WRITING SALON: Forbidden Rooms

The Writing Salon is unlike any other event for writers.  It seeks to draw inspiration from unlikely places as it dissects genre and narrative, explores fiction and non-fiction, and dives into all forms of storytelling.  Through a mixture of video, audio, theory, practical exercises, interviews with guests, and a very social and engaged membership it will make you feel energised about your writing. Everyone is welcome, as well as all writing genres and formats. Some members have no previous writing experience – others write regularly for stage, page and screen.  Whatever your level, you’ll get a warm welcome.

At the end of a corridor. Beneath the staircase. Behind a curtain. Hidden inside the house is a room nobody talks about. A place nobody enters. A locked space carrying the weight of secrecy, memory, fear, or desire. And the moment fiction tells us this, we want to open it. For the next edition of The Writing Salon, we will explore the strange and enduring power of forbidden spaces in storytelling. From Gothic castles and hidden chambers to impossible hallways, private clubs, bunkers, secret archives, luxury lounges, and digital rabbit holes, we will examine why stories remain obsessed with inaccessible places and what these spaces reveal about the societies and characters surrounding them.

Because forbidden rooms are never really about architecture. They are about access and exclusion. The session will explore how writers can use setting more psychologically in their own work. Too often, setting becomes passive backdrop. Yet the greatest writers understand that rooms can behave emotionally. Architecture can generate dread, tension, hierarchy, memory, seduction, or transformation long before a character speaks a single line of dialogue.

As ever, there will be a practical section, so grab your pencil cases, and we’ll see you there.

The session starts at 7pm but please feel free to book a table at the Club from 6pm to enjoy a bite to eat, or arrive a little early in order grab a drink before we begin (you can also book a table for 9pm to have your supper afterwards!)

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