WRITING WORKSHOP WOES
Nicola Solomon, SoA chief executive, looks at your rights when workshop collaboration goes wrong
WRITER’S VOICE
THE SOCIETY OF AUTHORS
Workshopping can be invaluable for developing your work and craft to the next level. Finding the right peer group of writers – whether via a course, creative writing degree, local writing group, online writers’ forum, or elsewhere – can be liberating. What begins with discovering the strengths and weaknesses of your own writing through the feedback you receive, and through analysing others’ work, should result in an inspiring, collaborative mindset amongst participants.
But while the best workshops can lead to long term creative and professional working relationships, what if you find yourself in a group where someone is so inspired by your idea that they decide to use your plot and characters for their own novel? Or you loved their poem so much that you jotted down some lines and later, forgetting the source, incorporated them into your own? Or someone suggested a new scene for your screenplay but, once it was in production, demanded payment for their work?