Course Sales and Promotions
Enroll in online creative writing courses with Writers.com, and take the next step on your writing journey with support from our award-winning instructors and welcoming community.
You’ll get regular instructor feedback on your work, ongoing collaboration with other committed writers, and a nourishing and supportive course structure.
Learn from published authors who have spent decades perfecting their craft, and are dedicated to supporting you and your work. Don’t miss out: find the online writing course for you today!
Courses and Workshops on Sale Now:
September Courses
Get It Done: Fast-Draft Your Novel in 13 Weeks
with Troy Wilderson
Write a complete first draft of your novel in this 13-week intensive, where you'll learn everything you need to write a successful story.
Penning Passion: Finish the First Draft of your Romance Novel in Ten Weeks
with Jeanne De Vita
In this comprehensive class, you'll learn the ropes of romance writing and finish a first draft of your romance novel.
Poetry Workshop: Bring Your Poems to Life
with Rosemary Tantra Bensko
Join us for this workshop on creating powerful poems—poems that are clear and organized, fresh and moving, full of life.
Suspense Sells! Power Up Your Writing With Conflict, Tension and Emotion
with Giulietta Nardone
Inject suspense into your stories to keep readers turning pages. For writers of all kinds of fiction: thrillers, mysteries, romance, humor, literary and memoir. A four week class with Giulietta Nardone.
Write Your Memoir in 12 Weeks
with Blaise Allysen Kearsley
Writing a full memoir takes energy, momentum, and moral support. Find all three in this memoir writing intensive.
Anatomy of a Premise Line: How to Use Story and Premise Development for Writing Success
with Jeff Lyons
The premise line is the only reliable tool that can tell you, BEFORE you start writing, whether or not your story will “work.” In this class participants will learn how to master the process of premise line development—the essential first step in any book or screenplay’s development process.
Creative Nonfiction, Fiction, Memoir, Novel, Stage and Broadcast
It Starts with Play: Get (Back) into Writing
with Janée Baugher
Harness the joy of creativity in this inspiration-focused class, where we'll uncover new ideas for writing projects and draft loads of new material.
Creative Nonfiction, Fiction, Lifestyle and Wellness, Memoir, Novel, Personal Essay, Poetry, Short Story, Stage and Broadcast
How to Start a Podcast
with Cara Stevens
Share your voice with the world! Learn everything you need to plan, record, and share your first podcast episode and beyond.
Creative Nonfiction, Fiction, Lifestyle and Wellness, Live Workshop, Memoir, Novel, Personal Essay, Poetry, Short Story, Stage and Broadcast
Cheap Shots: Writing Shoestring Budget Movies
with Malcolm Pelles
Pull yourself up by your shoestrings! Complete a short film script that you can later produce on a micro-budget.
Six Flash Essays in Six Weeks
with Rudri Patel
Tell the stories of your life in 1,000 words or less in this generative flash essays workshop.
Write Again: Returning to the Page
with Amanda Oliver
Rediscover your writing and voice. Write new pieces, connect in community, and leave with a clear path forward.
Creative Nonfiction, Fiction, Lifestyle and Wellness, Memoir, Novel, Personal Essay, Short Story
October Courses
Opening the Door to Poetry
with Jude Nutter
How do we use poetry to express life's marvelous complexity? Learn how to control language beyond the "ordinary" and discover the many possibilities of poetry.
The Checklist: Perfect Your Novel’s Opening Pages
with Carla Damron
Nail your opening pages! Apply the 11 core elements your novel opening must get right, and hook readers and agents into your story.
Food Writing: Meals And Manuscripts
with Jennifer Billock
Do you love cookbooks, cooking, or reading anything about food? This food writing course is for you. With award winning writer Jennifer Billock.
Plot Your Novel
with Jack Smith
Over eight weeks, you'll develop a solid basis in the fictional elements—protagonist, setting, secondary characters, point of view, plot, and theme—while you develop the outline of your novel. You'll receive feedback at all stages from your fellow writers and your instructor.
The Spirituality of Poetry
with Joy Roulier Sawyer
Let the spirit of language move through you. In this 6 week course, we will study, write, and share poetry about the sacredness of human experience.
Character is the Key: Unlock Your Best Stories
with Jessie Roy
If you want to tell a good story, you need to write good characters. Learn how to unlock your best stories in this one-day character development workshop.
Death Riding Shotgun: How Awareness of Our Mortality Impacts Poetry
with Lisa C. Taylor
How can your own mortality inform your work? In this 6-week course, you'll use death to inspire and motivate your poetry writing.
Deep Waters: The Prose Poem Advanced Workshop
with Anna Scotti
Take the plunge in this advanced prose poetry course, where you'll write and revise short, powerful works of prose that hit like poetry.
Hived Like Honey in Your Head: The Art and Craft of Writing Confessional Poetry
with Meghan Sterling
Discover the power and intimacy of confessional poetry, and unlock your authentic voice.
Tiny and True: Creating Flash Essays with Mindfulness
with Susan Barr-Toman
How do you tell the full truth in under 1,000 words? Learn the art of flash essays and write nuggets of wisdom in this tiny essay class.
Word Witch: Exploring the Strange Magic of Embodiment
with Erica Anzalone
Infuse your writing with the weird and wonderful: discover the transformative power of embodiment through the archetype of the witch.
Creative Nonfiction, Fiction, Personal Essay, Poetry, Short Story
Stringing the Beads: Craft Your Personal Essay
with Joanna Penn Cooper
Harness the freedom of the personal essay in this 4 week course, where we'll shape our ideas, thoughts, and obsessions into compelling nonfiction pieces.
November Courses
Thirty Tiny Stories In Thirty Days
with Giulietta Nardone
Discover the exciting possibilities of micro stories, and write a 6- to 250-word story every day for 30 days.
How to Firm Up the “Mushy Middle” of Any Story
with Jeff Lyons
Ensure a strong middle throughline for any story. Say goodbye to the "mushy middle," and hello to stories that work.
Creative Nonfiction, Fiction, Memoir, Novel, Short Story, Stage and Broadcast
The Lyric Essay: Invitation to Play
with Elizabeth Winder
Create dynamic, genre-bending works of musical prose in this playful and exploratory lyric essay workshop.
Poetic Prose: The Prose Poem
with Barbara Henning
Explore the border between prose poetry and flash fiction. For writers of fiction, poetry, essay and memoir.
Radical Revision: Get Your Poems Published
with Caitlin Scarano
Radically reimagine your poems, by transforming your revision process. Ideal for poets working toward publication.
Write Your Picture Book!
with Kelly Bingham
Picture books have changed greatly over the last few decades, and the market is wide open for fresh ideas. Join us in this six-week intensive where we’ll take that idea of yours and turn it into a manuscript!
December Courses
The Only Submission Workshop You Will Ever Need
with Meghan Sterling
How do you get your poems in literary journals? This two part webinar shows you the ropes for getting your work published, read, and celebrated.
Warp and Weft: Weaving Free Verse Poetry from Life
with Anna Scotti
Weave everyday events into deftly-written free verse poems in this generative, creativity-centered poetry workshop.
Get That Novel Started: A Two-Week Writing Workshop
with Donna Levin
Take the plunge! Put your ideas to paper, write and share the opening pages of your novel, and create a plan for writing a full first draft.
Poems of All Sizes: Haiku, Tanka, and Japanese Poetic Forms
with Miho Kinnas
Explore the history and poetics of Japanese poetry forms, and write haiku, tanka, renga, haiga, and linked verse poetry.
Show and Tell: How to Write Captivating Memoir and Nonfiction
with Brad Wetzler
Your true story of healing or transformation can captivate and empower your readers. Learn how to balance showing the vivid details of your own journey with telling the broader themes for readers to apply in their own lives.
Creative Nonfiction, Lifestyle and Wellness, Memoir, Personal Essay
Simple Winter Writing Circles
with Susan Vespoli
Write your way to the finish line of 2024: let go of and say goodbye to a momentous year, honor the changes in yourself and the world, and set your intentions for a new chapter.
Writing the Memoir-in-Essays
with Margo Steines
Learn how to tell your story through the memoir-in-essays, a form that allows writers to interweave the facts of their lives in interesting and evocative ways.
January Courses
In Brief: Explorations in Short Story Forms
with Sandra Novack
Explore the intricate world of short prose forms. Experiment with story forms from one-syllable micros to full-length short stories, and complete six new story drafts.
Intro to Fiction Writing
with Donna Levin
What makes a good fiction story? Learn how to write compelling stories in this eight-week intro to fiction course, with Donna Levin.
Rapid Story Development: A Master Plan for Building Stories That Work
with Jeff Lyons
In this 10 week story writing class, Jeff Lyons pairs the Enneagram with story development techniques to revolutionize your writing practice.
Creative Nonfiction, Fiction, Memoir, Novel, Personal Essay, Short Story
The Magic of Flash Nonfiction
with Tamara Dean
Tell your stories quickly and stylishly in this short form creative nonfiction workshop, where you'll come away honing the magic of flash nonfiction.
Toying with the Truth: Writing the Personal Essay
with Shelby Hinte
Experiment with creative nonfiction forms and find the best way to tell your personal stories. Write a short piece each week, and choose one draft to polish.
Start Your Writing Journey!
with Joy Roulier Sawyer
Launch yourself into writing: discover your unique voice, write 5 to 10 new pieces, and build and sustain a writing life.
Creative Nonfiction, Fiction, Lifestyle and Wellness, Memoir, Novel, Personal Essay, Poetry, Short Story, Stage and Broadcast
Write Your World: Express Your Creativity through Article Writing, Blogging, and Essays
with Rudri Patel
Want to write your world, your way? Join us for this six-week program on article writing, blogging, and essays.
Writing Autobiographical Fiction
with Jack Smith
Learn to depart from "what really happened," and write compelling fiction from your own life experiences.
Creative Nonfiction, Fiction, Memoir, Novel, Personal Essay, Short Story
A Poet’s Calling Card: Writing and Composing a Chapbook
with Caitlin Scarano
The poetry chapbook gives poets the chance to make a small, artful collection around a poetic obsession. Learn how to craft yours in this 8 week chapbook intensive.
The First Fifty Pages of the Novel
with Sandra Novack
The first 50 pages sets up plot, characters, and voice, and it lays the groundwork for your book's overall structure and success. Receive critical, supportive feedback on your book's start from novelist Sandra Novack.
Writing the (Modern) Love Essay
with Paz Pardo
How do you distill the complexity of (modern) love into language? Learn how in this workshop, where you'll transform your lived experience of romance into an essay.
February Courses
The Deep Dive: Poem As Self-Discovery
with Meghan Sterling
Through poetry, we can access our deepest truths. Use the poem as a roadmap to self-discovery in this 6-week poetic deep-dive.
Crafting a Story or Novel Chapter Using Forward-Moving Tension
with Sandra Novack
How do writers tell stories with tension, action, and emotion? Learn how to write forward-moving tension in this 5 week fiction course.
June Courses
The Chronology of Mind: From Journal to Poem or Prose
with Barbara Henning
Gather material through writing and experimenting with journaling, researching and taking notes to develop into poems or prose works.
About Our Online Writing Courses
We've been offering writing classes online since 1995 to all kinds of students. Whether you're completely new to the Internet (back then, everyone was) or more experienced learning online, our writing courses will be a great fit for you.
Online Course Platform
We offer our classes through an online course platform called Wet Ink. It's designed to be simple and usable for people without a technical background. You'll be sent instructions for joining your class in Wet Ink on the day it begins.
Weekly Assignments
Most classes are structured around weekly assignments: once each week, the teacher emails or posts a lecture to the list that includes a writing assignment, and the students complete the assignment and send it to the list. This means that the teacher and all students in the class see all completed assignments.
The instructor writes his or her feedback on the assignment and sends it back to the list, and students are encouraged to offer feedback on each others' work.
Additionally, some classes are set up as workshops, and are organized around feedback on student manuscripts.
There are no specific times that you must be online. This allows you to work on the class material at your convenience: it's the ideal way to take a class.
Class Discussion and Connection
The list also hosts class discussions about lessons, assignments, and writing in general. The more interaction among students, the more valuable and enjoyable the class. We offer guidelines to keep dialogue supportive and beneficial, and no negative or abusive behavior is allowed.
Writing can be a lonely pursuit, and it's often difficult for writers to make contact with each other. Part of our reason for being here is to change that. We encourage class members to develop ongoing correspondence in which they can share their work. Often a sense of community forms, and some groups have continued to work together long after the class is over.
With the odd "anonymous intimacy" of the Internet, it's easier to take chances in your writing, and to be honest and thoughtful in your criticism of others' writing. First-time students in our online writing courses are often surprised how much they learn, and how much they enjoy the experience.
If you have further questions, browse the Writers.com FAQ.
Our Online Writing Class Format in Detail
Most of our courses take place on an online learning platform called Wet Ink. We also offer some workshop-style courses through Zoom, which will be clearly marked in the course description. The details below are for our Wet Ink-based courses.
When you enroll in one of our online writing classes, we'll send an email confirming your participation. On the start date of the workshop, your instructor will send a welcome letter explaining how to access the Wet Ink classroom.
You'll access the entire course within Wet Ink, including:
- Reading lectures
- Starting or joining discussions
- Submitting assignments each week
- Commenting on other students’ work
- Receiving direct weekly feedback on your work from the instructor
When the course wraps up, we’ll send you a questionnaire about your experience in the course.
You won't need to be online at a particular time or day. In general, you should plan to check in with the course at least a few times each week.
Thousands of our alumni have returned to study with us again, and some have been with us since the beginning in 1995. We hope you’ll become part of the Writers.com community, too.
Questions about our online writing courses, our community, or anything else? Email us at writers@writers.com, please!
What Sets Our Online Writing Courses Apart
At Writers.com, we have 25 years of experience offering the best writing classes online. Many elements set our courses apart:
- Our instructors are gifted, experienced teachers who are writers themselves. They also care about their students and the progress they make. Any good "school" or workshop can teach you the craft of writing; we offer personal attention and inspiration as well.
- Each instructor develops his or her own courses. Unlike other online writing schools, we have no prepared, prepackaged classes randomly taught by just anyone who has the time to teach it. You know exactly who your teacher will be before you ever register, and you'll receive feedback from that teacher on your writing.
- We accept a maximum of 12 students per class in most classes. You will never be a face in the crowd in a Writers.com class.
- We take your work seriously, but we also have fun. Some of our classes are rigorous and intense. If you want to be a professional writer, you need a tough, but supportive, environment. We have that. But we also offer other classes that are a chance to experiment, learn for the sheer joy of learning, explore new ideas, and discover new pathways.
- Our classes fit into your daily life – no matter what time zone you are in.
- If you are able to visit websites, you can participate fully in our classes. The course software is simple to learn and designed for learners of all kinds across the globe.
- Writers.com is operated by a small, dedicated staff of human beings who genuinely want to help you meet your writing goals. Having a technical problem, or finding that a course isn't the right fit for you? Contact us and we'll work it out, person-to-person.
Join one of our writing courses, and experience the Writers.com difference for yourself!