Skip to main content Skip to navigation

Writing Challenges

David Morley, Director of the Warwick Writing Programme, leads you through a series of creative writing challenges designed to help you develop your creativity and talent as a writer and reader.

Play, Pleasure and Games

11:06, Mon 3 Dec 2007

Introducing the Writing Challenges podcast and setting challenge number 1 - The Word Hoard. My Odeo Channel (odeo/47a3e11b60d61c7b) Podshow PDN {podshow-77fc408d91196dd73cc96103e5c946f6}

(MP3 format, 7.1 MB)

Download

Adventures in reading

11:06, Mon 3 Dec 2007

The relationship between reading and writing and how being an 'original' reader can help with creativity.

(MP3 format, 5.9 MB)

Download

The Character Called the Writer

11:06, Mon 3 Dec 2007

Finding your voice will stimulate your progress as a writer. This week's challenge focusses on your self and selves, helping you to get to know the dimensions of your voice.

(MP3 format, 6.1 MB)

Download

A Mental Switch

11:07, Mon 3 Dec 2007

How to get into the writing 'zone'. How do you translate the desire to write into the will to write?

(MP3 format, 6.0 MB)

Download

The Painless Headache

11:07, Mon 3 Dec 2007

The role of consciousness in writing and the creative process.

(MP3 format, 9.2 MB)

Download

Fieldwork for Writers

11:07, Mon 3 Dec 2007

Everything is quarry, everyone is material, and everywhere is fieldwork.

(MP3 format, 8.4 MB)

Download

Music, Movement and Brain-Blocking

11:07, Mon 3 Dec 2007

Mess with your brain to get the best writing out of it.

(MP3 format, 6.9 MB)

Download

The Campaign for Real Language

11:08, Mon 3 Dec 2007

Creative writing's capacity for the creation of illusion-as-truth can make it a dangerous tool.

(MP3 format, 5.3 MB)

Download

Shakespeare's Field Trip

11:08, Mon 3 Dec 2007

When we use words, we have to use the right words and the right words in the best order.

(MP3 format, 5.7 MB)

Download

Language's Magic

11:08, Mon 3 Dec 2007

Natural magic informs every function of our bodies, our life span and the way we perceive.

(MP3 format, 6.3 MB)

Download

The House of Fiction

13:20, Mon 28 Jan 2008

Should you be trying to achieve artistic truth in your fiction or writing the next commercial blockbuster?

(MP3 format, 7.5 MB)

Download

The Truth About Pride and Prejudice

11:31, Wed 6 Feb 2008

Form in fiction is a specific and conscious decision, but your final decision may take several drafts and unsuccessful trials before you find that which suits the material best.

(MP3 format, 5.9 MB)

Download

The Palettes for Fiction

12:17, Wed 20 Feb 2008

Although the marketplace for short stories is difficult, many new writers choose to begin with writing them, almost as a right of passage, a place for honing language, testing their narrative nerve over a shortish distance, and organising a palette.

(MP3 format, 5.6 MB)

Download

Dreaming a Fictional Continuum

10:16, Tue 26 Feb 2008

So, after all, it was a dream... A fiction writer depends on the dream or fantasy of scenes that are true to life or, at least, carry verisimilitude however fantastic the setting or story.

(MP3 format, 7.6 MB)

Download

Character is Story

11:32, Mon 10 Mar 2008

Character is the heart and mind of your story - it is what makes it live.

(MP3 format, 7.5 MB)

Download

Points of view in fiction

10:05, Thu 24 Apr 2008

Where do you, the writer, stand in relation to your characters and readers?

(MP3 format, 6.7 MB)

Download

Beginning at the Beginning

10:06, Thu 24 Apr 2008

How do I begin?

(MP3 format, 6.1 MB)

Download

Conflict and Crisis

10:07, Thu 24 Apr 2008

When reading novels as a writer, you will immediately notice the importance of conflict as the engine of fiction.

(MP3 format, 3.7 MB)

Download

Murdering your darlings

10:08, Thu 24 Apr 2008

All writing is rewriting. With fiction the best test is to read your story aloud, and read it to somebody.

(MP3 format, 6.3 MB)

Download