Online Crime-Writing Workshop with Catherine Ryan Howard

Over the course of five sessions, this online workshop will explore topics such as developing your ideas, plotting, creating suspense, research, and preparing your work for submission to agents and publishers. Suitable for writers at all levels, it will especially appeal to those with an interest in the mechanics of plotting and whose aim is to ultimately submit their work to agents. The idea is not just to advance existing work but to spend the time stretching writing muscles, considering new approaches, and learning the nuts and bolts (or fingerprints and blood splatter!) of writing crime fiction, before returning to your work-in-progress with fresh eyes, renewed enthusiasm and more creative tools at your disposal.

Session breakdown:

1. The Interrogation: Taking Ideas from Brain to Blurb
2. Get Your Story Straight: Plotting and the Mechanics of Storytelling
3. The Art of Suspense: Characters, Conversations & Cliffhangers
4. How To Get Away With Murder: Research and Procedure
5. Crime Does Pay: Preparing Your Work for Submission

Solo writing exercises would normally take place during classroom hours but as the workshop will take place via zoom this individual writing time will take place offline outside class hours.

Instructions for participants will be emailed on purchase. If you don’t receive an email from us, please check your junk mail and contact us on info@westcorkmusic.ie if you can’t find it. And we’re here to support anyone with any questions.

You will need:

• A good Wifi connection
• Access to a Laptop, Tablet, PC or Mac with a microphone & camera
• Zoom – free to use and free to download here

NOTE: Times are GMT.