Writers At Play
Writers at Play
We get it. It’s hard to leave the house. But what if sitting alone at home is the barrier between you and great writing?
Eight sessions of play-based activities for writers, storytellers and people who think in stories.
Low cost. Low key environment. High quality impact.
What It Is
A room full of writers. No laptops. No formulas. No polishing. Just pens moving, people on their feet, stories appearing in the room.
Writers at Play is a monthly creative gathering at WonderPlay Studio. Each evening centres on a session theme and a series of playful exercises designed to generate ideas fast.
You will write things you did not know you had in you. You will meet people who get you.
Who It’s For
Writers at every stage.
Novelists. Playwrights. Screenwriters. Poets. Songwriters. People who have never written but know they should.
You do not need to be published. You need curiosity.
What Happens on the Night
Arrival: movement and creative prompts to get the room alive, session theme introduced and the evening begins. Playful exercises generating characters, dialogue, scenes, ideas. Small group conversations building on what emerged. Optional lightning share: readings of work created during the night. Story Seeds: you leave with something to develop
Sometimes a guest writer or storyteller drops in unannounced. Sometimes the room is everything you need. Everything handwritten. Everything experimental. Everything beginning with play.
The Eight Sessions
Monday April 20 — Get Into Character
Character is physical before it is psychological. We inhabit people before we write them. Movement games and embodiment exercises unlock characters that planning never could.
Monday May 18 — Say Everything Except That
The gap between what a character says and what they mean is where drama lives. Constraint games force subtext. Subtext creates tension. Tension creates story.
Comedy is structure, not personality. You either are or aren’t funny; until you play with the wrong answer first. From the most inappropriate, absurd response, something true always appears.
Worlds are built in specific detail, not general description. We build from the ground, one smell, one texture, one sound, rather than from concept and backstory. One true detail does more than a page of world-building notes.
Monday August 17 — Steal From Your Own Life
Real experience is the most powerful material a writer has and the hardest to use. We give our true stories to characters who are not us. Distance creates permission. Permission creates truth.
Monday September 21 — Nobody Leaves
Two characters. Incompatible needs. Neither allowed to leave or back down. We stay in the discomfort until something breaks. Conflict is not argument, it is two legitimate needs that cannot both be satisfied.
Monday October 19 — One True Moment
Big ideas live inside small specific moments. We begin with a single concrete image, not a theme, not a concept and find the story living inside it. The universal is only accessible through the particular.
The year closes with a witness session. Each writer brings one page, the best thing they made across the nine months. It gets read aloud. The room responds not with critique but with the specific moment that landed. Writing is a transaction between a writer and an audience. You cannot know what you’ve made until someone else receives it.
Bring: A notebook. A pen. An open mind. Leave the laptop at home.
At: WonderPlay Studio Level 2, 101-111 William St, Darlinghurst 2010 wondiverse.com.au
Time: 6:30pm – 8:30pm Cost – $22 per session. $150 for all nine.
Book via links on dates above.
