Powerful scenes are what we remember from great books. Learn from this highly sought after novelist and playwright the techniques to make your work stand out.

Plays, screenplays, novels and short stories, however long and large their scope, are comprised of smaller units called scenes, which are the building blocks of all stories. Master the art of an effective scene and writing a complete novel is no longer an impossible task. Before you begin to think about the structure of a piece of writing, it is imperative to get the foundations right and this starts with scenes.

We will discuss dramatic writing techniques which can be employed to write brilliant scenes in all forms of literary and genre fiction. We will also work through a series of exercises which can be used to write brand new scenes, and applied to drafts of any existing pieces you might wish to workshop in this session. We will also discuss how to generate ideas for scenes within your overall plot, and how to connect them up in order to structure your novel, memoir or even a script.

Participants will gain an understanding of how to write an effective scene, and how writing in scenes, or smaller units, is a manageable way of writing longer pieces of fiction.

Participants will:

• Gain an understanding of the mechanisms that make scenes work
• Learn how to structure their own stories
• Learn dramatic writing techniques which can be applied to all forms of fiction for the page, screen or stage.
• Learn tricks and tools for enhancing scenes
• Develop fresh approaches for re-redrafting their own work
   

About Brooke Robinson

Brooke Robinson is an award-winning playwright turned novelist from Sydney. Her debut novel The Interpreter is published in June 2023 as a lead crime title with Harvill Secker/Vintage (Penguin Random House) in the UK and Commonwealth countries, where it was acquired in a six figure pre-empt as part of a two-book deal. Rights have also been sold in the US to HarperCollins and to publishers in Germany, Russia and Italy at auction. As a professional playwright, Brooke’s plays have been produced at Casula Powerhouse, Griffin Theatre, The Old Fitzroy Theatre and the Bondi Pavilion in Sydney, and at Vault festival and the prestigious Old Vic Theatre in London. She won the 2020 Lysicrates Prize for Drama and has taught creative writing at Westwords and City of Melbourne Libraries.

Members $88 / Non-members $140

This workshop will be delivered via Zoom. Instructions will be emailed to you, please check your spam/junk folders. A recording will be available to registered participants for two weeks after the event.

—Not yet a Writers SA member? Join here for as little as $60!

—Writers SA members must be logged in to receive the member discount. If you would like to use a workshop credit to book in, please contact [email protected] at least five working days before the workshop commencement date. Our staff don’t work full time and we don’t want you to miss out!

—If you are a member of another state based writers centre or a member of SCBWI SA, please contact [email protected] at least five working days before the program commencement date to get a code for the member price.