THE ART OF story-telling
INVESTIGATIVE STORY-TELLING (TV and JOURNALISM)
This course looks at writing, focus and story structure so that you can turn your investigation into a great tale that will grip people:
>What are the key building blocks of a great story (characters, plot, conflict, accountability)
>How to have characters grow and change on a journey
>Why you need the “4 Cs” from every major person in your story: Character, Context, Conflict and Conclusion
>The secrets of a narrative-driven story structure
My Story, My Way:
How to Write the Story You Always Wanted to Tell
(A Quebec Writers Federation workshop, July 2025)
This was a class over four weeks aimed at non-professionals - people who are not journalists or writers. We tell stories all the time—about our lives, our families, an exciting adventure or a difficult moment in our lives. But how do you transform those spoken words into written words that you can share in a journal for your family, a personal book, or an article in your local newspaper? This easy-going workshop takes you through the steps of finding a character’s path and their journey, how to build that into a narrative arc, and how to write for all five senses.
WRITING HISTORICAL NON-FICTION BOOKS
(A Quebec Writers Federation workshop, November 12, 2023
Writing original and entertaining non-fiction is hard enough.But when you set about writing historical non-fiction about true events and real characters that happened many years, decades or even centuries ago, your challenges only increase. You cannot interview your main characters, they are long dead. Archives may be hard to access or expensive. How do you bring to life your locations and scenes and make them accessible and understandable to the modern-day reader?