Jem Poster and Sarah Burton

‘Begin at the beginning,’ says the King to the White Rabbit in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, ‘and go on till you come to the end; then stop.’ As readers, we might regard the instruction as straightforward, perhaps even unnecessary. As writers, however, we’ll be aware that the question of where (and how) a story begins and ends is a complex one, demanding careful thought. In this one-day course we will focus on beginnings and endings in ways that aspiring writers are likely to find helpful as they open and close their own narratives.

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. The focus will be primarily on fiction, but writers of poetry and creative non-fiction are likely to gain useful insights from the event.

This course can either be taken on its own or as in conjunction with the following day’s course Places and Spaces: Writing Location in Fiction.

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. Introduction/ Where to start?
11.00-11.30: Coffee
11.30-1.00: Session 2. Catching your reader’s attention
1.00-2.00: Lunch
2.00-3.30: Session 3. A satisfying conclusion
3.30 - 4.00: Tea
4.00 - 5.30: Session 4. Drawing it all together

Session 1. Introduction/ Where to start?
There may be a number of possible points of entry into a story. How do we discover what works best?

Session 2. Catching your reader’s attention
There’s a widespread belief that successful stories have to start on a note of high excitement. Some do, but there are also subtler ways of drawing your reader in. Through discussion and a practical exercise, we will explore a range of possibilities.

Session 3: A satisfying conclusion
Many stories have clear-cut endings, often determined by the completion of a more or less predictable narrative arc: the hero and heroine marry, the villain gets his come-uppance, a family is reunited. Through discussion and a practical exercise, we will explore endings of this kind, as well as the more open endings characteristic of much modern fiction.

Session 4: Drawing it all together
In this final session we will discuss ways of incorporating in our writing the insights we’ve gained during the course.

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. A companion book of writing exercises, The Prompts You Need to Help You Write the Book You Want to Write, is due for publication in 2025. Their co-written historical crime novel, Eliza Mace, was published in 2024. A sequel will be published in 2025.