Fiction Skills: Read Like a Writer is suitable for complete beginners or anyone who’s taken a beginners’ fiction course and wants to broaden their knowledge, explore new skills and develop their writing techniques.

The course is suitable if you:

• Want to understand how being a better reader can help you improve as a writer
• Are keen to develop your reading and writing habits
• Want to understand how to write reader-friendly stories
• Enjoy learning new skills and experimenting with different approaches to writing
• Want to join a friendly and supportive group of learners
• Can dedicate 5-7 hours per week for the duration of the course

Tutor Tom Bromley will introduce you to the reading skills and techniques that will help you understand what makes good writing and how you can apply this to your own work.

Over two sessions, Tom will show you how to read a text more closely, and how to apply this to your own writing, while you work within a supportive community of fellow writers keen to share their experiences with you.

Session 1: Reading Like a Writer – Being a good reader makes you a better writer. We’ll look at ways of improving your close-reading skills, approaching a text as a writer would, and uncovering craft secrets to use in your own writing. You’ll emerge with greater awareness of your reading and writing habits and a list of priorities to work on.

Session 2: Writing For Your Reader – A good writer also thinks about their reader. We’ll look at writing with a reader in mind. How can you make text reader-friendly? What are the dos and don’ts of drawing in readers? We’ll look at different ways of engaging readers and giving them space to use their imagination and become really involved in your text.

You’ll write a 2,000-word piece to engage your ideal reader. You’ll have the chance to share your work with the group, so you can give each other feedback.

Join the Faber Academy alumni

After your course, you can join the online alumni where you’ll meet the growing network of past Faber Academy students. The alumni is a friendly group of writers who support each other as they continue to explore and develop their writing.

Within the online alumni area you can:

• Rejoin your classmates on a private forum and access an archived version of your course materials and forum posts
• Meet alumni from other Faber Academy courses and groups and share your work for feedback on our alumni critiquing forum
• Join in on discussions about reading, writing, editing and ideas on our general discussion forum. This is also where we share news and useful info
• Retain access to our resources area, which has interesting and informative links
• Chat with other people online using the alumni area live chatroom. We also host live chats with guest tutors, authors, agents, editors and publishers

Commission a report on your work

If you’d like to receive a personalised, detailed report on your final piece of writing from your course tutor, this is available at an extra cost. You’ll receive detailed written feedback assessing your ideas and writing, plus advice on what steps to take next.

Taking things further

If you’d like to continue on to another Faber Academy course, you’ll receive a discount. Please get in touch for more details.