Write a Short Story in Six Weeks with June Caldwell
Info
Date: July 1, 2025
Time: 6.30 pm – 8.30 pm
Duration: 6 weeks
Level: Beginner |
Cost: €190 (€171 Members)
Location: Irish Writers Centre
This course will take place in person on Tuesdays (six sessions in total).
Find further information on our building access here.
Course Summary
From nailing a solid idea to the excitement of penning that vital last sentence, this course will examine the different elements of short story writing including character, setting, voice, structure, plot, pacing and dialogue. The most important question is: who is telling the story and why? Each week we will have a close reading of a short story by a published writer to see how they did it. We will also peer-group work –in–progress. By the end of the six weeks you will have a good first draft of a short story.
Course Outline
Week One: Sourcing Ideas. Using real life content (newspapers, fake news, social media) you will decide what you want to write about and write the first few paragraphs in class.
Week Two: Voice. How important is voice in a short story? How does it inform style, content, shape, structure?
Week Three: Character. How they’re motivated, what drives them to action, what stops them getting what they want.
Week Four: Plot. What’s really going on? Short stories are nearly always two things happening at once: a story beneath the surface (the unsaid or compressed) and a story above the surface (how symptoms play out as behaviour).
Week Five: Pacing and Progression. New possibilities open up, how will your character handle what’s thrown at them. How will they find a way out of their dilemma?
Week Six: Conclusions & Consequences. What has changed for your character, where are they now? How do you let them go?
Course Outcomes
Participants will gain a deeper understanding of the complexity and layering that happens in a short story and will be clear about how to tackle writing them.
June Caldwell is twice a prize-winner of The Moth Short Story Prize (2024 & 2014) and a 2025 awardee of the International Lamplight Fellowship. Her short story collection Room Little Darker was published in 2017 by New Island Books to critical acclaim and in 2018 by Head of Zeus, UK. June has facilitated workshops at various literary festivals, libraries, at Circle of Missé, France and Mountjoy Men’s Prison. She has also judged numerous short story competitions. Her debut novel Little Town Moone is forthcoming from John Murray.
Booked out? To be added to the waiting list for this course, please email info@irishwriterscentre.ie.
