Steve Bowkett

Steve Bowkett Workshops

New for 2007:

Visualisation – A well-known author was once asked ‘What three pieces of advice would you give to become a better writer?’ The reply was ‘Visualise, visualise, visualise!’ Visualisation is the skill of noticing one’s own thoughts in detail and being able increasingly to manipulate those images to extract the maximum information. This workshop will teach you the fascinating skill of metacognition or ‘thinking about the thinking you do.’

20 (more) Ideas to Boost Your Writing – You may know Steve’s book ‘50 Ideas to Boost Your writing’. Here are twenty more that you can add to your armory of tips, techniques and activities when developing your authorial abilities.

Countdown to a Story – This workshop presents a checklist of prompts, reminders, tips and resources for ensuring that as an author you have ‘prepared the ground’ so that when you launch into your novel the ideas you have when composing the work will grow successfully and flourish.

Haiku and ‘Myku’, but not Sudoku! – This is a course for writers new to that delicate but powerful and profound poetical form, the haiku. Originating in Japan, it is regarded by many to have reached its peak with the work of Matsuo Basho (1644-94). In this workshop we will explore the subtleties and beauty of the haiku, and create our own as we raise awareness of our ability to ‘think poetically’.

Writer’s Block and How to Beat It – What is commonly (but not helpfully) called writer’s block is most often not a failure of ability but rather failures of imagination and nerve. In this work you will learn how to blow writer’s block out of the water and tap into your creative flow while developing greater self-confidence and self-assurance into your working methods. Note that Steve has published a number of books in the area of developing emotional resourcefulness.

Writing for Children – To date Steve has published fifteen novels and dozens of short stories and poems for children from five-year-olds to teens. In this workshop you will be given some tips that he has found useful. Note that this course is based on Steve’s book ‘The Handy Little Book of Writing for Children’ to be published by NAWG in 2008 (www.nawg.co.uk).

The Hero’s Quest: exploring the deep structure of narrative – They say that there are only seven basic plots in the world. Whether that’s true or not, you will certainly find the same basic structural elements at the heart of every powerful story. This workshop explores these elements, showing how to build them into your own work while using the insights they bring to develop your own ‘inner resources’ as a writer.

Coaching Writing – This workshop is based on an idea developed by Steve and a colleague, Simon Percival, who is a qualified and practising life-coach. Using similar techniques to those found in ‘The Story Oracle’ (see below), Coaching Writing will give you the tools and strategies to self-coach your way to solutions to many of the problems that authors face.

The Story Oracle – This workshop combines developing your creative powers with techniques for building plots and characters, plus learning about the structure of narrative from basic ‘building blocks’ to sentence-level details.

Storytelling – Performing one’s work can be a powerful experience for both the author and the audience. In this workshop you will learn how to prepare a story for telling and learn some basic techniques of delivery.

Mysteries – The ‘mystery’ technique is a learning game where you are presented with pieces of information that can be put together to make a story with several solutions. As you work alone or in a group to piece together the plot, you will be developing your plotting and editing skills. You might very probably also come away with some ideas for your next novel!

What If? - Enjoy a menu of creative writing games designed to enhance your authorial skills. Can be used individually or in a group setting; with adults or children.

It`s Behind You! The Gentle Art of Writing Horror Fiction - The Horror genre is a rich and diverse territory for writers. This workshop will help you find your way around and focus in on possible areas to develop.

To Boldly Go...Writing Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror - These three genres have much in common. This workshop looks at the links and diversity within genre fiction, and offers directions for developing your skills in this area.

Creating Convincing Characters - Learn how to generate and develop in-depth characters and `thumbnails`, and how exploring characters opens a doorway into plot development.

The Eternal Threads - Themes, Conventions & Motifs in Fiction - One way of developing plots is to take a bottom-up, broad-based approach. This workshop demonstrates how storylines can be generated through looking at the `deep structure` of narrative.

A Sense Of Wonder - Using Self-Hypnosis to Boost Creativity - This workshop shows you how to exploit the natural gift we all have to enter the hypnotic state at will. Once there, you are in deeper contact with your creative subconscious mind and can enjoy greater control over the writing process. Steve is a qualified Hypnotherapist: he has several qualifications in this area and over eight years` practical experience.

These workshops are aimed at adult audiences, although some can be adapted for use with children. I can tailor the workshops to fit different time-slots, from modules that last an hour or two through to day-courses or longer. I am also happy to combine elements of different courses to suit your particular requirements. All of these workshops can run with a group of any size. I also offer INSET trainings for teachers on Literacy, developing Creative Thinking, and Boosting Self-Esteem and Confidence in children. Please feel free to contact Steve about these, or any other aspects of his workIf you want more information please contact me at

steve@sbowkett.freeserve.co.uk

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