Most writers don't have to think too hard to know whether they find it easier to construct plots or create characters. OCA creative writing tutor Nina Milton calls the two groups of writers plot junkies or characterphiles. What happens when a group of writers at the Ilkley Festival are put on the...
Mike Harris, the author of OCA's latest creative writing course, Narrative and Dialogue, looks at three common assumptions made by newer writers about their craft. Novelists and writers of narrative poetry have as much need as writers of scripts for stage and screen to work hard on writing dialogue. If you think you...
One day, Elizabeth reads David Nicolls' novel 'One day'. The next, she goes to see the film of the book. It's an experiment in comparison she's been meaning to indulge in for years: fiction versus film.
Let’s start with the assumption that writers want to see their work in print. For poets, novelists, biographers and writers of memoirs, the lure of type on a page, their name as author stated boldly on a cover designed by some-one who understands what makes books sell, holds a place in their aspirations. We...
I have just re-read ‘The Lumber Room’, a short story by the former Burma police officer H H Munro, who wrote under the name of Saki. More than 30 years after having the story read aloud to me when I was 15 years old, its language and tone are still vividly familiar, even though...
In a blog post published today by the Royal Society of the Arts (RSA), OCA Chief Executive Gareth Dent argues that if Higher Education Minister David Willetts had remembered his basic economics from his own days at university, he would have been able to predict that the majority of universities would set their fees...
The Big Issue in the North is a magazine covering current affairs and the arts staffed by a small team in Manchester. As you might know, the OCA is an education charity based in Barnsley which aims to widen access to creative arts education at undergraduate and graduate levels. What the two organisations have...
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