Venue: Zoom (free video conferencing platform)

Time: 6:30-8:30pm

Price: Full price places are £150, a limited number of bursary places (for low-income writers in receipt of means-tested benefits and single parent writers) are £75.

Attendees must pay for full course – individual course units not available separately.

Dates: Six workshops, held fortnightly on Tuesdays, to enable you to complete writing assignments:

Tues 21st Sept 2021
Tues 5th Oct
Tues 19th Oct
Tues 2nd Nov
Tues 16th Nov
Tues 30th Nov
Tickets can be purchased directly from Comma Press, email info@commapress.co.uk for details.
Booking deadline: 7th September 2021
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This course is about the short story …

Over the course of 6 workshops, you’ll get a handle on the predominant narrative structures and techniques used by short story writers, and implement them in your own work, including how to improve the characterisation, dialogue, and narrative voice. You’ll discuss exemplary short stories selected by the tutor, and discuss as a group, before being set tasks and prompts to encourage and inspire you to write between sessions.

What you need to be familiar with …

You don’t necessarily need any practical experience of writing stories, or creative writing of any kind, but it’s important that you have an interest in, and enthusiasm for, the short story form. To get the most from the course, you should be prepared do some background reading, undertake writing between sessions, and contribute your opinions and insight during the group discussions. The course isn’t geared towards any particular sub-genre within the short story form – be it literary fiction, sci-fi, or horror – we’ll be looking at techniques applicable to all these genres.
What we won’t cover …

This isn’t a course devised to help you write a novel, a novella, poetry, micro-fiction, or biography – it’s all about the short story, which presents its own specific demands and opportunities to writers (for the avoidance of doubt, short stories typically weigh in at somewhere between 1500 and 8000 words long).
Equipment you’ll need …

A computer and internet access at home, and a Zoom account (free).
About the Tutor:

SJ Bradley is a K Blundell Trust award winning writer from Leeds, UK, whose short fiction has appeared in various journals and anthologies including New Willesden Short Stories 7, Queen Mobs, Litro magazine, and in the Comma Press books Resist! and Conradology. She is the editor of the Saboteur Award-winning anthology Remembering Oluwale, which is available from Valley Press. Her first two novels including Guest, one of Morning Star’s Books of The Year 2017, are published by Dead Ink Books.

She has previously been fiction editor at Strix magazine, director of the Northern Short Story Festival, and organiser of non-profit literary social Fictions of Every Kind. She has been writer in residence for First Story in Bradford and Leeds, and was writer in residence at Alton Towers through the Liminal Residency. She tweets @bradleybooks / www.sjbradleybooks.com