FREE creative writing workshops are being offered to give adults the chance to become budding authors.

Halton Council has secured funding from the Arts Council for a series of eight week sessions at the borough’s four libraries.

The Write Time Write Place project starts on Monday, January 15 and runs until March.

This exciting opportunity is aimed at helping people to develop their literacy and gain creative writing expertise.

Halton Cllr Phil Harris, board member for libraries, said: “The one-and-a-half hour sessions will take place during the daytime and will focus on such areas as inspiration, characterisation, settings and plotting stories, revising and editing."

When the course has finished, participants will be encouraged to finish their stories and submit them for a Write Time Write Place anthology, which will be professionally published and each course member given a copy.

Halton Libraries will also keep copies for their lending section.

Writers will also be given the opportunity to read extracts from their stories at a special event at Halton Lea library.

Writer Charlie Lea, principal of the literacy company Read Now Write Now and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, who is running the workshops, said: "We aim to help participants learn the skills to write a short story and to thereon write independently.

“We feel that there is no better sense of achievement for writers than to see their work published into an anthology and to hopefully continue writing themselves.”

Workshops start on Monday, January 15 from 10.30am to 11.30am at Widnes Library and from 12.30pm to 2pm at Ditton Library.

Courses will also commence on Friday, January 19 from 10am to 11.30am at Runcorn Library and 12.30pm to 2pm at Halton Lea Library.

To take part call Charlie Lea on 07966 154133 or e-mail charles@readnowwritenow.org.uk.