This Will Change the Rhythm of Your Writing Forever
Lesson 1 of "Take It from Shakespeare" with Jo Gatford
This is Part 1 of Jo Gatford’s Shakespeare Workshop
Introductions
Hi! I’m Jo — a writer, an editor, and your friendly neighbourhood curriculum manager here at The Forever Workshop.
I’m also a massive Shakespeare nerd, as you might have gathered by the topic of this workshop series. I’d never been that bothered about the Bard at school, but after returning to university as a mature student to finish up a long-abandoned undergrad degree, I fell in freakin’ love. Once it finally ‘clicked’ for me, it was like diving into an ocean of colour and imagery and poetry; like discovering a language I didn’t realise I could understand. And so, head-over-heels, I went on to do a Masters at the Shakespeare Institute (where I got to hang out in Shakey’s birthplace, Stratford-upon-Avon) and I’ve not really stopped reading, writing about, or teaching Shakespeare since.
As a writer, my love of Shakespeare has given me a renewed appreciation for the flexibility of language — the power of language — and how we can make and break the rules as we go…
Which is exactly what I want to do with this workshop.
I suspect a lot of us think of Shakespeare as lofty and exclusive and inaccessible, when really — once we unlock the fundamentals — we can key into many of the same linguistic approaches he used. (In fact, you’ll probably find you’re already subconsciously doing it.)
And, by taking some time to understand why and how these techniques work, it can help us to pay closer attention to the choreography of our writing, be more intentional with our word choices, and make every line sing.
In this four-part course, I’m going to encourage you to muck about with form, push boundaries, experiment with syntax, and delve into the emotion of your work to create layers of meaning.
Here’s what we’ll be looking at:
Lesson 1: The power of a line — in which we break down the fundamental rhythm of Shakespeare and bend it to our will (thanks, Will).
Lesson 2: Emphasis, rhythm and repetition — in which we borrow from Shakespearean rhetoric to create atmosphere, movement and feeling.
Lesson 3: Big feelings and vivid description — in which we find new ways of evoking emotion and imagery in our work.
Lesson 4: Take it (literally) from Shakespeare — in which we rewrite, adapt and steal shamelessly from the big ol’ beautiful bard.
A few final notes before we get started:
If you’re a total Shakespeare newbie, don’t panic. I’ll do my best to make the Shakespearean aspects as accessible as possible — but if you have any questions at all, please drop them in the comments.
This course was originally created for the 2024 Flash Fiction Festival, so some of the techniques and exercises are particularly well-suited to flash fiction, poetry or experimental fiction, since they tend to lean more heavily into linguistic rhetoric and non-traditional forms. However, these lessons can absolutely be applied to all forms of writing, so take what works for you and apply it to your WIP.
And above all, this is an invitation to indulge your love of language, so enjoy!
