Descriptive Language Workshop

17^th January 2012

Andrew Brammer’s enthusiastic explosive opening to his storytelling workshop “It’s Alive” set out to help us to develop and enrich the descriptive elements of our writing. It proved to be an exciting and entertaining experience bringing alliteration, assonance and onomatopoeia, metaphor, simile and analogies to intensify the effect of oral storytelling to his audience. These tools transferred to the written page allow us to imagine for ourselves the constructive layers that paint a landscape of the senses within the stories that we create.

An evening of humorous storytelling by Andrew Brammer on Friday 23rd and Friday 30th March 2012 at 8pm at the Forum. Tickets available from Theatre Royal Box Office 01603 630000

Wymondham Words

The Wymondham Words Festival returns next month.

The event's 2nd year, which runs from Friday 16th to Sunday 18th September, features a weekend of readings, conversation and music set in the beautiful and historic South Norfolk market town.

Amongst the weekend's highlights is evenings with George Szirtes and Heidi Williamson. The weekend also sees our current Open Poetry Competition adjudicator Helen Ivory host a writing workshop on the Saturday.

Please visit wymondhamarts.com for more Festival info.

Writing The Image

This evening Norwich Writers' Circle welcomed Claire Hamburger, who gave us a workshop on Writing The Image.

During the meeting  the writer, tutor and visual artist gave us a several tasks to inspire us including writing a piece of prose or poem based on a random she had brought along. We also played The Metaphor Game which was designed to spark of ideas in our heads. The tasks were given to do by Claire then lead to various discussions within our group.

We next meet on Saturday 25th June in St Anne's Church Hall on Colman Road, for our annual Summer Social.

Hope to see you then.

Jean Fullerton's POV

This evening Norwich Writers' Circle's 2010/11 programme continued with a visit from Jean Fullerton.

The successful saga writer, who first visited us in December 2009, returned to give us a workshop on Characterisation & Viewpoint.

During the evening the visiting writer discussed the importance of characters within our chosen narrative. Jean also highlighted to us that it is vital to give each of our characters their own distinctive voice for our stories to have an impact.

The meeting proved popular with a lot of members as we were regularly given opportunities to offer our feedback, along with being able to discuss with Jean Fullerton any points of interest.

We next meet on the 5th April when Laurence Mitchell will be giving us a talk on Travel Writing.

Paeony Lewis

Norwich Writer's Circle's 2010/11 programme continued tonight as we welcomed tutor and children's author Paeony Lewis to our popular writing group.

To a packed Sexton Room, full of new and familiar faces, Paeony discussed her writing career to date, along with holding a workshop on creating child characters.

During the workshop, everyone in the room collectively discussed the differences in children's attitudes in several age-groups including Under 5s, 7 to 9, and 11 to 13. We then had in fill a detailed character sheet for our fictional child.

Both the above exercises lead to several humorous responses, whilst Paeony pointed out to us what we were learning from completing each of them.

In addition to the above, the visiting author also launched our In-House Competition Four. This competition requires Writers' Circle members to write a Picture-Book Story Text of no longer than 500 words.

Paeony's recommendations for the competion were as follows:

• To think globally - many publishers seek with a worldwide audience, as it provides them with a good return.
• Do not have a cliched attitude towards children - each child is different, and to be very aware of this fact.
• Make the character stand out by being larger than life and 'in your face'.
• Be truthful in your tale.
• Give your story a happy ending.

On 1st February Lucy McCarraher will returning to the Circle once more, to judge our Novel Outline competition.

We hope to see you next time.

Don't Forget

Don't forget that following our annual festive break, Norwich Writers' Circle returns to its usual meeting routine - the first and third Tuesday of each month - from next week.

On 18th January we will welcoming Paeony Lewis who will be giving us a workshop and talk on creating child characters.

Please feel free to pop along to our friendly, and ever-growing, writers' group. Everyone is welcome, to what promises to be another entertaining evening from our current programme.

Lucy McCarraher Returns

Tonight saw Lucy McCarraher return to Norwich Writers' Circle.

The author and tutor, who first visited NWC in October 2009, returned to give us a workshop on how to structure a novel.

The entertaining workshop, which sparked a variety of interesting exchanges, covered several points, most notable of which were:

• what is the inspiration for our novel?
• what do the characters experience?
• where the story is set? and,
• is there conflict featured in the main plot?

Tonight's meeting was also the launch of our Competition Three - to write an outline of a novel in no more than 1,000 words. Lucy will be returning to NWC once more, this time to adjudicate the competition, which closes on the 14th December.

We next on 7th December, when Taggart creator Glenn Chandler will be adjudicating our short Radio Script competition.

We hope to see you next time.

Write The Right Way

This evening, at The Assembly House, our Chair Anne Funnell held a presentation and punctuation workshop.

The interesting interactive workshop involved us all pairing up, so that we could work through a variety of fun games. The games highlighted to us the numerous English errors that could be made, and these soon got everyone talking.

At the end of each section, we discussed the rules of presentation and punctuation, and what we can do to follow the suggested recommendations made by speakers at our previous meetings.

We next meet on 15th June, for the adjudication of our Humorous Article Competition. We hope to see you there.

Kick-Start 2010 With Benjamin Scott

Norwich Writers' Circle's 2010 was kick-started this evening with a workshop, held by Benjamin Scott, in a packed Sexton Room at The Assembly House.

The freelance writer's fun workshop was designed to stimulate and encourage our writing ideas. The main focus of the workshop were several exercises involving the flipping of a 1p coin to randomly create a pair of unrelated characters, their environment, plus a story to fit all our creations together.

During the evening, Benjamin also set our In-House Competition Three and advised us of what he was expecting to see in our entries. Competiton Three is for the Cooper Prize and involves writing a Children's Adventure Story of around 2,000 words. Ben stated that he would like our stories to focus on a boy under 10 who goes on a journey, either literally or emotionally, and that he wanted the reader to be gripped from the first paragraph onwards.

Our next meeting sees the return of Esther Morgan, who, on 2nd February, will adjudicate our competition to write a poem of no longer than 40 lines on the theme of 'Encounters'.

We hope to see you next time.

Good English Gone Bad

In readiness for her workshop on presentation and punctuation on 1st June, our Chair Anne Funnell has an appeal.

If you have any examples of the following:

• sentences wrongly constructed so that they are the opposite of what is intended, and are therefore very funny.
• misplaced commas also giving the wrong meaning, eg. 'Eats, Shoots & Leaves'.
• other malapropisms, not just intrusive apostrophes.

Please can you e-mail your examples to Anne by the end of April.

Alternatively, please can you also contact Anne, should you have any hard copies of examples, such as photos, that can be used in the interactive workshop. Thank you.

Esther Morgan's Poetry In Motion

Tonight, as part of Norwich Writers’ Circle’s ongoing programme, noted poet Esther Morgan held a workshop, which launched our second competition of the year.

Competition Two gives Circle members the opportunity to write a poem, a maximum of 40 lines long, on the theme of 'Encounters'.

The popular workshop was based around several free writing activities, all of which were designed to highlight the numerous ways we could approach our latest competition's theme.

Esther also illustrated to us how other writers have used the ideas of encounters within their work. An important shift in action, plus the use of dialogue and a interesting setting were all suggested as useful points to consider when writing poetry.

The Norfolk based poet recommended visiting poetryarchive.org to hear a variety of poems read aloud by their famous authors.

Our next meeting, on 17th November, will be one of our regular Manuscript Evenings. We hope to see you there.