Creative writing workshop: teen to teen

Jane Austen was not born a great writer – it’s something she worked really hard at! She spent her teenage years writing wildly and outrageously, producing short stories full of humour and scandal and, above all else, glittering imagination.

Over five hour-long sessions, students will explore the stories Jane Austen wrote when she was their age, using them to create their own pieces of writing. Sessions will be structured around three twenty minute chunks – 1) reading, 2) discussion, and 3) guided writing.

We will cover:

• Beginnings – focusing on the opening of Henry and Eliza, we’ll think about how Jane Austen introduces characters and sets up questions that lead us into the story
• Setting – focusing on Jack & Alice, we’ll look at how Jane Austen sets the scene of a masquerade ball and think about what techniques we might borrow for our own writing
• Characters – focusing on Amelia Webster, we’ll imagine the kind of characters who wrote the letters in Jane Austen’s epistolary short story
• Endings – focusing on The Beautifull Cassandra, we’ll consider how Jane Austen has used a circular plot to bring us back to the beginning in a surprising but satisfying way
• Writing for an audience – focusing on Sir William Montague, which is described as a “performance”, we’ll look at how Jane Austen often dedicated stories to friends and family members, and how thinking about audience might influence the kind of stories we tell and how we tell them

Throughout these sessions, students will develop a lasting love of language whilst developing confidence in their own written communication and imagination.

Details

This course is designed to be delivered in five hour-long sessions. These can be delivered online via Zoom. We can accommodate a single class or multiple classrooms.

Email us for more info and booking: learning@janeaustens.house