Courses and Talks
Freeflow May 2010
IPAA: Writing with Style – The Power of Plain English
27 August 2010
IPAA: Grammar and Punctuation Essentials
17 September 2010
www.wa.ipaa.org.au
UWA Extension: Writing Clearly and Fluently
16 October 2010
www.extension.uwa.edu.au
workshops.
Alan Hancock runs Freeflow courses and workshops, and gives talks on writing and creativity. Please go to News for more details of what is on offer in the coming weeks and months.
Office of the Public Sector Standards Commissioner, Perth
Writing workshops:
• Grammar and Punctuation Essentials – March 2009
• Writing with Style: The Power of Plain English – March 2009
Notre Dame University, Fremantle WA
• Academic writing skills: using Plain English – 17 March
2009
Joondalup Library, WA
• Workshop for library writers’ group: writing short fiction
– 15 March 2009
Alan is also developing a programme with staff at Joodalup City Library to establish and run a writers' group there.
In the last few years he has run courses and given talks for UWA Extension, Murdoch University, Edith Cowan University, The Australian Institute of Office Professionals, Albany Summer School, Mandurah Stretch Festival, Claremont Library, Spearwood Library, Melville Library, Margaret River Community and Cultural Centre, Denmark Arts Council, the Western Australian Society of Women Authors, and Pemberton/Northcliffe Writers.
Follow the links for details of:
Freeflow
Freeflow Advanced
Freeflow Write your Life
Freeflow Writing for Voice
Freeflow Scriptwriting
Talks
Freeflow:
If you have ever wanted to find a way of getting a flow of ideas, memories
or feelings onto the page, and into the form of a piece of fiction, verse,
script or biography, then this course is for you. It's all about tapping
into intuition, and opening up to imagination and memory.
The process we use is simple and absorbing, and allows the writing to
unfold easily. It's a matter of letting the writing happen, rather than
making things hard for ourselves by trying to get it right. It amounts
to letting the "right brain" or intuition take over, at least
in the early stages of creating a text. Sounds straightforward? It is.
And it’s fun as well. You may find too that you need to unlearn
what your school teachers told you about writing a story. Many of Alan’s
students find that the Freeflow approach brings a fluency and originality
that surprises them. You can check out what they have had to say on the
Testimonials page.
Each Freeflow course or workshop covers the following:
• Getting started: the free flow of memory and imagination;
• Individual writing exercises;
• The structure of stories: narrative, plot and theme;
• Characters and how to put them into words;
• Finding the right form: novel, short story, script, memoir.
Alan leads writing activities so that he can offer participants feedback
on their work.
An important part of the work is that it offers a supportive environment
for participants to share their writing and creativity. The average class
size is between 10 and 14.
Freeflow Advanced
This workshop will show you how to get from a fragment to a first draft
to a finished piece. If you have a story that you haven’t completed,
but want to develop and finish, then Freeflow Advanced
may just be what you need. Freeflow Advanced is an intensive
workshop that shows you how to rework a first draft or a sketch into a
story.
The project you have in mind could be a short story, novel, or life story.
The piece might exist as a first draft, as a text fragment, or as a loosely
woven set of writings. The important thing is that there is a starting
point on the page that you want to develop. During the Freeflow
Advanced day workshop we will cover:
• Revising structure;
• How to rework narrative;
• Writing effective openings and endings;
• Approaches to developing character and dialogue;
• The ‘golden rules’ of editing;
• The qualities of a successful prose style;
• The role of description;
• Avoiding cliché;
• Maintaining a reader’s attention;
• Conveying emotion.
We will also offer feedback on each other’s work.
Before the class each participant is invited to submit a short sample
of their work (either a 4-5 page extract, a synopsis of the overall project,
or both) to Alan Hancock. He can then offer advice on how it might be
developed and/or revised as part of the workshop process.
He workshop is limited to a maximum of twelve participants.
Alan Hancock has helped many writers see their work through to completion,
and has wide experience in editing stories, scripts, articles and academic
papers.
Freeflow Write your Life
This course or workshop is for anyone who has a life story that they want to get onto the page. It could be a personal memoir, a family history, a biography, or a piece of fiction based on lived experience. Freeflow Write your Life will help you develop the skills you need to fashion a story from memory and imagination. For some people it’s a matter of making a start and allowing the story to find its unique form. For others it’s getting to grips with style, structure, characterisation or plot.
Alan Hancock’s writing often draws on his own experiences and memories, weaving them into stories which first and foremost are just that – stories. Facts alone cannot make a life story: the writer has to engage with the material at a deeper level, where intuition and emotion bring the words to life. Freeflow Write your Life will show you how your story can lead you on this journey of discovery into writing.
Freeflow Writing for Voice
In this workshop we will look at writing for spoken performance, and at what we can learn about all writing from considering how texts work as spoken word.
In our print and screen focussed society it is easy to forget that for most of human history language has been oral, not visual. Spoken language has been around for at least 100 000 years, while for the majority in our culture reading and writing arrived only a few centuries ago.
Poems and songs need to be heard, not read, to be fully appreciated, but it is not only poets and songwriters who might benefit from a consideration of how language sounds. A sense of the rhythm and melody of words is never amiss in any writing.
So – what are the characteristics and qualities of writing that is designed to be read out loud? How can we learn to play with and use the sounds of language in the texts we are writing? How can meaning be conveyed as much by rhythm, melody and resonance as by grammar and vocabulary?
Freeflow Writing for Voice answers these questions, and introduces a range of writing exercises to help participants write for their voices. We will workshop, write, edit and redraft, then perform our work. As well as verse we look at rap, stage monologue and dialogue.
Alan Hancock is an experienced performer who has taught theatre at tertiary level for fifteen years and has directed plays for the professional theatre companies in the UK. He has presented his own solo performance work to audiences throughout Australia.
Freeflow Scriptwriting
Alan Hancock’s scripts for stage and radio have been produced by professional theatre companies, by the BBC and ABC. This workshop teaches the special skills needed to write a successful script, whether for the theatre, the screen or radio. As with all Freeflow courses the emphasis is on the practical, on participants developing their own work through writing exercises, discussions and feedback.
If you have ever wondered how scripts work, and how to write one, then Freeflow Scriptwriting is for you. We look at scripts for stage, screen and radio, from full-length dramas to short pieces. By analysing the scripts for some popular films and plays we uncover the basic rules or guidelines for script writing. You then learn how to apply this to your own work, so that during the course you can develop a short script of your own. The course deals with questions such as:
• What does a script consist of?
• How does it work, from page to action?
• How is it different from other literary forms – short story
/ novel / poem?
• What are the differences between dramatic dialogue and everyday
conversation?
• How do you write good dialogue and monologues?
• Where do characters come from and how do you make them seem realistic,
or believable?
• How are dramatic characters different from ‘real people’?
• What is plot, and what is the role of dramatic conflict and tension?
• What do we mean by theme and sub-text?
• How do you know if your script is working?
• What are some common faults in script writing?
During the course Alan offers participants feedback on their work. An important part of Freeflow is that it offers a supportive environment for participants to share their writing and creativity.
Talks
Alan Hancock gives talks and presentations on creativity and writing. He has some surprising things to say about the creative process, and that demon the Inner Critic.
“Who says that writing is self-expression? I don't believe it is.
Other cultures have seen artistic creativity as having a source not in
"me", but in "the people", "the ancestors",
"the land", "the world of the unseen", "the muse",
or "nature".
Once we buy into the idea that writing is an expression of self, then
the writer will naturally want to control what they write very carefully
to avoid being criticised and judged through what they write. This is
how we learned to write in school - to avoid anything that might render
us vulnerable to the teacher-critic's sharp eye. And then we turned it
all inside and created a bullying inner critic who insists on keeping
everything in line.
It worked fine in school to keep me safe from ridicule, but it won't help me now when I write a first draft of a play or short story. Raw creativity is messy, unpredictable, often confronting or uncomfortable. It won’t necessarily take you where you thought you were headed: that’s why it’s exciting.
My experience is that when I write free of conscious control or a desire to please or make sense, then material emerges that has a life, an energy that is usually lacking in my more carefully planned work. Everything I have written in the last few years, including my PhD thesis on creativity (which I promise never to read out loud in public), was run off in first draft as a stream of unplanned unpredictable language.
Because I know it works, I am confident when I tell others to give it a try. Forget the careful planning, the constant corrections, the playing safe. Write it fast and dirty, and just watch the page catch fire. It might not be neat and safe, it might not be what you originally had in mind, it might be emotional, rude even, but, and this is the point – other people will want to read it. Trust me. It works. There is no other way I am aware of.”
If you would like to hear more, then book Alan to give one of his talks.
He is an experienced performer, so expect a lively presentation with a
keen sense of humour. Alan can also perform his original solo comedy.