Get creative with children's fiction

Find out how to create original stories for fiction's most demanding audience

Writing for children is like throwing a party – it should be enormous fun for everyone, but it's easy for the host to get bogged down in organising things and forget to have a good time. This course can change all that. It's not about how to format a manuscript or sweet-talk an agent. It's about putting you in touch with your muse, and making sure the two of you keep each other – and your audience – entertained.

With this liberating weekend course, Laura Dockrill, acclaimed author of the much-loved Darcy Burdock books, will teach you useable, creative exercises which make writing fun. Along the way, you'll find out how to use your own experiences, philosophies and personal quirks to create characters your readers will care about – and how to stimulate your imagination to transplant them into incredible adventures. With lashings of priceless feedback from Laura, you'll finish the weekend brimming with confidence as well as new ideas.

This course is for you if...

• You're new to children's writing and have a creative instinct, but don't know how to put your imagination to work
• You want to learn techniques to make writing less intimidating, and prevent writer's block
• You want to build up confidence in your story ideas

Course description

This highly practical weekend course teaches attendees how to write appealing, inventive children's fiction, mixing no-nonsense practical instruction with numerous writing exercises and extensive feedback, and including a number of proven techniques to help get the creative juices flowing. Topics covered include:

• Finding your writing voice
• Creating characters
• Developing the tone of a story
• Mind maps and memory: how your real life shapes your fiction
• Q&A with author Laura Dockrill

Tutor profile

Named one of the top ten literary talents by The Times and one of the top twenty hot faces to watch by Elle magazine, Laura Dockrill is a young, talented writer/illustrator who is a graduate of the Brits School of Performing Arts. She has performed her work at the Edinburgh Fringe, Camp Bestival, Latitude, Bookslam and the Soho Theatre, and on Woman's Hour, The Jo Whiley show, Newsnight, BBC Breakfast and each of the BBC's respective radio channels 1-6. She has been a roaming reporter for the Roald Dahl Funny Prize, run workshops at the Imagine children's literature festival on the South Bank, and is on the advisory panel at the Ministry of Stories.

Full course and returns information on the Masterclasses website