This is a four-hour seminar, split over two days in one week, to explore the techniques of nature writing. It builds on a previous, similar nature-writing course (on 6th & 13th March), but each 2-part session is entirely free-standing and independent. In these current sessions we will pay special attention to another of the essential parts of all good writing.
Nature is full of stories but how do you choose what to focus upon? How do you order the material to make it engaging, understandable and full of impact. The sessions will look very carefully at fixing your subject and setting the scene. It will look at how the writer creates a relationship with their reader and with their subject matter. Finally it will consider how you choose words to create the deepest emotional connection between those two parts.
This may be an exercise on nature writing, but it has relevance across the genres. All writers draw upon the landscape and the wider environment to create an atmosphere, to illuminate character and to move the narrative along. The class may be online but the aim will be being indoors as much of the outdoors as possible.
Instructor: Mark Cocker is a multi-award winning author and naturalist, whose 12 books include Crow Country, Our Place and Claxton. Over the last four decades he has also published more than 1000 essays on nature in national and international newspapers especially the Guardian.