Aspects of the Queer Novel |10 Part Course | Limited 15 Places | £275

Zoom Workshop dates

Starts Wed 13th September 7pm-9pm

then every two weeks at same time 

27th September

11th October

25th October

8th November

22nd November

6th December

20th December

3rd January

17th January

Slack

Slack is a great online platform for keeping in touch between zoom sessions and a place to upload your work and share links. You will be invited to the Slack area at the start of the course.

About the Course - from Michael Langan

With its title amended from E.M. Forster’s book, Aspects of the Novel takes a focused, playful approach to exploring prose writing elements such as dialogue, description, characterisation, world-building, narrative structure, plotting & planning, and employs different techniques and ideas to generate new work, develop ideas and reinvigorate our creative practice.

Attendee numbers limited to 15 max.

• Readings of LGBTQIA+ material provided the session before as prompts for discussion and creative stimulus, both about general elements of technique, but also including larger questions regarding the novel as a form and the queer novel as a genre.
• Each workshop contains 2 or 3 writing exercises on the chosen aspect of fiction for that session – e.g. creation of character profiles, the use of the senses in descriptive prose, exercises in effective dialogue writing, explorations of a variety of points of view, structural experimentation, plotting and planning.
• Sharing and oral feedback of written work produced during the workshops. As with Writing the Novel, I would provide each participant with 1-2 paragraphs of written feedback at the end of the course on the work submitted to the group.

Who the course is for - words from Michael Langan 

I envisage the series of workshops as being appropriate for beginning & emerging novel/novella writers, some of whom may be just beginning to sketch out ideas/a plan to those who already have a first draft.

The workshops involve ‘progression’ in creative pratice but would also be pitched as appropriate to those who completed the previous Writing the Novel course because the material and workshop content supplements and develops the experience of prior workshops – there would be no repetition but there would be enhancement.

In this way it could be described as a series of ‘open-ended’ workshops in that the writing of a novel is a long-term endeavour/creative practice and any course never ‘finishes’ in that sense but is simply part of one’s on-going development as a writer.

Minimum Course Numbers 2023/4

To keep Out on the Page sustainable whilst allowing for experimentation and diversity in the range of activities we offer, we are setting minimum course numbers for our paid activities to go ahead. The minimum attendee number for this course to ahead is 5. If for some reason, this is not reached by 7 days before the course, we will cancel the activity and refund anyone who has bought tickets within two weeks.

After the Course 

Attendees also get free access to our online LGBTQ+ Writer Network Community for 2023/4. This is a safe and managed space on our own Slack platform and it's easy to use.

There is an option to pay in two instalments before the course starts. Please email contact@outonthepage.co.uk if you would like to find out more about this option. 

Partial Bursaries for writers who would otherwise be unable to attend are available for this workshop. To enquire about a bursary please email Paul, his email address is contact@outonthepage.co.uk

About Michael Langan

Michael Langan works as a freelance editor, mentor, and writing workshop facilitator. He was a founding member of the Liverpool writing collective Queer Scribes, Arts Editor of Polari Magazine, and a Contributing Editor of Paris-based Seymour Magazine. He has a PhD in Creative Writing from Liverpool John Moores University and taught at the University of Greenwich for 10 years. In 2019 his debut novel, Shadow is a Colour as Light is, was published by LUME Books and he is currently working on his next. Each June (Pride month) Michael teams up with The Literary Consultancy to offer free feedback to LGBTQ+ writers as part of their LGBTQ+ Free Reads Scheme. Michael lives in Lisbon with his husband, the artist Henrique Neves.