GWG ONLINE WORKSHOP
LUCY CALDWELL
CHOOSING YOUR TENSE AND POINT OF VIEW: THE ALCHEMY, THE COLLISION, AND THE INCENDIARY POSSIBILITIES!
TUESDAY 13 FEBRUARY 2024
1900 CET (VIA ZOOM)
The choices you make about the point of view from which your story is told and the tense in which it’s told are among the first and most basic that any writer must consider, and must consider anew with each piece. Often we do it instinctively, or by default. And yet different combinations of tense/pov can have radically different effects and outcomes. In this one-off workshop we will look at the more unusual options available for writers of short stories – things that the short story can do brilliantly, and that might not be sustainable with longer-form prose. We will look – for example – at second-person and choral narration, we will think about the possibilities of future tense, the conditional tense, the imperative tense. We will play about with the tone and feel of different combinations of narrative modes, and you’ll go away with lots of fun things to try.
Bio
Lucy Caldwell is the author of four novels, most recently These Days, which won the 2023 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction; two collections of short stories, with a third, Openings, forthcoming in May 2024; several stage plays and radio dramas, and is the editor of Being Various: New Irish Short Stories. Awards include the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the George Devine Award, Dylan Thomas Prize, and a Major Individual Artist Award from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. In 2018 she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature; in 2021 she won the BBC National Short Story Award for "All the People Were Mean and Bad" and in 2022 she was the recipient of the EM Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters.
She runs a masterclass series in the short story for the Faber Academy. Her website is www.lucycaldwell.com and she tweets @beingvarious
For all queries please contact us at:
genevawriters@gmail.com
