Find the Fun in Flash Fiction with Patrick Holloway
Info
Date: May 4, 2026
Time: 10.00 am - 12.00 pm
Duration: 6 weeks
Level: Advanced | Intermediate | Beginner |
Cost: €200 (€180 Members)
Location:
This course will take place online on Mondays for 6 weeks beginning 4 May.
Course Summary
Find your narrative voice in this introduction to Flash Fiction, where you will learn to read, understand and write your own Flash Fiction. The course will introduce the genre of flash fiction and analyse characterisation, point of view, narrative arc, for writers who are starting on their journey. The course will also include workshops where participants get to show their work to classmates and tutor for feedback. Students will gain a broad knowledge into the genre and feel ready for more advanced workshops.
Course Outline
Week 1: Introduction to Flash and the 6-word story, along with terminology, pair work and in class activity.
Week2: Reading Flash Fiction in class: analysis + close reading; the emotional power of verbs; place; POV; dialogue. Writing activity
Week 3: In class reading, analysis and conversation: plot; narrative distance; narrative arc. Writing activity
Week 4: In class reading, analysis and conversation: furthering characterisation—five senses, characters through action, through place, through objects. In class writing activity.
Week 5: Reading and analysis. Workshop number 1
Week 6: Reading and analysis. Workshop number 2
Course Outcomes
Students will gain a depth of knowledge about Flash Fiction as a means to start writing, with a view to move onto longer works of fiction, e.g, short story. They will develop an understanding of craft in terms of fiction as a genre, while developing their own writing practice and workshopping their fiction pieces.
Patrick Holloway is a prize-winning Irish writer of fiction and poetry. His debut novel, The Language of Remembering, was published in 2025 to critical acclaim. His second novel is forthcoming in 2027. His work appears in The Stinging Fly, The Moth, The London Magazine, among others. He is the winner of The Bath Short Story Prize, The Molly Keane Creative Writing Prize, The Raymond Carver Contest, The Flash 500, among others. He is an editor of The Four Faced Liar.
Booked out? To be added to the waiting list for this course, please email bookings@irishwriterscentre.ie.
