Alice Jolly

Alice Jolly has written two novels and eight plays. She won the Royal Society of Literature’s VS Pritchett Memorial Prize in 2014. Her memoir Dead Babies and Seaside Towns won the Pen/Ackerley Prize in 2016.

TUTORING AT

Oct 29 - 03

The Hurst

61 . LIFE WRITING

Create powerful stories from your lived experience

It’s frustrating when people don’t ‘get’ what you have lived through. O ...

Tutors: John-Paul Flintoff; Alice Jolly; Guest: Anthony McGowan

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Writing Tips and Exercises

Writing Tips

Controlling your fear

Genre: Non-Fiction & Life Writing

Thomas Keneally says that, ‘Writing is an exercise in controlling your fear. Above all the fear that you are not a writer.’ This is another way of saying that we all have to write with an inner critic looking over our shoulder, telling us that what we are ...

Alice Jolly

Writing Exercises

Don’t let them talk you out of it

Genre: Non-Fiction & Life Writing

Spend a little time identifying who the people are who might tell you not to write your memoir. Once you have identified that person/those people, you need to talk them down. Do this as a ‘free-write.’ A ‘free-write’ is when you just sit down for twent...

Alice Jolly

Writing Exercises

Developing a scene

Genre: Non-Fiction & Life Writing

If you are already writing a memoir, look through the work you have done to date and see where the scenes are. Pick out one of these scenes – or something which is not currently written as a scene but should perhaps be re-written as one. If you are just ...

Alice Jolly

Writing Tips

What is a scene?

Genre: Non-Fiction & Life Writing

Novelists are always told to show, not tell. They are also told to ‘write in scenes’ which means broadly the same thing. But do memoir writers also need to follow this advice? Yes, absolutely. A memoir will not work well if it only really has one c...

Alice Jolly

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