“You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you” - Stephen King, 'On Writing'
Following a brilliant six-week project with Kielder Observatory in 2023, I was delighted to be invited back by the education team at HMP Northumberland earlier this year to deliver another writing programme. After some discussion with both staff and learners, we decided that short stories was the way to go this time, and I set about designing a block of sessions that would help each participant plan, write and edit their own short story of approximately 2,500 words.
What the programme entailed
I delivered six sessions across twelve weeks - in between each session, the group were able to meet independently and share their works in progress with one another. These meetings were facilitated by some of the group members who had been involved in the Kielder project and chosen to take part again, which gave them a great opportunity to upskill and give support to their peers.
In my taught sessions, I aimed to give the learners a good amount of time to think about the themes, messages and motifs they'd like to incorporate into their work before diving into quite structured lessons on character, plot, structure, and setting. We used lots of short stories and extracts from longer works to gather inspiration, including ones by Road Dahl, George Saunders, F Scott Fitzgerald, Jackie Kay, Stephen King and more. We also used everything from old photographs to wall paint samples as prompts for short writing exercises!
By the end of the twelve weeks, each participant had written - or was on the way to writing - a short story of their own. The subject matters and genres varied greatly and I absolutely loved taking them away, typing them up and giving personalised feedback to each participant.
Participant Feedback
'Very productive, helped me learn about structuring stories, how to finish a book'
'Very well planned sessions which were thought out and easy to understand'
'Informative and relaxing'
'I enjoyed working on settings and feel it has also helped me in my poetry'
'Creative writing has been like a shining star for me.'
'Just what the doctor ordered'
A huge thank you to all of the participants - approximately 25 of them across two groups - and to Nicky, John, Joanne, and the rest of the team at Novus in HMP Northumberland for making these sessions run smoothly!
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