Jem-poster
Jem Poster

Creative Writing Course: Places and Spaces: Writing Location in Fiction

Jem Poster and Sarah Burton

Sunday, 30 March 2025

9:30am

1 day

Trinity College: Garden Room Levine Building

£90

This one-day course will highlight the importance of place in writing, addressing such matters as factual research, remembered and imagined spaces and the creation of atmosphere. We will consider how place works in conjunction with other elements of a narrative, such as character, plot and atmosphere. We will also consider how and when descriptions of place are justified, and therefore most effective.

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 previous day’s course, Start Strongly, Finish in Style: Writing Beginnings and Endings 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/The importance of place
11.00-11.30: Coffee
11.30-1.00: Session 2. Finding a place
1.00-2.00: Lunch
2.00-3.30: Session 3: Creating a place
3.30 - 4.00: Tea
4.00 - 5.30: Session 4: Drawing it all together

Session 1. Introduction/The importance of place
Whatever we’re writing, the location of our narrative is likely to be an important consideration. Using examples drawn from a range of different texts, we will begin by discussing the ways in which writers’ awareness of place figures in their work.

Session 2. Finding a place
Through discussion and a practical exercise, we will explore the ways in which both memory and research may help us to find locations appropriate to our creative needs.

Session 3: Imagining place
Through discussion and a practical exercise, we will explore the processes by which the writer moves beyond remembered or discovered facts to create new locations in fictional worlds.

Session 4: Drawing it all together
The sense of place works in conjunction with other aspects of the writer’s art. Character, plot and atmosphere are all likely to be linked to the locations represented in our narratives. In this final session. we will explore these links before going on to discuss ways of incorporating in our future writings 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.

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