. If you have any credit left over it can be carried forward if you sign up for another tranche.

With their distinctive honest-but-kind approach, our mentors Jo-Anne Richards and Richard Beynon with associates Michele Rowe for screenwriting and Fred de Vries for travel writing, provide notes and advice on story, characters, structure, scenes, point of view and style.

How the programme works

• There will be a preparation phase where you’ll work through our comprehensive creative writing course or, if you’ve done the course, we’ll send you our comprehensive ten-step master class to work through. This is to ensure you have the skills you’ll need to see you through your writing project.
• At the start of the programme we will, depending on the nature of your project, assign either Jo-Anne or Richard (or Michele or Fred) as your mentor.
• Each month you’ll receive full written feedback on your submission from your mentor.
• The programme is run through a private mentoring group on our online course platform, which is hosted by Ning.
• This is where you submit your writing and where Jo-Anne and Richard post their feedback.
• We use Zoom for brainstorming and the monthly group discussions and the write-ins.

Submissions and brainstorms

• Brainstorms – We can help you develop a story idea or character details through a three-way Zoom brainstorming session, in readiness for writing a book, or if at any stage you find yourself stuck. These can be in lieu of your monthly written submission.
• Your monthly submission might consist of character descriptions, story outlines and scene descriptions etc or be part of the narrative.
• Before you get too far into the process, we strongly suggest you prepare by working with Jo-Anne and Richard on your story idea and character development.

Submission dates

• We have two submission groups and we’ll assign you to one of the groups when you start.
• Submission days are always on Tuesdays.
• When you join, we’ll give you a list of the upcoming submission dates. We might occasionally change these dates but you’ll have advance warning of this.

Feedback sessions

• The group discussion Zooms always take place on the Tuesday following the submission date.
• You also have the opportunity to ask Richard and Jo-Anne’s opinion on urgent problems at the monthly write-in or via the forum.

We ask participants to commit to:

• Reading and commenting on at least some of their colleagues’ work.
• Playing an active part on the online forum
• Submitting by the deadline every month. (The only exception is if you submit substantially more than 5000 words then you agree to submit a week before the deadline.)