Published on: 12 March 2020


Fremantle-based author David Whish-Wilson was at Christ Church recently sharing his creative wisdom with our Year 9 Creative Writing class.

The visit coincided with the class’ exploration of short story writing, with particular focus on how David goes about creating a sense of unease, tension, atmosphere and mood in shorter prose fiction.

“David really helped draw together some major ideas in the course, whilst also showing us how a single sentence can make or break a story,” commented Assistant Head of English, Mr Spencer Davis.

“He was instrumental in helping us, discussing ideas around making memorable, compelling and redeemable characters.”

“David also outlined how he uses imagery in his crime-fiction to help draw his readers into the situation and danger surrounding certain characters.”

Year 9 student Travis King said, “My learning from the talk was that in order for suspense to be created, the reader must find the character likeable or at the very least redeemable or intriguing, because if the reader doesn’t care about what happens to the character they won’t find the book engaging.”

The boys are now working towards submitting a short story for the Scribbler’s Writing Awards, which will see them lean on David’s recent advice.

David is author of the novels The Summons, Line of Sight and Zero at the Bone and teaches Creative Writing at Curtin University.