How to Find Your Voice in Fiction with Lisa Harding

Course Summary

What makes a writer’s voice unique, compelling and memorable? Over the course of eight weeks, we will undertake a high energy, experiential creative practice workshop exploring essential elements of fiction writing, through writing prompts and short readings of selected stylists, with a particular emphasis on what generates ‘voice’ and ‘character’ (in their broadest sense) on the page. As a playwright, novelist and short story writer I’ll introduce elements of each of these creative forms to help spark that place of inspiration and impulse.

Course Outline

Participants will focus on all the major components of fiction writing as outlined below:

Inspiration and impulse

Voice

Introduction to character

Dramatic momentum/story/plot

Setting and place

Dialogue

Style and poetic language

The short story

Editing

This is mostly an interactive workshop where work will be produced in the sessions and there will be homework assignments. By the end of the eight weeks, participants will have a completed chapter/short story to share with the group if they are comfortable doing so.

Course Outcomes

A 3,000-word chapter or short story, as well as an invigorated approach to the craft of writing and a love of the process that will live long after the course ends.

Lisa Harding is the 2023 writer in residence for UCC. She is an experienced teacher having facilitated creative writing workshops at master’s level. Harvesting won the Kate O’Brien award, was shortlisted for an Irish Book Award and the Kerry Group Prize in 2018.  Bright Burning Things (2021) received a starred review in the Publisher’s Weekly, was a New York Times Editor’s Choice, a People Magazine Choice, and was featured on the Today Show. It was shortlisted for the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year and a Dalkey Literary Award. The Wildelings has just been bought by Harper Collins in the US and Bloomsbury in the UK.