Let's get you started…
Finding inspiration can come from your immediate surroundings and people in your life. Begin with 5-minute bursts of writing each day. Pick a room in your house and describe it. You might be drawn to an object in the room. Can you describe it in detail?
Everyone loves a story, especially their own. So why waste time scrolling on social media, which does nothing for your well-being. Take yourself out of that false reality and dive into your imagination and write something, anything!
Writing for wellbeing doesn’t have to be focused on emotions and documenting your feelings. Sometimes it’s okay to have fun and explore a fictional setting with made-up characters. Even better if your characters are those who have triggered you in life. Could you write them as a villain or if you are in a forgiving mood, a hero?
Helen Shipman, writer and tutor to many international prize-winning authors, feels the best way to find inspiration is to look right in front of you. While phones can be our biggest setback you could use Pinterest, for example, to find an idea or interesting quote to begin writing. An old photograph hanging on the wall might give you a story idea.
In Helen’s Beginner Fiction course, which opens online this July, her podcast and step-by-step tutoring will give you access to an abundance of writing material. When it comes to finding an idea, her advice is to…
“Challenge yourself – pick the one prompt that you’re least interested in – you might be surprised where it takes you.”
- Change
- A good woman
- The biggest lie of all
- Blue
Finding a character to write about could be the best part of this course because that’s the greatest job of a writer – to create memorable characters. Who has been the most interesting or most boring person you’ve ever met? Can you write about them for 5 minutes, describe their appearance, make them speak (not what they say but how they say it), and reveal their innermost thoughts and opinions that they wouldn’t dare say out loud. Have fun with it because they will never know!
Let’s keep you going…
As a follow-up to the Beginner Fiction course is Helen Shipman’s next level up – Fiction 2, which opens online in the same format this August. The 4-week courses contain 30 years of Helen’s writing experience compiled into a compact easy-to-follow short course format. The perfect place for those who have never written a story and for those lost to writer’s block.
Learn how to write atmosphere and setting into a story and maybe even bring that character to life from the first course.
Helen says…“Setting can play a vital part in the drama of a story. Think about the tension of a prison setting, the suspense of hospital environments where matters of life and death unfold, adventure stories where suspense depends on the outcome of characters pitting themselves against mountains, or storms at sea, or even a giant shark…”
The WriteWell fiction courses will finally help you with Plot. To guide you to structure your story and see how the chain of events is connected and how one thing leads to another. These four corners of fiction are covered over 8 weeks in a self-help, no writing to deadlines online course, to take at your own pace. What could be a better way to spend your summer than to start and continue your fiction writing journey…
Join WriteWell today and enjoy a two-week free trial. Are you a current member? Take the courses for free and at your own leisure!
