Tag Archive for creative writing

Blatant plug for AQR’s Bring It!

April 22, 2012 AQR, Networking, Qualitative Research No comments

Booking now open for AQR’s ‘Bring It’

How do YOU enter a room? Do you ever find yourself watching other people present and wish YOU could swagger around the stage like you own it? Do you know what first impression you make? Find out how to be more confident, charismatic and memorable with performance coach Charlotte Austin.
I know you think you can’t draw. But you can. And not only can you draw but you can get better, quicker and more concise in your ability to distil a single thought into just that great one-liner. Learn how with marketing cartoonist Jake Goretzki.
Co-Founder of the London Comedy Film Festival (LoCo) and screenplay writer Jonathan Wakeham will get us thinking about how we tell stories and how we can tell them better by following some simple rules of genre, character, plot and action. Debrief as Spaghetti Western? You got it.
Even the term cliché is a cliché. Nick Southgate’s bag of tricks will help us unleash our inner creative beasts and think outside our boxes as we turn idea into insight. Feel the fear and do it anyway. What goes around comes around and you’ll never take language for granted again.
Finally, Datch Datchens (really), copy-writer at Saatchi & Saatchi will pit us against the clock to create memorable, snappy, meaningful descriptions of brands. You think they just sit and drink martinis all day. Well, maybe they do, but we can all sip with them.
During Bring It we’ll all be challenged to make weird noises, weird shapes and use words we tend to forget when we write our debriefs. It’ll get us thinking harder, being more confident and ultimately, remembering that we do is a lot more creative than sometimes we give it credit for. It’s not often we get to spend a day with such inspiring, charismatic and clever people…and that includes you…so come along.

Friday 18th May, 9:00pm – 6:00pm
Coin Street Neighbourhood Centre
108 Stamford St, SE1 9HN (a few minutes walk from Waterloo)

£210+VAT for AQR members and £350+VAT for non-AQR members (includes 1 year of membership)

*********
Session leaders include:
Charlotte Austin is a Performance and Development Consultant to some very swanky people indeed, including creative agency AKQA, the BBC and the Ministry of Justice.
If she can get chap from the Ministry miming ‘climbing the stairs’ and ‘opening the gate’ (with sound effects), then she can do anything. Seriously though, her expertise lies in helping you do things, say things and BE things you didn’t know you could be.

Jonathan Wakeham is the co-founder of LoCo and the London Comedy FIlm Festival at BFI Southbank. He was an advertising planner in a past life (AMV, St Lukes)
and has worked with entertainment companies including Disney, Discovery, the BBC, ITV and Random House, and is a director of Arts Emergency and Camden People’s Theatre. His screenplay The Nile will be directed by Susanna White. He’s still trying to work out whether he’s a man or a Muppet.

Nick Southgate is the IPA’s very special advisor when it comes to all things Behavioural Economics. But fear not (or I’m sorry), we’re going to be borrowing his skills as a ‘thinker’ for this course.
He’s a philosopher, a planner, a lover of art. And he teaches people ‘how to be cool’ at the School of Life.
You never know, if we stand close enough, some of it might just rub off on us.

Datch is an enigma. A man for whom only one name is sufficient. And whose surname is Datchens. Proof that some traditions in ad agencies are still upheld, he is a copywriter
who has worked alongside his art director partner (Reuben) since before they got their first ‘creative pair’ job at RPM (they’re now the hot stuff at Saatchi’s).

Jake Goretzki is a freelance researcher and consultant but that’s not why he’s Bringing It with us. He’s also a satirical cartoonist and illustrator, specialising in cartoons that lampoon,
reflect, challenge our marketing ways. Can’t think where he gets his inspiration from.

To Book: complete and return attached form or book online at http://www.aqr.org.uk/calendar/info.shtml?event=TC12BI

Do you know what a Lipogram is?

April 21, 2010 AQR, Qualitative Research No comments

Chloe wrote about the fabulous AQR Creative Writing course that she organized last week in her latest blog. Here’s a nifty piece of info that I picked up when on the course:

A lipogram (from Greek lipagrammatos, “missing letter”) is a kind of constrained writing or word game consisting of writing paragraphs or longer works in which a particular letter or group of letters is omitted — usually a common vowel, the most common in English being “E”.

So here goes…

On a day that follows Monday, it was 13th April in fact, a group of Razors took a turn back in a classroom to find out ways in which to boost skills in an art known to all as writing. It was a day full of intriguing and thought provoking tasks. Facilitating this day was our top notch Razor (initials CF) who did an amazing job of bringing a bunch (four in fact) of writing aficionados into a room to pass on small dollops of information to us hungry pupils.

To start, Joanna Pocock taught us how to hook in an individual who wants to pick up a book and absorb its words. It was about knowing what is good, bad and ugly writing. Short is good, too many words not so good. A straightforward approach is good, dancing around a point not so good. Painting with words is good, as is having an original sound. All important stuff.

Jonathan W was all about how to build a story. So it’s about always having a string that runs through the story upon which bits of information can hang. It’s about building and building on this to and taking an individual on a trip, up hills and down again.

On to Rob Bain who, to put it simply, told us to cut out any crap to avoid pussy-footing around. No fluff. Just good writing.

And Nick S took a lot of words and basic ABCs away from us and told us to go without. So it was about thinking out of the box and using words that could put across a story in a way that was at odds with our gut instinct.

All in all a fab day. Thanks AQR.

Lucy