Fake News or True Stories?

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Fake News or True Stories? Blurring the Lines Between Fact and Fiction 

A Creative Writing Workshop by Alison Taft, who writes:

Ideas are everywhere, but how does an idea become a story? Thanks to funding from The Arts Council, I got the opportunity to develop a workshop on this very theme, which took place at this year’s Headingley LitFest. We looked at real life stories from the newspapers and then asked the question all fiction-writers ask:

‘What if?’

 The questions ranged from the deep, to the sublime. ‘What if history could be written as an equation? What if the pope was converted to Judaism by his Jewish counsellor? What if a bomb went off? What if she wanted revenge?

Juxtaposition

Once you have a compelling question to answer, you have a story. We looked at how to fictionalise further by setting the ideas in different periods, locations and cultures.

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I came away, as I always do from working with other writers, uplifted and inspired. Thanks to everyone who came.

Comments from the people who came:

·      The best I’ve attended!

·      Amazing, Inspiring and fascinating! So good to meet other people who think like me. Really enjoyable – learned a lot as new to writing. Can’t wait to get writing.

·      Excellent, inspiring and highly innovative. Provided many good ideas. Overall refreshingly creative. The atmosphere was pleasant

·      Well-conducted workshop. Learned from it

·      A welcoming workshop for all levels and full of good ideas to take away. Thank you

·      Good session, very packed. No time wasted. Good way to link unrelated ideas.

·      Great! A positive and interactive workshop that gave me lots of information and inspiration.

·      Thought provoking. Good pointers for a person new to creative writing. Met some interesting people. Leader was excellent

·      A fascinating workshop on the connection between truth and fiction

·      The group was big (19) and there were pluses and minuses to this – it left less time for writing but some people’s views were interesting in regard to the writing process

·      Very good. Alison is so entertaining. Would attend one of her workshops again

·      Excellent workshop – could have been 30 minutes longer

·      Lively with some useful insights. Very inclusive, in spite of large numbers

·      Excellent short workshop looking at creative writing from an interesting perspective. Very useful insight into novel writing

·      Excellent – well organised and plenty of creative suggestions

·      This workshop was as interesting and inspiring as I had expected, having attended Alison’s creative writing group previously. We had to work hard and I learned a lot. Great!

·      Great workshop. I’ve always enjoyed everything I’ve attended that Alison leads. She’s an inspiration as a writer and teacher. Being a creative writing teacher myself, it’s great to be a student for a change!