On the First Twenty Minutes of the First Creative Writing Workshop

of the First Term

There is something very delicate about the first time a workshop group is gathered in the same room together.

If even a single one of them is unable to make the first class, then The Group as such isn’t really there.

The term will start off with a sense of imbalance.

The Group only gets to see what kind of beast it will be when complete.

But if all the student writers are present, something remarkable happens.

You have a gathering of ten or twelve people who, within a year, will know one another more intimately than they know most of their family and friends.

Some of them, fingers crossed, will become lifelong writing buddies.

Some of them might even fall in love and have children together. (Or not fall in love, and still have children together.)

For this reason, because all of this intimacy is inevitably ahead, I tend not to do Getting to Know One Another exercises.

Those exercises seem likely to rush the student writers past important moments of subtle misunderstanding and recognition.

I want the kinships and connections to come through their writing, rather than bland and surfacy answers.

Usually, I will begin the first workshop by speaking for five minutes, to give everyone (including me) the chance to calm down. They’ve negotiated the confusing new building, phew. They’ve found the room, thank goodness. They’ve walked into a proper university classroom, perhaps for the first time, perhaps for the first time in years. Yikes.

I won’t expect them to take in much of what I’m saying — and I will make sure that I repeat most of it over the next couple of weeks.

I am speaking so they don’t have to — so everyone can settle in.

I’ll probably say something about us making the most of the time we’ll have together. We’re lucky to have it.

I do have a couple of first workshop exercises I’ve picked up from working with theatre and film people. Mostly, these require clearing away the tables and chairs.

Some involve throwing round a soft, catchable object, and shouting out nonsense words.

One involves everyone grabbing the hands of two other people and forming a huge knot, which the group then tries to untangle like a huge, deranged game of Oranges and Lemons.

There are books and books of this stuff. But it’s most suitable for physically able, confident and expressive types.

Rob Ritchie, who taught me Screenwriting at the University of East Anglia, used to get the whole group standing in an empty space.

Then he drew an imaginary line down the middle of the room. To the right was Yes and to the left was No.

He went and stood at the end of the line.

He then asked us a few questions.

Have you taken a creative writing class before?

Have you ever done any acting?

Would you like to ask everyone a question?

He would then hand over to one of the students, to ask the next thing — until we’d all asked something.

Of course, everyone reveals themselves in what they are curious about, more than in the answers they give.

I remember I asked, ‘Do you believe in ghosts?’

Rob Ritchie’s straw poll exercise worked brilliantly, but was quite an infodump.

As I said, I tend to start more gently, less physically, with us going round the workshop group and everyone saying their name, their pronouns, and then giving the title of the last book they really enjoyed, and saying what they liked most.

I’ll go first.

For every student writer, I’ll ask a follow up question, to give them the chance to say a little more, to express their nervousness, to get a laugh.

While this is happening, I will draw a sketch-map of the classroom and write each student’s name in turn, next to where they’re sitting, plus their chosen book and a couple of adjectives they’ve used. This will help me learn who each of them is. (I’ll refer to it before the next workshop.)

I may then go backwards around the circle (if possible, we’ll be sitting facing one another), asking what everyone hopes to get out of the workshop.

At this point, I am already hoping to break up the rhythm of Q&A. If I can start to get the group asking one another gentle questions, then that’s great.

All of this should have taken around fifteen minutes. Longer is also fine.

I’ll then talk briefly about us now being in the Draft Zero room, before we go into our first writing exercise.

Whatever this is, I will likely put the class into groups of three.

Being one of three means that no-one feels they suddenly have to stand up and declare themselves, or show their best.

In a three, you can hide.

Sometimes I ask the groups to come up with a written list of three things a story has to have, or a dictionary definition of plot.

They will do this with pens on rough paper, not in precious notebooks or on laptops. It’s scrappy and shared and disposable/recyclable.

As they discuss what answer they are going to give, I will sit back and go through each of their names again — trying to make up a silly rhyme or mnemonic.

By the end of the first workshop, I aim to know what everyone is called.

I will also look closely at how everyone is interacting. Who is speaking most? Who is talking loudest? Is someone not participating at all?

And that’s it.

We have made a gentle start.