
In light of the recent escalation of COVID-19, TLC will be postponing this workshop, to protect the health and safety of our tutor, venue staff, and participants. We have been in touch with all participants by email about this, and will send follow-up updates in due course. We remain in close contact with relevant partners in order to ensure our events policy remains in line with government and Public Health guidance.
You have invented and constructed your story. Your living, breathing characters, meticulously created, are striving for their destiny in the setting you have devised. Your narrative structure feels solid and workable. And now there’s the writing: the quest to find the words, the techniques, to tell your story to best effect – to get started, to keep going, and find the stamina to finish. This workshop looks at openings and endings; it offers tips to sustain momentum, to keep you interested and committed when the fiction seems to flag. Through discussion and exercises we’ll locate the heart of this complex activity that is the creation of fiction – and look ahead at opportunities to keep going, now that you have embarked on the adventure that is the writing life.
Perfect for: Writers who are nearing completion of or have completed a first draft of a creative writing project.
Includes: Tea, coffee, all teaching, and feedback on a 1,000 (maximum) word extract of your writing.
BOOK NOW for ‘Finding Your Voice’
Trusted TLC assessor, novelist and writers’ mentor Shelley Weiner has designed three individual one-day intensive workshops especially for TLC, critically engaging with essential elements of fiction and working with Shelley’s patented model of teaching craft ‘from the inside out’. Each Masterclass runs from 10am till 4pm at the Free Word Centre, in the heart of Clerkenwell. Teas and coffees are included in the price. You can book any single Masterclass, or book all three for a 15% discount (applied automatically at checkout).
TLC Masterclasses are for writers just starting out, or those with a specific writing project in mind and with a determination to see that project through to a more cohesive, coherent end product. Each Masterclass offers a holistic deep dive into elements of craft, with practical exercises and inspirational examples drawn from a wide range of sources. This special series of three Masterclass offerings has been built to be accessible either individually or as a complementary suite, with a series discount of 15% available (applied automatically at check-out). You can find links to each Masterclass below.
One free ticket to this TLC Masterclass is available to a writer on low income, with priority given to those from groups currently under-represented in publishing. Please email us at to apply in confidence.
Shelley Weiner is the author of five novels, and a respected creative writing tutor with a passion for nurturing writers at all levels. Her short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies in print and online, and have been produced for BBC Radio 4. Shelley has run masterclasses for the Guardian, Faber Academy, Gold Dust Mentoring Scheme and Skyros Writers’ Lab, and has lectured on the Creative Writing MA at Anglia Ruskin University, as well as for Birkbeck College, the Open University, the Taliesin Trust, the British Council in Israel, and Durham University. She is passionate about guiding and enabling writers at all stages of their writing journeys. She is an Advisory Fellow at the University of Westminster.
Finding Your Muse: Inspiration and Invention
Finding Your Story: Plot, Setting and Structure
Finding Your Voice: Putting Your Story on the Page, Sustaining Momentum