Short Story Workshop

Introduction

The short story is a literary art of less than 10,000 words. It contains a few characters and basic elements such as time, place, geographical location, weather, date, the social status of the characters, and the mood or environment in which the story takes place.

The short story workshop (SSW) is dedicated to the art of writing a story, the mechanism of writing it, and training talented young people to compose a complete story with good plot and logical sequence of events through the development of basic skills:

Plot Skill:

Training on the skill of sequencing events in the story until reaching the denouement, or the theme presented in the story, or the turning point. This element is essential for building the plot, as without it, there is no plot in the story because it links the events together.

The SSW puts talented young people on the right track and qualifies them to write a story with good technique and sound language in an ambiance of creative ideas.

Research and Investigation Skill:

The Dubai International Program for Writing (DIPW) is concerned with motivating talented writers to use imagination in building a sequential story that is meaningful and conveys a message to readers, using sentences, paragraphs, or words that have actual indications of each meaning, either directly, or symbolically without excessive ambiguity, to urge readers to continue the story to know its conclusion.

The SSW encourages the use of databases or search engines to find out true information or to accurately add an idea to the story and transform it from a mere scientific part into a literary art.

Intensified Details:

The SSW focuses on building fine details because it is based on concise and intensive writing because the short story is not suitable for lengthening or excessive description. The workshop trainer pays more attention to a sharp writing style, without redundancy, boring repetition, or neglecting the key aspects of describing places, people, or events in a way that includes all aspects of the theme and explains it directly.

Community Objectives:

The SSW aims to:

• Qualify a generation of talented young people to write correctly
• Train young people to intensify ideas and information
• Savor the beauty of concise narrative
• Revive this main form of literary writing

Training Objectives:

• Learn the skills of building narrative texts and enjoying literary imagination
• Expand interest in the art of the story and related domains
• Train SSW participants in intensive writing
• Develop ideas and benefit from knowledge
• Find new lingual relationships and innovative images

Training Mechanism:

• Announcing the organization of a training workshop to teach writing short stories
• Written forms are sent to the DIPW administration
• The written forms are forwarded to the SSW trainer to select the talented pieces
• Training sessions start onsite or online
• The trainer supervises each story written by the participants during the SSW
• The trainer works on a collection of stories for each participant
• The collections of stories produced during the SSW are prepared for publication

Workshop Duration:

• The duration of the workshop ranges from 3 to 4 months, usually with a week monthly onsite and the rest of the month online
• Training ranges from 3 to 4 hours a day, including interaction and modification
• The workshop days are divided into theoretical and practical aspects

Workshop Outcomes:

• At the end of the workshop, each trainee produces a collection of stories (containing training models).
• The trainer can select good models and nominate them for publication
• Launching sessions for SSW’s products are organized at book fairs and other events.