Date/Time
Date(s) - Mon 22nd May - Sat 27th May, 2023
All Day
Location
Moniack Mhor, Kiltarlity, Inverness-shire , IV4 7HT
Finessing Your Fiction
Are you working on a novel that needs a new lease of life? Or one that needs an injection of fresh thinking to push it towards completion? In this highly practical, engaging and supportive work-in-progress week, Carys Bray and Wyl Menmuir will explore a range of techniques for developing your novel, including delving deeper into character, filtering techniques, finessing your fictional worlds, and developing humour in your writing. We’ll also consider practicalities of process and routine to help you ensure that you finish what you have started.
Carys Bray is the author of a short story collection Sweet Home and three novels, A song for Issy Bradley, The Museum of You and When the Lights Go Out. She won the 2015 Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award, and her work has been shortlisted for the Desmond Elliott and Costa Prizes. Her short fiction has featured in magazines and anthologies, and several stories have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Carys teaches creative writing to undergraduates and in the community. She lives in Southport in North West England.
Wyl Menmuir is an award-winning author based in Cornwall. Wyl’s most recent non fiction book, The Draw of the Sea, won the Roger Deakin Award for nature writing. In 2016, his debut novel, The Many was longlisted for the Man-Booker Award and was an Observer Best Fiction of the year pick. His second novel Fox Fires was published in 2021 and his short fiction has been published by Nightjar Press, Kneehigh Theatre and National Trust Books and appeared in Best British Short Stories. A former journalist, Wyl has written for Radio 4’s Open Book, The Guardian and The Observer, and the journal Elementum. He is co-creator of the Cornish writing centre, The Writers’ Block and lectures in creative writing at Falmouth University.
Born in Stockport in 1979, Wyl now lives on Cornwall’s north coast with his wife and two children. When he is not writing or teaching writing, Wyl enjoys messing around in boats.
Sarah Franklin is the author of two novels: Shelter (2017) and How To Belong (2020). She was a judge for the Costa Short Story Prize from 2015-2022, and is the founder/host of literary night Short Stories Aloud. She has written for publications including The Guardian, The Irish Times, the Seattle Times and Psychologies magazine as well as short fiction for a variety of formats. Sarah is a Senior Lecturer at the Oxford International Centre for Publishing at Oxford Brookes University, and in a previous life worked at publishing houses in London, Seattle and Dublin.
Sarah grew up in the Forest of Dean, in Gloucestershire, and after stints all over the place currently lives halfway between Oxford and London with her family.
Fees
The full fee for this course is £650. This includes your accommodation in a single room with shared bathroom, all meals, hot drinks and snacks from Monday afternoon until Saturday morning, and your tuition. For more information about the practicalities of our courses and retreats, please visit our About the Courses page.
A limited number of en-suite rooms are available for a £50 surcharge, and a limited number of Twin Room places are available at a discounted price of £600 per person. When booking a Twin Room place, please tell us in the comments box which gender you are and which gender(s) you are comfortable sharing a room with. This information will remain confidential.
A deposit is required to secure your place, which is non-refundable after a 14-day cooling-off period. The balance payment of £500 is due six weeks before the course begins. If you would like to pay the full amount earlier than this or at the point of booking, please call our booking office on 01463 592 828 or email info@moniackmhor.org.uk.
Please let us know if you have any access requirements, for example a ground floor bedroom and / or access to a wheelchair-accessible shower room. For more information about access to our courses, please visit our Access page.
Bookings
This event is fully booked. Please email info@moniackmhor.org.uk to be added to the waiting list.