WRITING SALON: What happens offstage

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.

The Writing Salon returns in September with a session about the parts of stories we do not see. A murder takes place before the curtain rises. A relationship ends between chapters. A character walks into a room carrying the emotional weight of something that happened elsewhere. The audience never witnesses the event itself, but they feel its pressure everywhere.

This month we will explore what happens offstage, off-page and beyond the frame. We will look at how writers use absence, aftermath, implication, sound and silence to make an unseen event more powerful than a visible one. Greek tragedy placed violence beyond the audience’s view and brought it back through testimony. Shakespeare built entire plays around crimes that had already happened. Contemporary film often uses the edge of the frame to make us imagine what cannot be shown. Novelists leave crucial events in the gaps between chapters, forcing the reader to reconstruct what changed.

The question is not simply what a story leaves out. It is what remains. A moved chair. A wet coat. A name nobody will say. A character behaving differently. A sound from another room. The unseen event must leave evidence.

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 5pm to take advantage of the pre-theatre menu. You can also book a table for 9pm to have your supper afterwards!

You can sign up for the Writing Salon newsletter here

Writing Salon on Instagram – Writing Salon on Twitter – Private Facebook group