One of the common ills affecting many fiction and creative non-fiction writers is our tendency to forget that the people we describe have bodies, and to make use of this wonderful fact. In real life, all of us are embodied and everything we do, even our thinking, comes from, through and/or despite our bodies. In Writing the Body, we’ll learn to write in a way that not only pays attention to this central fact of human existence, but also uses the body as a source of inspiration.

The body is a multidimensional entity: a thing that’s physical, cultural, and a singular marker of an individual; it’s the source of our pleasures and difficulties. In this course, we’ll discuss what importance the body might have in your project. Participants will learn how to describe appearance, body language and other bodily gestures vividly, in a way that deepens characterisation; how to describe pain in a way that’s particular to your character, and how to describe sensory experiences, including writing erotic scenes. We’ll also learn about the common pitfalls in writing about the body and how to avoid them. The workshop incorporates theory, discussion, writing exercises, and examples from fiction and creative non-fiction.

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Expected Learning Outcomes

1. Participants will deepen their understanding of the concept of the body in general and in writing in particular.
2. Participants will discover how to write bodily sensations, actions and appearance in vivid and memorable ways.
3. Participants will learn how to use the body to deepen characterisation, and sometimes in metaphorical ways too.

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Participant Requirements

Pen and paper