A Writing Course with Paul Kerensa by Annmarie Miles

 

After hearing Paul Kerensa at the  ACW Zoom event in October, I decided to sign up for his six-week online course. Paul has such an engaging and generous nature; it really was a joy to listen to him each week. There over twenty of us at the opening session. Paul invited us to introduce ourselves and he gave an overview of what the course would entail. He was very interested to hear what the participants wanted to get out of the course and was happy to tailor it as the weeks went by.

Session 2 was about Character & Relationships – finding a character’s funny and/or testing their limits. Then using the connection between different characters to bring those traits out. There was also a discussion about characters in non-fiction. I’m writing memoir but had not thought of myself as a ‘character’ in the story. That’s going to be so helpful as I continue editing.

Sessions 3 and 4 were about Story Structure – we spent these two sessions discussing the various different versions of the story arc. I had no idea there were so many! We spent some time looking at The Hero’s Journey, then Paul took us through his own version of the story arc, based on the 12 months of the year. He also encouraged us to look at our stories like a three-legged stool. Character/Story/Genre. If one leg of the stool is not working, the writing will be wobbly.

The reader should always know which character is talking (and not just from speech tags)

The story should always be moving forward

The genre should always be clear (as in historical/romance/crime)

Session 5 was about Comedy & Genre. I didn’t think you could be taught funny. I thought you either were funny or not. What do I know?! 😊 We discussed some classic on-screen comedy moments and thought about how to take a normal setting and bring the funny into it. Our homework in prep for this session had been to watch S.1 Ep.1 of The Detectorists and then we spent some time looking at the script itself. That was such a good exercise. When it came to genre Paul took us through Christopher Booker’s “Seven Stories”, and The Ten Genres from a book called ‘Save the Cat.’ Again, such a range of ways of looking at what and how we write. It was fascinating. 

I even got to sit beside him :D

 Session 6 was Industry/Pitching. A number of the participants were screenwriters and podcasters. We looked at a number of layouts for pitching scripts; a beat-sheet, an outline, a treatment etc. Paul also discussed magazine article submissions and submitting longer prose to publishers. He was very encouraging to those who can only hope for such things…

We then had a seventh session for chat and to catch any questions we hadn’t got to at the time. After each session, Paul sent a PDF with bullet points of what we’d discussed. There is also a Facebook group which is still active for the participants to keep in touch. It was well worth the cost and I have it on good authority that Paul will be hosting a similar course in January. I highly recommend it. 

Oh and make sure to check out his Christmas book. You can order signed copies directly from him. Go to his Facebook page to find out all about his books, the course and his Uplift Live sessions on Facebook. He's a great guy. 

 Annmarie Miles is from Dublin, Ireland.

She lives with her husband Richard who is a pastor in the Eastern Valley of Gwent, in South Wales. She writes short stories, magazine articles, devotional pieces for Christian radio, and blogs about her faith at www.auntyamo.com Her first collection of short stories published in 2013, is called 'The Long & The Short of it'. Her second collection, 'A Sense of the Sea and other stories,' was published in 2018 and in December 2019 she published her first novel, Gorse Lodge. She is currently editing a non-fiction book about being an overweight Christian called, 'Have mercy on me O Lord, a slimmer.'