This week, we are going to try and write a story based on a story someone else has told us. It can be any sort of story you like. Good luck.

A couple of exercises in showing and telling this week. This is a very famous exercise in descriptive writing, or showing not telling, devised by the American novelist and teacher John Gardner. It appears in his book The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers (1991):Describe a barn as seen by a man whose son…

Terrible weather last Sunday, so only three people turned up. As a result, we are going to repeat the “notebook story” exercise so everybody can join in. Remember, it doesn’t have to be a complete story: it can be a fragment, a poem, a piece of memoir, a scene from a play or anything you…

Next week we’ll do the second half of the notebook exercise. Make some notes this week or bring some you have made before. The notes can be anything you like or think might be useful. All our notebooks will be different.  Then I want you to make something based on one or more notebook entries:…