Our blogs

Regular news and insight from our many poets, writers, educators and facilitators

11 November 2025

Posted by Harley Truslove

You've Gotta Have Pace, Pace, Pace

Pace was the name of the game today! Ali had our writers pair up and work on stories together, but not in the usual collaborative way. Instead, our writers were given kitchen timers to keep them working quickly. Everyone wrote for two minutes then swapped with their partner, then for two and a half minutes and swapped back - increasing the amount of time they had slightly with each change-over.


At the end, we had lots of rapidly-penned stories, including deafened and blinded competitors in the Crystal Maze, someone having a breakdown when a rude phone operator wouldn’t let them give blood, and flying alien cats who screeched to their humans about respecting milk.


Ali explained that one way to keep the pace up in a story was to switch between scenes. One character could be doing something high-octane, whilst another was challenged elsewhere. You can find examples of these scenes in any action movie, especially things like Mission Impossible and Fast and Furious.


For their final task, our writers had to write a breakneck scene of their own, splitting perspectives between characters in different places, i.e. during a train heist with people on and off the train. 


One of our writers chose to document their scene in a series of call & message logs between a wife and her husband whose train had not shown up. Another gave us a marine biology student being berated by her family as she noticed a group of shady men further down the carriage.


Our writer of the week was Ella, whose scene about two secret agents attempting to stop an assassination left us with our hearts in our mouths, especially when it ended with one of them dying from anaphylaxis after being trapped in a lift. Well done!

Previous

Archive

Back to blog

What's on

Find out more

Our projects

Find out more

Our films

Watch now

Headlight Press

Find out more

Latest news

06 November 2025

What Women Write

Working in partnership with Southampton Forward, What Women Write is a series of free workshops celebrating women's voices across the city of Southampton to...

Read more

Our blogs

Regular news and insight from our many poets, writers, educators and facilitators

Find out more

Resources


Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in the New Forest

Why not get in touch?