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Incredible Italy Writing Retreat gang 2025 outside Terzo

Ever since Kerstin and I first saw photos of Terzo Di Danciano we felt drawn to hold a retreat there. The restored hilltop fortress looked like something out of a fairytale, filled with magic. Perfect for a writers’ retreat. But on our way, as we drove further and further into the remote forested hills of Tuscany bordering Umbria we wondered if perhaps we’d made the right decision. If it was too far from the crowds, if we’d be isolated, trapped like princesses in that tower.

Anna at her bedroom window - Incredible Italy Writing Retreat 2025

But as soon as we arrived and our delightful hosts, Krizsti and Luca, carried our bags up to our rooms and showed us around, we knew we’d found somewhere very special indeed. Every room is beautiful in its own way, some with Luca’s original artworks decorating the walls, some with restored frescoes, Anna’s door resplendent with angels. Sleek, modern, heated bathrooms, air-conditioning in every room, crisp ironed sheets and fresh flowers from the garden on the writing desks ticked every box. Magnificent views over the surrounding hills and valleys brought light and joy from every window.

The yoga shala, in the converted barn, is every yogin’s dream. The floor in the shala has wide weathered wooden floorboards, polished and worn from use. Huge arched windows let in the sun and views and newly installed heating ensured we were toasty warm even on the coldest mornings.

Yoga shala - Incredible Italy Writing Retreat 2025

Downstairs from the fully equipped yoga room is the sublime spa. I thought I didn’t like saunas. I probably hadn’t had one for a couple of decades, but the twin saunas here – one steamy, the other infrared – made a huge difference to my enjoyment of the retreat. Usually, I’m working so hard I forget to relax and enjoy myself, but every afternoon I headed to the saunas and bubbling spa bath and emerged refreshed and renewed. I don’t know the science behind saunas, but it certainly felt like my whole nervous system was being soothed and rebooted. I’m hooked!

Eclipse Spa - Terzo Di Danciano — Eclipse Spa – Terzo Di Danciano – LOVED IT!

The main teaching rooms and dining hall cover the main floor of the converted barn, a huge pine fire roaring in the fireplace far into the night. Comfy lounges in cosy corners were perfect for chatting with other writers. We had tables to work at and Sergio and Anne-Claire and the team in the kitchen serving us delicious meals every few hours. But the breakfast room tops the lot. A recent addition to the centre, this stunning glass-walled suntrap makes the most of the stunning location and every morning we tramped down from yoga to find a sumptuous buffet of fruit, cereals, smoked salmon, cheeses and ham, breads and just about everything imaginable on your dream breakfast menu.

Breakfast and workshop room Terzo Di Danciano

Most days when we woke, we looked out the windows to a sea of cloud below us, blanketing the valley as we princesses on the hill stretched and drank in the beauty as the sun came out and bathed us all in soft golden light. Yoga, breakfast, then a break before our daily workshops. With writers ranging from newbies to those with published books under their belts, we adjusted writing activities and content accordingly. Small feedback groups and genre buddies formed organically as writers met up in the afternoons to share work and run ideas by each other, if they weren’t writing up a storm on their own, that is. With only nine participants Kerstin and I had plenty of time to discuss projects with our guests, one on one, and I really enjoyed pulling tarot cards for everyone to help them grow, not only as writers but as people. I even pulled cards for our lovely hosts.

Highlights of the week include a fun excursion to Cortona, to St Francis’s hermitage, St Margarita’s spectacularly beautiful church and the long steep walk down the Roman roads into the ancient town, where some of us may have gone a bit art crazy and bought up big. Gelatos to top off the day, then home again. Lovely Bec had rented a car and led a smaller excursion to Assisi which was heartily enjoyed by those who went. Thank you Bec!

We had a ball at Sergio’s cooking class too, some more professional pasta makers than others, but all good eaters. However, when Sergio sang sad love songs on our live music night, he claimed a little of our hearts. The band was fantastic and before we knew it, we were all up dancing. What a ball we had! Patrizia showed us some fancy salsa moves, Anna swinging with her, the rest of us releasing our best disco moves (some unused for decades). Such fun! I’m just glad no footage survives of my shimmying. But boy, we had a good time.

This retreat was really something special. Even as facilitators, Kerstin and I emerged after our week of yoga, writing workshops, saunas, spas, massages and excursions feeling rested and replenished. I loved seeing people light up with epiphanies about their projects (and their lives), thousands of new words being written and new writing friendships developing.

As always, we finished retreat with collages to shine light on our ways forward, working with images instead of words, planting seeds for the futures and books we’d like to create.

With seven nights together, we really bonded as a group, and it was hard to say goodbye as everyone headed off on their own adventures (there were many!). For days after these retreats, people’s energies and writing projects stay with me. So from afar I send them bum glue, persistence, patience and creative epiphanies to bring their book dreams to life.

For a while Kerstin and I were so enamoured with Terzo Di Danciano we were determined to return in 2026 – until we regained our senses and realised we’re only human and need more time.

So instead, we’ve booked back in to Terzo Di Danciano for the next Incredible Italy Writing Retreat for October 1- 8, 2027. Details to be updated soon. If you’re super keen drop me a line and I’ll bags a spot for you before we even open for bookings!

That will give everyone enough time to save up, because let’s face it Europe is far and Euros expensive. BUT boy oh boy was it worth it? YES!! All the info HERE!

If you’ve always dreamed of your own Tuscan writing getaway, come and join us at this heavenly retreat centre in 2027. We’d love to share this magical place and all the inspiration and heart healing of retreat with you. Put yourself and your writing dreams into these pictures. I can’t wait to share it with you! More on the 2027 retreat HERE.

With special love to our wonderful retreaters who made this inaugural Italian retreat such a joy. Love you guys!

Lots of love

Edwina 🙂 xx

But how do I do it?

One of the first pieces of advice all new writers hear is “Show don’t tell”. But what does it mean? And how do you do it?

WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

Really, it’s about the difference between telling someone about an event and RECREATING that event on the page so that they too can experience what it was like to be there. How do we do this? By WRITING IN SCENES!

When we write in scenes we are, as much as is possible, translating experience into word pictures that a reader can see, hear, smell, feel and taste through their imaginations interacting with our words on the page. It’s the difference between telling someone, “I had a really rotten time at school. I was bullied,” and showing them by writing a scene of you being bullied at school so that they can walk in your shoes for a minute or two – so they feel the spit-ball land on the back of your head as you walk through the schoolgrounds, so they smell the rotten egg sandwiches the bully put in your locker, so they hear the taunts and feel the hurt inflicted.

HOW DO YOU DO IT?

Look through what you’ve written, whether it’s memoir or fiction it all works the same. Find a passage where you’re telling – don’t worry we all do it, even experienced writers have unwanted patches of telling in their first drafts – something that has potential for a scene. For example, “My father was a really great man”. Instead of telling us, SHOW US how he was great, in his own unique way.

Write the scene of how he did you wrong, show us the good he did. Let us hear him speak, the things he said, the smell of him. Find a moment of a harsher side of him too, so he becomes more than a caricature of goodness. Develop the scene fully. Show us the conflict. Think of each scene as a little mini story painting a picture of the life you want to portray, the plot point you want to illustrate, the character you want us to understand.

Here’s an article on HOW TO WRITE A SCENE IN 6 EASY STEPS and another on WRITING CONCISE SCENES.

TELLING A LITTLE BIT

Though mostly it’s best to write predominantly in scenes, telling is also an important part of shaping and most especially grounding our stories. At the start of a scene for example you need to make sure the reader knows where and when they are in time and place and who the POV character is for the scene. Make sure you GROUND YOUR READER with a little bit of telling – it doesn’t have to be much, a sentence or two.

For example: When I was seven years old, we lived on the banks of the Oxley Creek in a sixties fibro house my father had renovated himself, so all the doors and windows hung slightly awry. Then you can go into a scene set in that slightly crooked house.

OR you can use telling to cover a large period of time when nothing much happened. Don’t feel that every single detail needs to be included in your story. Unless you’ve been poisoned, we really don’t care what you had for breakfast, or if your character has chestnut curls after a recent trip to the hairdresser – unless they’re disguising themselves on the run from police.

Instead, you can use a brief passage of telling to fill us in. For example: Three years later I was still on the run, but I was desperate to see my mother again. My sister had got a message to my hut on a Thai island. Mum was sick. I had to see her. No matter the risk. So I dyed my hair brown and curled it, padded myself with cushions, plastered my face in dark tan foundation and took the risk of getting on a flight back to my hometown.

READ widely in your genre of choice and mark out passages of telling between scenes. Can you spot them? Now have a look at your own project. Are you mainly telling? What sections might work well as scenes?

Now WRITE THAT SCENE. Use the tips in my articles on writing scenes to help. Your writing will come alive on the page and your readers will feel as if they too are experiencing the story events, not just hearing about them.

GOOD LUCK! Let me know how you go!

Lots of love

Edwina xx

Edwina Shaw

WRITER / EDITOR / MENTOR / THE HEALING POWER OF STORY

HEAVEN ON A STICK – Incredible Italy Writing Retreat 2025 – Rundown

SHOW DON’T TELL (mostly)

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