Words on the Page: Backbone and Heart: A Short Story Summer with Órfhlaith Foyle

Course Summary

A five day course covering what it takes to write a story, long or short, with the aim of writing a story. How does a story begin?  What makes a story? How do you write a story? How does a story flow? How do you ensure your writing makes your story live on the page?

Explore the space and the negative capability (John Keats) essential in writing the short story.

Each day we will focus on the different aspects that bring a short story to ‘life’.

The Writers’ Voice, Voice and POV, Narrative, Structure, Dialogue, Pace, Flow, Rhythm, Sound

Writers include Claire Keegan, George Saunders, Cary Davies, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi, James Baldwin, Ursula le Guin, Shirley Jackson, V.S. Pritchet, Hiromi Kawakami.

Course Outline

Day 1

What creates a story? Who are the writers you read? What do they say? How do you create the main character? What is narrative distance/POV? Protagonist and Antagonist. Individual work on students’ own stories – their projected aims for their writing/stories.

Day 2

The first line and the first paragraph, and the next paragraph. How a story’s character precipitates action, confrontation, description. Pros and cons of outlining a story – short and long; Flash, Narrative Poems, etc.

Day 3

What do you tell and what do you leave out? What does a story’s voice promise the reader? Are voice and character necessary in a story? Location and time? Descriptive writing, dialogue. The writer’s voice. The narrator’s voice. Writing styles.

What does your character want? What is your character terrified of? What are you afraid of  for the character; for your writing?

Day 4

What is the point of writing a story? Is your story emotionally ‘true’? Can imagination be as true as experience? How do you write subtext into your story? A look at writers whose first work, novels etc – who build their work from truth and imagination.  Autofiction, memoir and autobiographical writing. Our stories are us no matter how different the character, dialogue and narrative. We write out of ourselves and in service to the story.

How much of you is in your work and why is that imperative when writing fictional work?

Day 5

What can be dangerous about a story? The words you use, your writing style, what your story says and how it says it?  A writer has every right to write. Discuss. Also cliché, stereotypes, archetypes, themes may have a place in stories but only if shown for what they are.

What do you want your story to say? What does it say? Does it follow its own truth? Does it follow its narrative line? How does it End?

How does a writer remain committed to writing their work? A look at writers who do not avoid asking questions in their work aka Richard Flanagan, Toni Morrison; writers who face the abyss within and outside themselves – Jean Rhys among others.

Course Outcomes

At the end of the five days, each student will have:

• Explored the many-sided passions and necessary elements in various stories.
• Discover what makes them a writer who writes.

At the end of the week, participants are invited to sign up to read their work at a showcase on Friday 10th July from 5-7pm.

Órfhlaith Foyle is a short story writer, poet and dramatist and lives in Galway.

Doire Press published her third collection of short stories Three Houses in Rome September 2023.

Her work has appeared in the London Magazine, The Dublin Review, Wales Arts Review, The Manchester Review, The Stinging Fly, the Gorse journal and various anthologies. She wrote and directed the radio dramas May’s End and How I Murdered Lucrezia. Both received full BAI funding and premiered on Newstalk Radio in October 2021 and 2023.

Her fourth short story collection PLACES is to be published by Doire Press Autumn 2026

Booked out? To be added to the waiting list for this course, please email bookings@irishwriterscentre.ie.