Tag: magazines

Writing workshops: how to read magazines — and write for them

If it’s Friday, then it’s a magazine masterclass in Chester.

I ran the first in a series of new-style workshops today, hosted by Meltdown, in which we got to grips with some of the thorny issues of making it as a magazine journalist.

Such as, you ask? Well, try signposting, pitching editors and, the thorniest of all — money.

Magazines matter, I think. They educate and inform; they define the age in which we live.

That’s why our discussion moved from Nineties Britpop and Loaded to Monacle‘s spin-off brands and the rise of the indie magazine as celebrated by Stack Magazines.

It was a lively debate with four super-keen wannabe hacks [pictured above], all of whom brought loads of experience, ideas and enthusiasm to the session.

Here’s a taster of some of the take-away tips of the day …

If you’re going freelance, then you will need:

  • An ability to generate lots of ideas and pitch them successfully, turning your ideas into hard cash
  • An ability to take old ideas and recycle them or spin-off fresh ones with different angles. Either way, you need to refresh quotes, rewrite intros and concs, and check with editors re copyright contracts
  • Some business sense and a basic grasp of accountancy to keep your own records

Thanks to the attendees and for the great feedback, such as:

And this comment from the feedback sheet:

“This has given me the confidence to give it a go and actually start pitching stories to editors.”

The plan is to take these workshops quarterly, so look out for the next one in the new year.

Tortoise Magazine writing workshop at the Good Life Experience

A phone call out the blue.

It was the nice people from Tortoise, Chester’s independent magazine.

They had a stand at the Good Life Experience, the annual festival of, well, good life, taking over Hawarden for a weekend each September.

And they were thinking of running some writing workshops to encourage visitors to react to the sights, sounds and, in particular characters at the festival.

That’s where I would come in.

So it was last Saturday was spent running three workshops during the day [that’s group one with me, above].

We encouraged wannabe bloggers and writers to explore the festival site in search of a good story and a even better soundbite.

I had adults, kids, creative writing students and fledgling mummy bloggers amongst others.

But they had one thing in common: they all did us proud.

From a profile of a dog portrait photographer (yes, that is a thing) to two schoolgirls saving the world from plastic (check out Kids Against Plastic), it was a rich source of material.

Okay, I missed the set by Michael Head as I was working but it was great fun and we had loads of nice comments afterwards, such as:

Look out for the edited compilation of stories in the next issue of Tortoise magazine.