Our Workshops
In person or online, our workshops are highly interactive: we encourage students to engage with us in continual discussion, and to participate in call-ins, pair work, writing exercises and in sharing feedback on those exercises, so there is a genuine dynamism in the room.
Our approach is to treat all students as writers and to demonstrate how tried and tested creative writing techniques, drawn from our ongoing professional practice, can give academic writing a clear focus, lucid writing style and strong narrative - with no loss of rigour.
We know that the sessions are demanding. They are pacy and intense; students work hard, and have all kinds of insights into their work that they can capture in the moment.
We offer a diverse range of workshops, such as:
Writing for Neurodivergent Thinkers; Writing Across Disciplines; Writing Your Research Paper; Writing for Wider Audiences
...and many more.
We also design bespoke workshops, so contact us to discuss your needs.
“The workshops were beautifully layered day after day, spot on, well paced, demanding, thoughtful.”
A Selection of Our Workshops
Writing for Neurodivergent Thinkers
We focus on practical strategies for managing challenges such as overwhelm, tangents, perfectionism, and difficulty getting started or sustaining work. Develop approaches that reduce cognitive load and support more sustainable writing habits. Inclusive of a broad range of neurodivergent experiences.
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Writing Across Disciplines
We tackle the challenges that writing across disciplines presents by thinking and writing directly from within those challenges. You'll identify the structure and voice with which to draw the components together in support of your argument. And you'll reflect on how your particular position at the intersection of fields is not a liability but a genuine intellectual resource.
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How to Craft an Argument
Move beyond describing a topic to making a clear, defensible claim. Learn how to identify the central argument, clarify what is at stake, and ensure that each section of writing contributes to a cohesive whole. You’ll be introduced to techniques for sharpening claims, organising ideas, and making the movement of your argument visible to the reader.
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Thesis Writing for First Years
We aim to help establish good writing habits, anchored in two key ideas: your personal investment in the topic, and your ability to practise skilled questioning. We’ll spend as much time thinking about focus – how your thesis will be different and why it matters – as we spend thinking about cultivating the kind of wide-open thinking your research needs to make nuanced connections.
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Creative Thinking for Researchers
Where and when do you get your best ideas? What do you do when you feel blocked or demotivated? In this workshop you'll be guided through some short divergent thinking activities designed to help you interrogate your research from new perspectives. We’ll also discuss ways to optimize your productivity and engineer a state of mind in which insights are more likely to occur.
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Drafting to Crafting
Writing is a dance between creativity (drafting) and the critical process (crafting), which are separate, yet overlapping activities. The first half of this workshop will give you tools to get your raw material onto the page, interrogate your ideas more deeply, and find your own unique voice. Next, you will step into the shoes of your reader and revise your material so as to make your ideas clear to follow and compelling to read.
Reading Like a Writer
Close reading is very different from the way academics are trained to skim read and distil argument from a text. We introduce you to reading for technique, and use examples as a stimulus for writing exercises.
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Thinking Like an Editor
This workshop addresses the problem of privileging research over writing up. We show you how to tighten your argument, feel for pace and flow, avoid repetition and learn what to cut, instilling the practice of knowing where your reader is at all times. Expect red-pen exercises.
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Getting Published: How to Write a Research Paper
Writing research papers as a doctoral student can be daunting; this workshop aims to make this process that little bit easier. You'll explore your own research project for suitable topics, then present them in a way that clearly demonstrates their originality, significance and rigour.
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Thinking Wide and Deep: Critical Thinking and Writing
Thinking critically isn't just about finding flaws, it's about pointing out connections and relationships, and thinking about further possibilities. Through a series of short critical thinking exercises, you'll evaluate the arguments of other scholars - and your own.
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Writing for Wider Audiences
Drawing on True North's extensive experience as professional writers, this workshop demonstrates how craft, voice and narrative can help you carry your ideas into the wider world. You will practice these techniques on your own work in progress.
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Bespoke Workshops Tailored to Your Group ...
Talk to us about the requirements of your writers and we'll design a course that speaks directly to their needs.
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