A great end to 2016

Our final masterclass of 2016 took place on December 3rd with Alex Wheatle MBE, who challenged us to write outside our comfort zones and drew some strong, angry writing out of the five Megaphone participants. Alex recently won the Guardian Children’s Fiction prize for Crongton Knights, his second YA novel. With Patrice Lawrence recently shortlistedContinue reading “A great end to 2016”

Third masterclass: Patrice Lawrence

Yesterday we were really happy to welcome Patrice Lawrence, whose first YA novel, Orangeboy, has just been published by Hodder. Patrice delivered the third masterclass, a wide ranging session where we discussed trusting yourself to write, finding a structure and using the wealth of our own diverse backgrounds to develop characters. We also talked about theContinue reading “Third masterclass: Patrice Lawrence”

Second masterclass: hook, cake, hake.

We were really pleased to welcome Catherine Johnson (and her cake) to the Writing West Midlands’ meeting room for the second masterclass of Megaphone. Catherine focused on story: from your first chapter, can the reader tell what the story is about or  not? She brought us back again and again to the fact that aContinue reading “Second masterclass: hook, cake, hake.”

Megaphone first masterclass!

The first Megaphone masterclass took place on Saturday 02/04/2016 at Writing West Midlands’ meeting room in the Custard Factory, Digbeth, Birmingham (venue kindly provided as in-kind funding by Writing West Midlands). I didn’t notice the graffiti outside the window when I was taking this but it’s quite funny! We looked at book, story, plot pointsContinue reading “Megaphone first masterclass!”