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Writing Short Stories

w/ Laura Elvery

Short story writing requires an incredibly sharp skill set. This course will be your opportunity to shape a short story over the space of three weeks with award-winning author Laura Elvery, learning the tips and tricks necessary to crafting a captivating work of short fiction.

Thursdays, 6.30-8.30pm

3 August – 17 August 2023

Online

$395 / $335.75 (alumni)


This is a past course.

For emerging short story writers, this course will energise you with examples of brilliant contemporary short fiction and fast writing exercises to explore setting, description and tone. You will learn skills and techniques to elevate and complicate your short story draft, heading towards completing at least one single short story during the course.

Discuss your work with other writers and learn to identify and fix problems in your fiction. Understand how to look at pace and dialogue anew to tell your short story. Learn from those moments in others’ short stories that reveal layers to characters’ motivations.

Elvery is an award-winning short story writer whose fiction has been published widely in Australia. This course is designed for literary short fiction writers who want to learn new ways to generate ideas, explore strategies to devise plot and character, and write inventive and moving stories.

Writing Short Stories also includes a copy-edit on a short story of up to 3000 words by our Editor-in-Residence following the conclusion of the course. This is the perfect opportunity to polish a story to the highest level before submitting for publication at a literary journal or short story competition.

Your course includes:

• 3 weeks of 2 hour evening tutorials
• A complimentary copy of a recent A&U publication
• A copy-edit on a short story of up to 3000 words
• On completion of the course, alumni discounts on future Faber Writing Academy courses and books from the Allen & Unwin Website

Writers you'll be working with:

Laura Elvery

Laura Elvery is a writer from Brisbane. She is the author of two short story collections, Trick of the Light (2018) and Ordinary Matter (2020), both with UQP. Ordinary Matter was inspired by the lives of female Nobel Prize-winning scientists, and won the USQ Steele Rudd Award for a Short Story Collection at the 2021…

Course outline

Session 1: Thursday 3 August
Introduction to short stories + generating ideas + exploring plot

Session 2: Thursday 10 August
Foundations for your characters + motifs + solving problems in the text

Session 3: Thursday 17 August
Reverse-engineering your endings + polishing + submitting

 

 

Praise for this course

“Laura’s passion for short story is an absolute joy. I have had a bit of a lull in my writing but am now once again enthused to keep going. So many good examples, dos and don’ts, great thought-provoking quotes.”

“Walking away with a fully-fledged short story – mine was developed from one of the exercises set – with personalised feedback from a writer whom I admire is really special.”

“Laura is so knowledgeable, broadly read, passionate, and open to ideas.”

 

How to Book

This is a past course.