Arvon Writers

Arvon is internationally renowned for its retreats and residential writing courses led by leading authors -  a home for all those who love writing. We are dedicated to writers who are looking for the tools and resources they need to develop and challenge themselves....

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Writing a story, regardless of length, begins always with a single word.

Don Roff (via amyoung)

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A lovely quote from Beatrix Potter

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Tobias Jones ‘Filling in the gaps’ Writing Exercise

For those who want to carry on from his great fiction writing tip, here’s the writing exercise that accompanies it:

Take three seemingly unrelated events. Now try and link your three scenes in some way so that they come together. Write down in synopsis form (notes or bullet points is fine, it doesn’t have to be purple prose) how those scenes are linked.

You have now effectively filled the gaps...

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When you do all the work for your readers, and leave nothing to the imagination. Leave the gaps for your readers to figure things out themselves

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PLAITING DISPARATE ELEMENTS TOGETHER Genre: Poetry

Your first task is to generate material from which to work. Set a timer for three minutes, and write about a childhood memory associated with a particular colour. Repeat with three minutes each for a piece of art (high or low, doesn’t matter); something you saw this morning; a historical figure; the last thing you cried about; a moment in sport; and one subject of your own choosing. 

Now work some of this material into a single poem that plaits together three of the strands (or more, if you feel so inclined). Each strand must appear more than once, and all of them must be present in the poem’s conclusion. This will take as long as it takes.

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Think of yourself as the reader when writing your novel.

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Letting your characters speak for themselves in your writing. 

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Ros Barber, helping you discover the benefits of free-writing.

Set a timer for 5 or 10 minutes. Start the timer and start writing, as fast as you can. Write without stopping, without judgement, without crossing out, without correcting your grammar or spelling, without really caring if you are writing in “proper” sentences. (Though you should be writing forward in a flow to the edge of the page, in free-flowing sentence-type things, not doing some kind of word association down the page).

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C.S Lewis on the power of the creativity  

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Ros Barber on free writing

So don’t let your critical self stomp on your creative self. Compartmentalise. Never give them headroom at the same time. Doing a few minutes of free-writing every day is the best way of training yourself into this separation.

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Bare Lit Festival is now accepting applications for #BareLit17! 

Apply here & get involved

Some post #BareLit16 coverage and mentions:

Bare Lit Festival: Building a Community

Playing to the crowd | Access All Areas

International Women’s Day: The Bare Lit Festival highlights the need for diversity in literature

Fair play: can literary festivals pay their way?

Your Bare Lit Team

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THE WORD CULL by Emma Carroll

After the giddy rush of a first draft, how you edit and refine your work is of equal, if not more importance. For me, this is the point where the real writing starts, where I see what works and what doesn’t. It’s also when my word count drops; I try to delete anything I don’t need in order to ‘crisp up’ the writing

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Ernest Hemingway on writing one true sentence

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Good writing is remembering detail. Most people want to forget. Don’t forget things that were painful or embarrassing or silly. Turn them into a story that tells the truth.

Paula Danziger (via psliterary)

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Viv Albertine’s writing exercise shows you how to write from your own experiences