Writing course Wigtown April 2025

Let me know if you are interested!

Creating a world- in the Glorious Scottish Booktown of Wigtown

A short course on the most important aspect of writing- one rarely addressed: Creating a World.

11^th to 14^th April (but you can leave on 13^th April if you have to)

£350 Inc two meals a day, all tuition, and bonus sessions with bestselling authors Shaun Bythell, Robert Twigger and Jessica Fox.

An exclusive offer: limited to 10 people only.

Jessica Fox created a world in her award winning film Stella.

Shaun Bythell created a world – for real- in his bookshop, and then he recreated it on the page in his bestselling series of memoirs.

Robert Twigger created a world in his novel Dr Ragab’s Universal Language. He also writes literary travel books which requires creating a recognisable world for travel readers.

1.     What is a world in book terms

2.     What are the raw ingredients?

3.     What are the secret ingredients

4.     Characters and world building

5.     Creating a film world

6.     Recreating a travel world

7.     Memoir and world building

 As well as various teaching sessions each day (which you can opt in or out of) this is your chance to have one on one Q and A with successful published authors, plus group Q and A around the fire. Meet and talk books for three days, ramble along the sea shore, refresh your batteries in a place of calm and exquisite landscape.

travel writing journals

Everyone is a travel writer these days. Everyone is writing captions, shooting videos and writing social media posts about where they are.

That doesn't interest me much, beyond the posting of hard core information about prices and access to places. I - along with many others- have grown to find over produced 'content' severely dull and boring!

What I do love are travel journals. Handwritten, hand drawn in some cases, real photos stuck in, tickets and the other flotsam and jetsam also stuck in or at least photographed. Poems mixed with prose. Snatches of real dialogue. No pretension, just an honest record. Dan Price- author of several superb journal type books as well the superb 'how to make a journal' is the godfather of this kind of art/life project. What a great thing to look over years later. Whereas that social meida post- meh!

Travel writing is alive and well- as soon as you take out your notebook and start scribbling.

can't write dialogue?

If you don't know what a character will say or how they will say it exaggerate their character until you do. Keep stretching and exaggerating some characteristic until you hear how they speak. Character shows up in contrast to environment and other characters, so you only have to stretch that which creates the biggest contrast. For example, exaggerate a gangster's love of rare first editions rather than his violence: books offer a bigger contrast in his world. But for a university don- make his hobby white collar boxing.

building fictional characters #2

The question you want to be able answer about a potential character is: can I run with this? You can build up a character full of quirks and contradictions and then find he or she just doesn't move of their own accord- you're always having to cattleprod them from scene to scene. You know you're in this pickle when the thought of writing new scenes seems like a drag (or a bigger drag than usual). You want a character with LEGS which carry them around gaily and happily or even grumpily but at least carry them. So you need to keep trying on characteristics that seem to chime in with the name and character's context, seem to mix into a potent cocktail that moves. For example I spent a long time building this character X who was supposed to be an expert on the jungle, knew about plants, etc etc...but it was all a bit static. No legs. Then I had a mid-morning coffee break insight that X was tough. That was it. I had my legs. I like writing about toughness and now I had my chance. So, it is likely that the key driving characteristic may be somthing simple that appeals to YOU, gets YOU a bit excited- or excited enough to want to write about it. One must always ignore what is 'good' or 'acceptable to the audience' at this stage- it's all about charging your own generative powers with whatever fuel they need.

building fictional characters

Embark on your novel at peril if you haven't nailed your characters. Character can be done last but it involves headache inducing rewrites. Instead get 'em nailed first. Number one- get the name right, this goes hand in hand with what I call the moment of squint-truth: this cumbersome phrase refers to the inner mental squint you make to try and capture your character in some defining moment or relationship. For one of my characters it is the fact that he has an unnecessary 'enemy', for another that she has a huge first aid kit- these captured moments seem to set up the right improvising energy needed to make the character thrive. It's rather like getting the right hat for a role on stage. Wear the right hat and you know how to speak, go on stage in the wrong hat and you're tongue tied. The right defining feature will also, usually, highlight a contradiction within the character- people who are internally torn are always more interesting- and lifelike.

a picture held us captive

The question to ask is what picture/way of looking does this person have of the topic which makes them believe in the argument they put forward. The argument is almost irrelevant as it will never convince anyone who does not share the same picture which is why everyone disagrees so much. It is the pictures we have of things that decides stuff and a picture is altered by emotion, primarily, and at a distant second, experience mediated by emotion (which is why we only very slowly learn from experience). If the foregoing is true (you will only think so if you share my way of looking, my picture of how life is...) then the way to alter the way people think is to find a BRIDGE from their picture to yours. Such a bridge is a story...

resisting makes you tired

I have noticed that when a part of an activity is internally resisted it magnifies tiredness exponentially. When doing manual labour but under someone else's timetable the constant stop-start is resented. Internal opposition builds. This squanders energy like nothing else. At the end of the day you are far tireder than doing the same effort but without resistance. if you can PLAY while doing it- even better. Play is frictionless activity- energy is conserved and you will not feel anything like as tired as you do when you use 'serious' energy.