Online Short Story Writing Courses

Voice: What is it and how do you find yours? Instructor Gloria Kempton offers feedback on assignments in this 3-week online class.

Write about love beyond trite sentiment and shallow fictions. Work down to the real thing: deep, powerful, destructive, exalted, fundamental.

Banish writer’s block, unearth fresh ideas, and sharpen your storytelling ability with the practice of fast, timed writing.

Take a four-week writing adventure deep into the core of your story, to find the true theme of your personal essay, short story, or short memoir.

Turn your experience into fiction, autobiography, or creative memoir. Bring forward stories with a powerful truth at their core. Instructor Anya Achtenberg.

In-depth character development using an ancient personality study of human motivation–the Enneagram.

For writers of memoir, creative nonfiction and fiction, with some experience. Particularly helpful to writers in the midst of a longer work.

Write the entire first draft of a novella-length story, with plenty of feedback from stage to stage, and finish with a plan for revising toward a publishable manuscript.

Have a grand time with specific physical exercises that honor your health, generate imaginative ideas, explore deeply and make your creative writing entertaining.

Have a grand time with specific physical exercises that honor your health, generate imaginative ideas, explore deeply and make your creative writing entertaining.

Bring your characters to life in this in-depth character development class with Gloria Kempton.

Can you translate the movement of a dance into a poem? What happens when you write a story in the form of a multiple-choice quiz? Learn to take your work in rich and unexpected new directions by subverting and blending genre conventions.

In this fun, transformative four-week program, get tips and techniques to bring out your courage to publish a story in print or online.

Address the larger issues of writing story through a look at the essential elements of narrative in fiction and memoir.

During this six week program, you will work closely one-on-one with Kelly to finalize, refine, and polish your picture book into a manuscript ready to submit for publication or representation.

The holiday season is the best time to get the ball rolling on your book. Join us if you really want to get your book into the world.

Ready to add a splash of fun to your writing life? Join us for a four-week humor writing class. We’ll read. We’ll laugh. We’ll write. We’ll experiment.

Want to write about nature like Robert Frost, Henry David Thoreau, or Annie Dillard? Join us for this six week nature writing course.

Learn how to draw inspiration and material from your life experiences or those of people you know, or want to know, to craft compelling, publishable memoirs, personal essays, autobiographical novels and short stories, and/or narrative poetry.

What makes a good fiction story? Learn how to write compelling stories in this eight-week intro to fiction course, with Donna Levin.

Take the whirlwind tour! Learn the conventions of eight major fiction genres, try them out, and figure out your niche.

You’ll write prose that gets folks so hot and bothered they won’t be able to put it down, even if it isn’t about sex.

Instructor Sarah Aronson welcomes all writers who are working on manuscripts for kids and teens. This advanced workshop will focus entirely on the participants’ own work in progress.

Author Sarah Aronson leads this intermediate/advanced workshop on writing for children. It offers support, structure and detailed feedback on manuscripts.

A course for intensive practice and feedback in scene writing skills.

Dig deep into personal ritual while studying narrative poets, short fiction and non-fiction authors, and food writers.

Write like mad, read brilliant books & deepen your craft while exploring new paths to inspiration. With novelist and poet Anya Achtenberg, .

As a prison volunteer for 20 years, Gloria Kempton has met many anti-heroes. In this course, you’ll receive feedback on your story antagonists.

It’s an age-old art form—storytelling—and you can learn the craft.

Gather material through writing and experimenting with journaling, researching and taking notes to develop into poems or prose works.

Create new work with fresh language, universal themes, sustained mystery and memorable characters. Stimulate your imagination.

For any writer wanting to root writing in vision and vision in the body: for poetry, fiction, essay, memoir & pleasure.

Join Susan in two writing circles each week: intimate spaces for writers to free-write together, saying yes to whatever shows up, followed by group read-arounds. These writing sessions are spontaneous, intimate, freeing, and transformative.

Expressive writing can be a powerful elixir for what ails you. Learn and practice tools for writing expressively, including two virtual writing circles each week, turn raw writing into poetry or prose, and come away with a better understanding of how writing can lead toward wellness.

Join our writing circle to form a writing community, find clarity in your words, and turn your untamed free-writes into poetry and/or prose.

For young writers (ages 10-15) who want to learn more about creating their own stories: Four video seminars and direct one-to-one coaching with Sarah Aronson!

If you turn on to the absurd in life—to the ironic, edgy, bizarre, and grotesque—this is the course for you. Learn the key techniques of writing absurdist fiction, dark fiction, and satire.

Create new work with fresh language, universal themes, sustained mystery and memorable characters. Stimulate your imagination.

Jump-start your creative juices, and explore a world of divination, symbolism, and imagery right at your fingertips: learn short story and novel writing through Tarot.