The Work
Fighting Words is a creative writing centre, established by Roddy Doyle and Sean Love. Inspired by 826 Valencia in San Francisco Fighting Words is located on Behan Square, Russell Street, Dublin 1, very close to Croke Park.
Fighting Words helps students of all ages to develop their writing skills
and to explore their love of writing.
We provide story-telling fieldtrips for PRIMARY school groups, creative
writing workshops for secondary students, and seminars, workshops and
tutoring for ADULTS. All tutoring is free.
The Fighting Words fieldtrips and workshops are created and run by volunteers. The volunteers include professional writers - novelists, screen-writers, journalists, poets - aspiring writers, student teachers from DCU and all the Dublin colleges of education, retired teachers and many more people who are just keen to be involved in creative work.
If you are interested in finding out more about the fieldtrips and workshops on offer for primary school groups, secondary groups, or adults, click on one of the highlighted words in this sentence.
If you are interested in being one of our volunteers, click here.
Primary
Each morning, Monday to Friday, from 10.00 to 12.00, primary school students, to a maximum of 30 children per group, visit the Fighting Words Centre, to write a book. Helped on by Fighting Words tutors, they write a story which is projected onto a big screen.
The children decide on the characters and plot, and write the story sentence by sentence. They edit, and make corrections as they go. Meanwhile, a volunteer artist draws an illustration or two, to go with the story.
The group's element of the writing takes the story about three-quarters of the way through the plot. Then the pages are collated, printed, covered and bound with several blank pages at the end, so each child can write and illustrate his or her own ending, at school or at home. A photograph of each student the Author Photo - is incorporated on the back cover of each book. Each student leaves Fighting Words with his or her own book.
STORY : Mrs McConkey's First Date, Our Lady Immaculate Senior National School, Darndale - 3rd Class. Illustrations by Aine Kavanagh. 30 November 2009.
Secondary
Weekday afternoons are devoted to workshops for secondary students, either as part of a school group or attending independently. These are writing projects short fiction, screening writing etc which involve a week-by-week commitment, and result in publication of the finished work, on the Fighting Words website and, in some cases, in book or magazine form.
The workshops are particularly suitable for Transition Year students. We are also keen to include young people who want to write independently.
Each tutor/volunteer works with one to five students. In the case of the short story workshop, there are sessions on character development, dialogue, plot, and on the importance of editing - editing as a form of, and help to, creativity. The students themselves decide on the broad themes of each group¹s work.
Each session lasts two hours, from 2.00pm to 4.00pm. The session starting times and duration are adjusted, depending on each school¹s timetable and distance from Fighting Words.
Depending on distance and time, Fighting Words will go to secondary schools, and other relevant locations, if necessary.
Write Club
“The first rule of Write Club is - you do not talk about Write Club. The second rule of Write Club is - you DO talk about Write Club.”
Wednesday afternoons at Fighting Words are set aside for Write Club. If you are aged 12-18, enjoy writing and would like to come to Fighting Words to work on your writing, this is for you!
You have an opportunity to talk to our trained volunteers and other writers about your work if you wish as well as time and space to work on your writing. There will also be an opportunity to look at different types of creative writing and different themes, for example writing short stories, film scripts, comedy, poetry, etc – whatever interests you.
For further information, or to register for Write Club, please e-mail orla@fightingwords.ie or phone 01 8944576 and ask for Orla. Parental consent will be required for anyone who wants to join the club.
Adults
Evenings and weekends will be devoted to seminars and workshops for adults,
conducted by professional writers and volunteers.
