It wasn’t until the third day of my two-week fellowship at the KSP Writers’ Centre that I began to fully appreciate what a wonderful opportunity this was. Magpies chortled in the background as the sun rose behind us, revealing the soaked cityscape in the distance. I sat in the comfy armchair of the Clarke cabin eating a bowl of steaming porridge and reading Julia Cameron’s The Vein of Gold. The external world, also known as “real life”™, had finally slipped away. As I read, a passage triggered a childhood memory. A moment later, I scrambled for my writing journal, inspired to write what became ‘Lunch on the Farm’, the first of two memoir vignettes I spontaneously wrote during my fellowship.

While my entire stay was wonderful, it’s these inspired moments that stand out. Katharine’s benevolent spirit, it seems, still lingers at the centre, inspiring residents to write what is important to them. 

I had applied for my fellowship with the intention of rewriting Part II of my novel-in-progress, ‘The Rebels’, an epic fantasy-fiction story, which also forms part of my PhD in creative writing. During my stay, I revised a considerable chunk of these nine chapters. Part of me wishes I had completed the lot, but I didn’t. And this is a very good outcome. Let me explain why.

In Aesop’s The Tortoise and the Hare, the arrogant Hare rushes off without much thought and quickly becomes distracted by so many things that he forgets about the race until it’s too late. Meanwhile, the Tortoise takes a slow and measured approach and wins. Despite living thousands of years before us, Aesop understood modern life: we are always hurrying to get somewhere without stopping to enjoy the journey.

Caught in self- and university-imposed deadlines for the past three years, I have been the Hare, flitting from one end of my novel to the other without spending enough time in any chapter to fully inhabit each scene. I have been so preoccupied with finishing the project and writing to specific word counts, that I didn’t even acknowledge that several scenes were no longer what I had intended to write.

The infamous moral of Aesop’s tale is that “slow and steady wins the race.”

What writing ‘The Rebels’ needed was the Tortoise’s approach: to slow down, take in every sensory detail, then evoke them so that the reader could inhabit each scene as if they existed within it. And that, is the purpose of good storytelling. To paraphrase author and teacher Barbara Turner-Vesselago, if we hurry to get to the point of the novel, “that point won’t seem worth getting to if we haven’t really participated in the journey along the way” (Writing Without a Parachute: The Art of Freefall, 2014, pp. 42-43).

The time and space of my fellowship allowed me to take this approach, returning to what I had intended to write and, with flashes of inspiration, produce much more vivid material.

Any writer who is genuine about their craft knows how beneficial long periods of uninterrupted time are for producing evocative work. Whether it’s the idea for a new project or a fresh perspective on an existing one, you need that dedicated time and space to allow the story to evolve organically.

So, if, like me, you have become trapped in the Hare routine that is modern life, I recommend applying for a KSP fellowship. You might just find yourself curled up in the armchair with a steaming bowl of porridge and a good book on a cold morning. And, as the external world slips away, you might have that magic moment of inspiration that changes your story for the better.

A. R. Levett
23 July 2017

Please be advised that bookings for A. R. Levett's Mapping Your Novel course are now closed since all the places have been filled. If you wanted to attend but haven't booked yet, you can still reserve a place on the waiting list in case someone pulls out of the course at the last minute. To do so, please email A. R. Levett. Please be advised that the course is now being run monthly from September instead of weekly. Full details via email.

Thank you to those who booked early and made suggestions to change it to a more manageable monthly venture. A. R. Levett looks forward to meeting you and helping you work towards completing your novel.

Did you know that A. R. Levett’s writing course, Mapping Your Novel, contains 30 hours of content? Did you also know that the course usually costs $900 per person? For a limited time, Western Australian Writers’ United (WAWU) members (that’s KSP, FAWWA, PCWC, and OOTA members) can attend the workshop for only $400. That’s right, for less than half price! And the general public can attend for only $500. Most other authors charge more than that for a single workshop! With Mapping Your Novel, you get ten workshops! Don’t miss this rare opportunity to learn the skills you need push your novel towards competition and pay next to nothing for it.

Split into ten weeks’ worth of three hour workshops, the Mapping Your Novel course helps writers take their existing stories and ideas through the process of redeveloping the premise, intensifying the conflict, expanding the characters, finding a potent theme, enriching the story world, implementing rich symbols, strengthening the plot, applying the hero’s journey, and improving your ability to write engaging scenes and dialogue. Each workshop contains detailed slides and handouts as well as multiple writing exercises to help you develop your novel further.

At such a low price, you would be crazy to pass up this great opportunity.

For full course details, please see the Mapping Your Novel webpage and the flyer below.

To book, please visit the bookings page.

Please note, bookings close 18 August 2017.

If you have any enqueries, please email A. R. Levett.

Conflict is at the root of all good storytelling. From Homer’s epics and ancient myths, to classic literature and modern tales, all stories contain this essential element of a protagonist’s struggle to overcome an obstacle on their path to reaching a goal, demonstrate their capabilities, prove an important point, and grow in some way. Whether it’s an epic battle scene, a lover’s tiff, or a difference of values, conflict drives every story forward from beginning to end. Without compelling struggles that hurt or push your protagonist in some way, your story will fall flat. To ensure that your conflict is compelling and that it drives your character’s growth in a believable way, we must look at what the protagonist wants, how that puts them into conflict with other characters, and how this can change them and their world.

During Generating Compelling Conflict, the second workshop of the Mapping Your Novel course, we learn how to create struggles that will not only keep readers hooked, but also lay the foundation for the protagonist’s growth. We create compelling conflict in your story by developing the protagonist’s weaknesses, needs, and ultimate desire, fleshing out the struggle between the protagonist and an opponent, building this conflict towards a final struggle, determining the protagonist’s final self-revelation, and producing a new equilibrium at the story’s end. Doing so allows us to expand our understanding of our novel and begin to see it emerge from a concept into a story.

This workshop, Creating Compelling Conflict, is key to helping us give our stories the narrative drive it needs to not only keep readers hooked, but also accommodate and understand the characters, theme, world, symbols, and plot we develop in the following weeks of the course.

For full course details, please see the Mapping Your Novel webpage and the attached flyer.

To book, please visit the bookings page.

Please see the attached flyer for more information.

Please note, bookings close 18 August 2017.