The blank page can be intimidating, and organising a written story is demanding.

Yet it is also fascinating and somewhat magical.

We all have something set aside that we would like to put down on paper. We all have a story to tell, and every story is worth telling. Whether someone will want to read it depends on how we choose to tell it.

This is an introductory course on written storytelling, designed to explore what a novel and a short story are, and to attempt writing one.

Writing can be structured; narrative has internal mechanisms that can help us organise our journey so that it feels less daunting than a blank page, which often resembles the open sea, with no islands on the horizon.
We will try to understand these mechanisms, drawing support from renowned authors, films, and songs; we will take narrative tools apart and examine how they work. And above all, we will try to write and discuss our work together.

Character, plot, rhythm, dialogue, settings, and language will be some of our key elements.

We will spend 21 hours together for a first approach to writing and written storytelling. What eventually emerges from the drawer remains to be seen.