Jem Poster and Sarah Burton

This one-day course will highlight the importance of character in fiction-writing, addressing such matters as the relationship between character and plot, how we create rounded characters, and how characters reveal themselves both to the writer and the reader.

Whether you’re a beginner in creative writing or a more advanced writer looking for new ideas and inspiration, this event may be exactly what you need. Designed by two professional writers with long experience of teaching creative writing at university level, the programme will address the writer’s art and craft in ways both practical and thought-provoking, involving both writing and the discussion of writing.

This course can either be taken on its own or in conjunction with the previous day’s course, ‘Writing Short Stories.

The course has been devised with a group of 30 in mind; however, the presence of two tutors means that, apart from a short period at the beginning of the course and another at the end, the teaching will take place in groups of 15. Each group will have two sessions with each tutor.

The sessions

9.30 - 11.00: Session 1. The function of characters
11.00 - 11.30: Coffee
11.30 - 1.00: Session 2. Who is this person?
1.00 - 2.00: Lunch
2.00 - 3.30: Session 3: Discovering character
3.30 - 4.00: Tea
4.00 - 5.30: Session 4: Drawing it all together

Session 1. The function of characters
How can we get the most out of our characters?

Session 2. Who is this person?
The importance of a character’s worldview and the perils of overplanning

Session 3: Discovering character
How characters reveal who they are through action and interaction

Session 4: Drawing it all together
Concluding thoughts, observations and tips.

The tutors

Jem Poster is emeritus professor of creative writing, Aberystwyth University. He is author of a collection of poetry, Brought to Light, and two novels, Courting Shadows and Rifling Paradise. Sarah Burton, founder and former director of Cambridge University’s MSt in creative writing, is the author of Impostors; A Double Life: A Biography of Charles and Mary Lamb and The Strange Adventures of H. Poster and Burton are co-authors of a handbook for fiction writers, The Book You Need to Read to Write the Book You Want to Write, and of a novel, Eliza Mace, the subject of a talk on March 18.