2012 Year of the Novel: Act One (SOLD OUT)

Who: Bem Le Hunte
Dates: 10 x Tuesday evenings: 7,14,21 & 28 February; 6 & 27 March; 3,10,17 & 24 April 2012, 6:30pm-9:30pm
Cost: Full Price: $900; Member: $640; Conc Member: $545
Code: 12LEHU2

Click here to Join the Wait-list

Make this the year you write that novel or novella you’ve yet to start or complete. This course gives you the inspiration, the camaraderie, the structure, skills and motivation to write the novel you’ve been putting off. Whether you’re beginning your writing adventure or have lots of writing under your belt, you’re welcome to attend.

Internationally published author, Bem Le Hunte, has written three novels and several short stories to great critical acclaim, and has worked across many other writing forms over the past twenty-three years as a full-time writer. Bem will write her next novel with the other writers in this three- phase course.

This is act one. For information about full course (including acts two and three) click here

Unless a writer begins with an open mind thery’re likely to miss the chance to tell a tale that’s both strongly located in time and space yet universal in its appeal. Act One is about developing ideas with dramatic potential and intriguing themes. Complete beginners and developing writers are welcome. By the end of this course you’ll have a strong foundation for the story you’ve always wanted to write.

This free-flowing stage of the writing process is the foundation for the next two phases. This is where we seed our intention to complete a work that will stretch our imaginations, push the potential of our characters, and leave our readers engaged in our stories. This is a time for indulgence in a wildly liberating creative phase where we freely produce the words that will guide us into our stories.

Session 1 – Setting the challenge
This first week we will set the challenge – your personal challenge and our challenge as a group. We will experiment with the blank literary canvas and savour words yet to be written and a story yet to be discovered. This is the time when you are given permission to write absolutely anything, with a focus on creating momentum no matter what!

Session 2
Liberating your curiosity – exploring your potential

With freedom as our premise, we will explore the world of untold stories, forgotten insights, memories and inspiration to find a dozen or more seams that we can mine to reveal colour, intrigue, passion and potential, demonstrating that no experience is lost on a writer. We will use lateral thinking exercises to trigger the creative impulse and participate in an experiment of enormous scale, which will guide us on this journey towards the source of our story.

Session 3
Finding a way into the mystery

In this session we will further explore the all-important phase of creative incubation. We will use ‘loose construing’ or ‘free thinking’ exercises to coax bravery and help us to engage with the unknown. We will examine the idea of transcendence and creativity – how we can go beyond our abilities and beyond the confines of reality to create something truly sublime.

Session 4
Circling an idea

In this session we will start to define what prompts us to know more – what intrigues us and pulls us in, like a magnet – what demands exploration and what stories belong to us. We will look at what the individual writer brings to their material – reveal what hunches and impulses we want to explore. Even if you know what you want to write about, you may be surprised at what you learn. We will also start to circle other ideas – to see how they link – to see how stories are born out of connections.

Session 5
Finding a target – then pulling back the bow and letting go

In a world of all possibilities how do you ‘commit’ to an idea that will let you ride in its wake? In this session we will examine the prompts, the scenarios, the set-ups, the triggers and the risks that enable a fully formed work to take flight from fledgling pieces. Then we will begin our commitment to the threads of our writing that lean towards a narrative that will inspire us and other readers.

Session 6
Courting your story

Many writers don’t just wait for inspiration, they court it. This session will take you through some tried and tested techniques for harnessing ideas and making sure that more ideas follow. We will explore writing that really ‘gives back’ on your investment of love and passion, and how to know that you’re following a truly worthwhile love into the big blue yonder.

Session 7
The hidden voice

Writers often talk about ‘finding a voice,’ but how do you find this elusive voice and how do you know it’s the right one? This session will be a free flowing, experimental exercise in authorial voice – how to hit on one that works and how to plummet the potential of this voice for the duration of your work.

Session 8
The truth of the observer participant

One of the skills of the storyteller (as learned from anthropologists) is to be able to observe a culture and participate in it simultaneously. This session will help you identify all the points of intrigue in your narrative – the emotion of the insider, the intense first-person construct of the world – and juxtapose this with the arm’s length perspective of the observer. Expect unique revelations about your culture and the role you play in it!

Session 9
Exploring conflict

In this session we will start to pull together our writing in terms of universal human experience and conflict. We will examine all the struggles and conflicts that have been considered worthy of analysis by great writers, including cultural and class conflict, political conflict, family conflict, conflicts of conscience, conflict between generations, conflict between desires, etc. We will also explore the ‘pendulum of potential’ – explore these conflicts unravel as the opposing forces we have set up react or resolve.

Session 10
What do you know; what are you going to reveal; what will you hold back?

Now it’s time to start gathering together our writing and ideas so far to examine emerging themes, interests, imagery, characters and stories that can move our overall narrative to the next stage of development. After revealing and developing threads of narrative we will all take a break. What follows, is the crucial writing phase that will allow us to start weaving together our disparate musings into a still-flexible structure.

Food

Tea and coffee making facilities will be provided. Course participants are advised there are no cafes within easy walking distance.

About the tutor

Bem Le Hunte has published two novels: The Seduction of Silence and There, Where the Pepper Grows. The Seduction of Silence was released as the ‘Harper Collins Publishing Event of the Year,’ became an international bestseller and was shortlisted for The Commonwealth Writer’s Prize. There, Where the Pepper Grows was launched in late 2005, received critical acclaim and became a number one bestseller here in Australia. Her third novel, Father of all Stories (pending publication) forms part of her recent creative doctorate from the University of Sydney.

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