Your Creative Writing Masterclass

Jurgen Wolff is an American author who teaches at workshops around the world, and here he analyses and interprets the lessons that can be learned from more than one hundred authors – from Charles Dickens and Jane Austen, to Patricia Highsmith and Rose Tremain.

We are often told that the way to learn to write is to read and to note the ways in which great authors have worked. That is doubtless true, but to benefit from your reading you need to know what to look for.

This is where Jurgen Wolff comes in. In commenting on Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, for example, he explains how her specificity in detail helps her characterisation. And in discussing Great Expectations he shows how Dickens creates powerful writing because he keeps his emotions in check.

These are lesons that you may not have picked up on an unguided read, but with Mr Wolff’s help, your reading can become truly productive.