Short Story Writing Craft
SHORT STORY MAGIC: The Elements of Story
Join South African writer Stella Madre and fun alchemist Kshetra Govindasamy for a creative, embodied writing workshop. You'll explore the magic of the short story and the elements of crafting one through nature, ceremony, somatic movement, and sensory awareness.
Cape Town - Newlands Forest
14 November - 08:00–12:00 SAST
R555
Personal Attention | IN NATURE | eBook to keep
You will receive the payment link and meeting location upon booking.
Get out of your head and into your body
The most engaging writing doesn’t come from thinking harder.
It comes from presence.
We use nature, movement, and sensory awareness, beyond the five senses, to settle into the body so you write from embodied perception instead of abstraction.
You notice more. You feel more. When you can see, hear, smell, taste, and feel the world of your story, your reader can too. The result is writing that’s vivid, precise, authentic. True.
What to Expect
An opening and closing ceremony honouring Story and the Elements of Nature (in person, led by Kshetra)
A gentle meander and nature immersion exploring the elements that make a short story magic (in person), or guided scent-and-sensory immersion (online)
Sensory, safe, FUN embodied writing, plus peer play and feedback
Guided embodiment and somatic practice
You write your own short story, start to finish
You share your story (no pressure)
The Elements of Story eBook: prompts, practices, and craft tools to keep.
Your Guides: Story and Land
Stella Madre
Writer | Mystic | Muse
The magic of tall tales in short form with a tiny guide
Stella is a South African writer whose fiction explores belonging, mythology, ecology and the relationship between people and the living world. Her stories blur the boundaries between science, myth and magic. She’s known for irreverent honesty, a grounding presence, warm wit and no-nonsense tenderness. With a background in professional writing, entertainment, stand-up, life coaching and yoga, she’s spent nearly three decades making people laugh while guiding them through embodiment, creativity and personal truth. Her work offers both craft and catharsis.
Three things to know about Stella: she has a bit (a lot) of a potty mouth. She’s better in person. She’s happiest busting a move, reading or writing in nature.
Kshetra Govindasamy
Kundalini Teacher. Geographer. Fun Alchemist
Kshetra has spent decades at the crossroads of Vedic wisdom, movement, and the land. He doesn’t bring healing to people so much as create the conditions where it becomes possible. He ran a mapping firm in London, did salmon conservation in Scotland, responded to disasters in India and Indonesia, and crossed the Himalayas by motorbike before South Africa pulled him home. Now he guides everything from half-day forest immersions to multi-day retreats across the Western Cape.
“You are the medicine. The forest helps you remember.”
Check Ksh’s Website Here.
George R.R. Martin recommends short stories to aspiring writers because they teach craft fast. I recommend them because they’re fun, and because they sharpened the shit out of my own writing.
This shindig is for if you:
want to write, write more, write better
want to own your mind, your intellect, your attention and your focus
want to build pattern recognition and hold the tension of nuance and paradox, because those are the skills of the future
are feral, wild and free and want to stay that way, or want to write your way there, as I did
Maybe not, if you
want a quiet, polite lecture on grammar
would rather think about writing than actually do it
would rather be jealous and judgy
would rather blame time and money for why you don’t write
You don’t have to call yourself a writer. But if you do, you will make magic. Turn up, tune in, and be willing to play.
What people say
“Stella gave us the basic tools, outline, and format of how to create an impactful simple story. Having the forest as our playground, she encouraged us to use the Nature elements as inspiration for our writing... Her experience and passion as a storyteller and as a teacher of this skill have given me the desire to put pen to paper with more confidence and know-how.”
Suzie-Mae Jenkins“I hadn’t written anything creative in years due to crippling self-doubt. The prompts in the workshop helped guide my short story out of my imagination and onto the paper by removing the hypercritical voice in my head... With whimsy and fun, my creativity flowed, and my self-doubt disappeared.”
Tanya Richer
On Stella’s stories:
“WOW f*#kin AAA. I couldn’t put it down until I finished it.”
“I’ve had sex twice since reading this story!”
“I was riveted to your short story, absolutely top class, I’m blown away!”
Want the whole story?
Short Story Magic is the craft. Write Life is where we turn those same elements into the gloriously messy, unpredictable story of your life.
Take both as the Story Bundle for R1111 instead of R555 + R777, and save R221.
Take the bundle
After you pay, email becomeamermaid13@gmail.com with “Bundle” and your name, and tell me which Write Life option you’d like: in the forest or online.
Read Come to My Window, my steamy short story.
A journalist falls for an ex-cop over a series of steamy interviews. First published in Tattoo Press’s Love Me Tender: short stories of obsession. Readers report a happy ending. Not for readers under 16.
“This is like Ladies Detective Agency smoked a crack pipe and got spat out into an alternate dimension. 😂” Says a reader…
Write Your Story. Remember Your Soul.
THE ARTIST DATE DISCOUNT: If you made it all the way down here, you spotted the Artist Date Discount! Send me a short story or some other piece of writing that you are tinkering with, and I'll send you the discount before you pay.