The Invisible College

“You’re in the middle of writing something and your mind goes blank… ok, you’re being warned, aren’t you?” Discover Ray Bradbury’s simple trick for overcoming writer’s block.

Contemporary novelist Caryl Phillips close reads a dramatic passage from ‘Another Country’ by James Baldwin to see what we can learn from the great American writer.

If you’re going to put your work out in the world, then sooner or later, someone’s going to take a pop at it. This lesson features tips on handling critics from novelists John Fowles and Graham Greene, plus some unexpected behaviour from Henry James.

“Easy reading is damned hard writing,” says Maya Angelou. Hear the many pains she takes to ‘sharpen her language’ in this lesson about revising your work.

Hear how Graham Greene gradually evolves a character – and a novel - on a research trip to a leper colony in the Congo.

Sometimes the world gives writers a location so atmospheric it’s just waiting for a back story. But how do we do it justice? Poet Ted Hughes, diarist Christopher Isherwood and Vladimir Nabokov on capturing the soul of a place in words.

How often do you get the chance to attend a lecture by one of the Beats? An extraordinary opportunity to spend time with poet Allen Ginsberg, as he explains Jack Kerouac’s theory of writing.

If you want to write good dialogue, you need good ears. Listen to all the little idiosyncrasies of an individual voice: the cadences, elisions, flourishes. With an extended reading from short-story writer and poet, Grace Paley.

Waiting for the muse to strike? Give it up and get writing. Here are five creation stories from the archives to inspire you, from novelists Beryl Bainbridge, John Fowles, Daphne du Maurier, Roald Dahl and Ray Bradbury.

In praise of day-dreaming, holidays and playing hookey: this lesson exalts the importance of time off. Go to the pub with W.B. Yeats, flit through the airport with Noel Coward, and wander the streets of Paris with Henry Miller.

The subconscious mind can be the writer’s greatest helper – or nastiest foe. This lesson considers ways to access its mysterious depths, with archive clips of novelists Doris Lessing and Aldous Huxley and a mesmerising reading of “I’ve Known Rivers” by poet Langston Hughes.

Yes, we need talent – but we also need discipline. In other words: keep your ass in the chair. With tips from Daphne du Maurier, Graham Greene and James Bond creator, Ian Fleming.

Show don’t tell. Well, no, actually – show AND tell. This lesson explores different ways of presenting a scene, with tips from the Yiddish writer, Isaac Bashevis Singer, playwright Harold Pinter, and a wonderfully creepy fairy tale from Angela Carter.

To plot or not to plot – that’s the question. Some writers plan in advance; others set out without a map and see where they wind up. Featuring archive of Angela Carter, Elmore Leonard, and Ray Bradbury, plus William Golding as the Stern Teacher.

How nosy are you about your protagonist? Do you know what she eats for breakfast? Likes to dance to? How she parts her hair? A lesson about creating characters, with tips from Graham Greene and Muriel Spark, plus Baroness Orczy reveals how she met the Scarlet Pimpernel.

How do we recognise a dancing, hell-raising word from one that just wants a quiet life flat on the page? Poet Ted Hughes helps us recognise words that act and use their muscles, plus rare archive recording of Virginia Woolf.

How do we find a voice? Figure out what’s ours – and only ours – to say? Tips from Neil Gaiman and Invisible College favourite, Ray Bradbury, plus stand-up and burps from Charles Bukowski.

If you want to write – read. Marinate your mind in the sentence and the word. With Susan Sontag on the book-drunken life; Ralph Ellison on the jazzy genius of TS Eliot; and Eudora Welty, whose mother bartered her hair for a barrel of books.