Short Story Course with Karline Smith, Manchester

About the event

This course is about the short story …

Over the course of 6 workshops, you’ll get a handle on the predominant narrative structures used by short story writers, and implement them in your own work. Completing set writing tasks between workshops, and receiving structured, peer-driven feedback, you’ll develop 3 short stories to completion, with tailored advice on how to shape the story, and how to improve the characterisation, dialogue, and narrative voice. Comma Press, one of the UK’s leading publishers of short fiction is always looking for new voices in short fiction and our courses have a strong history of producing prize-winning short story talent. 

What you need to be familiar with …

You don’t necessarily need any practical experience of writing stories, nor of supervised creative writing of any kind, but it’s important that you have an interest in, and enthusiasm for, the short story form. To get the most from the course, you should be prepared do some background reading, undertake writing tasks between sessions, read the work of others on the course prior to each session, offer tactful – yet frank – feedback, and receive constructive criticism on your own work. The course isn’t geared towards any particular sub-genre within the short story form – be it literary fiction, sci-fi, or horror – we’ll be looking at techniques applicable to all these genres.

What we won’t cover …

This isn’t a course devised to help you write a novel, a novella, poetry, micro-fiction, or biography – it’s all about the short story, which presents its own specific demands and opportunities to writers (for the avoidance of doubt, short stories typically weigh in at somewhere between 1500 and 8000 words long, for the purpose of this course we will be looking at stories up to 5,000 words long).

Equipment you’ll need …

Something to write with (pen and paper will do) during sessions, and a computer and internet access at home, to upload your work in progress to the online drop box, or email to the group. If you prefer to print out other people’s work to read prior to the sessions (rather than reading from a screen), you’ll need to do this at your own expense.

About the Tutor …

Born to Jamaican parents who arrived in Britain in the 1960s, Karline Smith was one of the first black female crime writers to deal with the subject of drug gangs in inner-city Britain. She is the author of three novels, Moss Side Massive, which was dramatised by Liverpool’s Unity Theatre, Full Crew, and Goosebumps and Butterflies are Fairy Tales (published by Black Sapphire Press). She is also the author of several short stories, variously published in The City Life Book of Manchester Short Stories (Penguin), M.O.: Crimes of Practice, and Resist (Comma). She is currently working on her fourth novel.