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!
Online Writing Course Schedule
January
Writing Autobiographical Fiction With January 13, 2021 $315 | 8 Weeks Learn to depart from “what really happened,” and write compelling fiction from your own life experiences. |
Writing the Short Story With January 13, 2021 $360 | 10 Weeks Create new work with fresh language, universal themes, sustained mystery and memorable characters. Stimulate your imagination. |
Writing with Tarot With January 13, 2021 $315 | 8 Weeks 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. |
Creative Nonfiction and the Personal Essay With January 20, 2021 $360 | 10 Weeks Gretchen Clark pick axes her way into the volcanic marriage of real life and fiction. Weekly writing with incisive feedback. |
Humor Is The New Black! With January 20, 2021 $215 | 4 Weeks 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. |
Write Your Novel! The Workshop With Jack With January 20, 2021 $360 | 10 Weeks Get a good start on a novel in just ten weeks, or revise a novel you’ve already written. Free your imagination, move steadily ahead and count the pages! |
In Your Own Words: Transforming Life Into Memoir and Fiction With January 27, 2021 $350 | 8 Weeks 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. |
Plot Your Novel With January 27, 2021 $315 | 8 Weeks 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. |
Writing for Children: Create A Picture Book! With January 27, 2021 $260 | 6 Weeks NEW! 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! |
February
Creating the Visual Journal With February 3, 2021 $315 | 8 Weeks Go beyond narrow definitions of “journaling” to include visual images and let writing give what is seen a new voice. Surprise yourself. |
Poetic Prose: The Prose Poem With February 3, 2021 $430 | 10 weeks Explore the border between prose poetry and flash fiction. For writers of fiction, poetry, essay and memoir. |
The Next Fifty Pages of the Novel With February 3, 2021 $415 | 10 Weeks So now that you have your opening novel pages, what next? Get detailed, constructive feedback on your work-in-progress, wherever you’re at in writing it. |
Next-Level Creative Nonfiction: Elevating Essays, Memoir, Travel Writing & Literary Journalism With February 10, 2021 $360 | 10 Weeks Elevate your memoir, travel writing, literary journalism, & lyric and personal essays. |
The Craft of Poetry With February 10, 2021 $315 | 8 Weeks Poetry is alive and well. Contemporary poets can be touching, terrifying, and laugh-out-loud funny. Join us for an exploration of writing and reading poems. |
The Ongoing Fiction Workshop With February 10, 2021 $415 | 10 Weeks Many students have attended this 10-week online fiction workshop with Shelley Singer multiple times, completed novels, and come back to finish more books. |
Essentials of Character Development: How to Create Characters that Move and Breathe and Can't Stop Talking With February 10, 2021 $315 | 8 Weeks Bring your characters to life in this in-depth character development class with Gloria Kempton. |
How to Firm Up the “Mushy Middle” of Any Story With February 17, 2021 $250 | 5 Weeks Ensure a strong middle throughline for any story. Say goodbye to the “mushy middle,” and hello to stories that work. |
Mastering the Elements of Fiction With February 17, 2021 $360 | 10 Weeks In this course, you’ll work with the basic elements of fiction–the fundamentals that drive the story and determine the quality of the work. |
Using Bullet Journaling to Achieve Writing Goals With February 17, 2021 $155 | 3 weeks New! Looking to keep your writing goals organized? Make it happen in our bullet journaling course. Learn the art of the BuJo with Rudri Patel! |
Plan On It: Essential Novel Planning Workshop With February 24, 2021 $260 | 6 Weeks NEW! Set your novel up for success! In this six-week workshop, instructor Dennis Foley will help you craft a plan to handle the essential demands and choices you’ll face as you write your novel. |
The "I've Always Wanted To Write Fiction" Workshop With February 24, 2021 $250 | 5 Weeks Learn the basics of fiction writing and submit weekly writing for feedback from Shelley Singer, author of 13 novels. It’s time to start. |
March
Crafting Your Collection: Next Steps In Poetic Craft With March 3, 2021 $360 | 10 Weeks Hone your poetic craft by writing 6-7 new poems and combining them with previously-written poems to create a chapbook, or short poetry collection. |
The Art of Storytelling With March 3, 2021 $315 | 8 Weeks It’s an age-old art form—storytelling—and you can learn the craft. |
Plumbing the Past: Turning Life Experience into Poetry, Flash and Creative Non-Fiction With March 10, 2021 $250 | 4 Weeks Dig deep into personal ritual while studying narrative poets, short fiction and non-fiction authors, and food writers. |
Writing Mindfulness: Sensual World/Poetry Mind With March 10, 2021 $250 | 4 Weeks A four week class, melding the language mind with the sensual: How to turn detailed observation into a poem. With Marc Olmsted. |
Crafting the Poetry Novel for Young Adults With March 17, 2021 $300 | 5 Weeks Even if you’ve never written poetry before, you can begin the rewarding process of crafting a poetry novel for Young Adults. Is there a market for novels written in verse? Are they well received? Yes, there is, and yes, they are! |
From Writing Circle to Finished Poem: Turn Raw Writing into Poetry With March 17, 2021 $260 | 6 Weeks Gather together in a virtual writing circle, hit the mute button on your internal editor, and uncover inspiration to shape into poetry. |
Let’s Get Personal: The Art and Craft of the Personal Essay With March 17, 2021 $350 | 8 Weeks Draw inspiration and material from your life experiences or “real life” people you know to craft compelling, publishable personal essays. With author Margo Perin. |
The Watching Eye: Writing Flash Fiction With March 24, 2021 $285 | 5 Weeks Write tiny fictions while experimenting with 3rd person point of view and analyzing how that point of view affects the craft of fiction writing. With Barbara Henning. |
April
Anatomy of a Premise Line: Story and Premise Development for Writing Success With April 14, 2021 $250 | 5 Weeks 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. |
May
The Thinking Mind: Writing Flash Fiction With May 5, 2021 $285 | 5 Weeks Write tiny fictions while experimenting with 1st person point of view and analyzing how that point of view affects the craft of fiction writing. |
From Journal To Poem Or Prose: The Chronology Of Mind With May 12, 2021 $430 | 10 weeks Gather material through writing and experimenting with journaling, researching and taking notes to develop into poems or prose works. |
Private & Unscheduled Courses
These online writing classes don't currently have a next session on our calendar, but will soon. If you see a course you're interested in, use the "I'm Interested" button to let us know, and we'll follow up with you when the course is on our calendar next.
Classes marked "*Private Class" are offered one-to-one between you and the instructor. Register at any time.
Want to reach us or our instructors with questions about our online writing courses? Contact us at writers@writers.com, or visit the contact form.
*Private Class | From Journal to Poem or Prose: The Chronology Of Mind
Gather material through writing and experimenting with journaling, researching and taking notes to develop into poems or prose works.
Elevate your memoir, travel writing, literary journalism, & lyric and personal essays.
*Private Class | Private Tutoring
Gather material through writing and experimenting with journaling, researching and taking notes to develop into poems or prose works.
*Private Class | Shadow Writing
Your unconscious can drive your writing or block it. Gloria Kempton will guide you in coaxing your shadow out of hiding.
*Private Class | The Literary Essay
Explore the literary essay – from the conventional to the experimental, the journalistic to essays in verse – while writing and workshopping your own.
A Novel First Draft in 70 Days
For novelists ready to write daily and intensively to finish the first draft of their novel in ten weeks.
Voice: What is it and how do you find yours? Instructor Gloria Kempton offers feedback on assignments in this 3-week online class.
Architecture of the Creative Heart: Writing Formal Poetry
Learn how diving into form—the coherent relationship of all of a poem’s parts—can enhance your creativity and freedom as a poet.
Beyond Formula: Writing Love Scenes With Spirit, Passion, Grit And Character Truth
Write about love beyond trite sentiment and shallow fictions. Work down to the real thing: deep, powerful, destructive, exalted, fundamental.
Block Buster: Turbocharge Your Creativity with Breakneck Writing
Banish writer’s block, unearth fresh ideas, and sharpen your storytelling ability with the practice of fast, timed writing.
But What Is Your Story Really About? Finding the Core of Your Short Memoir, Story, or Personal Essay
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.
Claiming Our Stories: Autobiography, Memoir & Autobiographical Fiction
Turn your experience into fiction, autobiography, or creative memoir. Bring forward stories with a powerful truth at their core. Instructor Anya Achtenberg.
Create Story Characters Using the Enneagram
In-depth character development using an ancient personality study of human motivation–the Enneagram.
Deepening and Organizing Our Stories: Autobiography, Memoir and Autobiographical Fiction
For writers of memoir, creative nonfiction and fiction, with some experience. Particularly helpful to writers in the midst of a longer work.
Discover the World: Science and Nature Writing
Make science come alive through storytelling. Write about any area of science, nature and the environment or health and medicine.
Fiction or nonfiction? Article, short story, or how-to book? Do you want to write for children, teens, adults? There is a type of writing that is best suited for you, and the discovery process can be an adventure.
Drafty in Here: Write Your Novella in Ten Weeks
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.
Embodied Writing: Improve Your Writing with Full-Body Creativity
Have a grand time with specific physical exercises that honor your health, generate imaginative ideas, explore deeply and make your creative writing entertaining.
Embodied Writing: Somatic Practices to Improve Your Work
Have a grand time with specific physical exercises that honor your health, generate imaginative ideas, explore deeply and make your creative writing entertaining.
Experiments in Genre: Finding Creative Inspiration by Messing Up the Rules
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.
Finding the Real Story: Essential Elements of Story in Fiction and Memoir
Address the larger issues of writing story through a look at the essential elements of narrative in fiction and memoir.
Finish Your Manuscript: Next-Level Picture Book Mentorship
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.
Flash Fiction: Writing the Short-Short Story
Write 1–3-page flash fiction in this online course with Barbara Henning, drawing on classic, poetic & experimental elements. Read the form’s masters.
Food Writing: Meals And Manuscripts
Do you collect cookbooks, love to cook, or religiously read anything about food? This course is for you. With award winning writer Jennifer Billock.
From Pitch to Publication: Writing Narrative Journalism
Explore literary journalism as a powerful means to share fascinating characters, stories, and perspectives. Learn all you need to start pitching, landing, and writing reported essays and features.
Get Your Book Done Intensive! 4 Weeks to Measurable Progress
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.
Getting Started Marketing Your Work
Solve the mystery of marketing and get your work out there in front of readers in this 4-week online class taught by Instructor Gloria Kempton.
Create your blog, brand it, create engaging content and successfully promote posts. Taught by journalist, writer and photographer Jessica Festa.
How To Turn Your Blog Into A Career
From branding to search engine optimization and advertising, this course puts bloggers on the path to earning an income through their blog.
Introduction to Writing Genre Fiction
Take the whirlwind tour! Learn the conventions of eight major fiction genres, try them out, and figure out your niche.
Let It Rip: The Art of Writing Fiery Prose
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.
Manuscript Workshop: Writing For Children
Author Sarah Aronson leads this intermediate/advanced workshop on writing for children. It offers support, structure and detailed feedback on manuscripts.
Mastering the Scene: For Fiction Writers
A course for intensive practice and feedback in scene writing skills.
No More Excuses! Four Weeks to Finish and Submit Your Personal Essay or Short Memoir
Join us for this insightful four-week “get the writing done” program, give and receive thoughtful comments from your fellow writers and the instructor, and enjoy heaps of encouragement and writing wisdom along the way.
Ordinary to Extraordinary: Turning Everyday Experiences into Poetry
No experience is too small or mundane to serve as a foundation for extraordinary poetry and short fiction.
Overcome Writing Anxiety: Boost Your Storytelling Confidence in Four Short Weeks!
“Who are you to want to write?” Someone great, that’s who! Politely ask Mr. or Ms. Fear to step aside while you sign up for this fun, freeing and functional adventure.
Plotting and Outlining for the Novelist
A course covering both plotting and outlining for the novelist, with Dennis Foley.
An open-forum poetry workshop in which students’ interests will direct the nature and content of our discussions.
Roads Into Writing: Opening New Terrain In Your Work
Write like mad, read brilliant books & deepen your craft while exploring new paths to inspiration. With novelist and poet Anya Achtenberg, .
Simple Winter Sanity-Saving Writing Circles
Write your way to the finish line of 2020: 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.
Suspense Sells! Power Up Your Writing With Conflict, Tension and Emotion
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.
Tales From The Memory Palace: 6 to 250 Word Memoirs
If you want to be an in demand storyteller in the digital age, you need to get in, get out and get going. In this “short” four-week memoir writing adventure, you’ll learn to scope out, swoop down and snatch up important memories from your life then speed write them into miniature masterpieces.
The Anti-Hero's Journey for Storytellers
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.
The First Fifty Pages of the Novel
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.
The Hero's Journey For Storytellers
Structure your story and give it meaning with Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey.
Explore the literary essay – from the conventional to the experimental, the journalistic to essays in verse – while writing and workshopping your own.
Explore non-traditional and imaginative ways to tell your stories with this ten-week writing course online. Creative nonfiction teacher Gretchen Clark provides detailed feedback on weekly writing assignments that emphasize creative freedom.
The Micro-obstacles/Flow Technique
Create new work with fresh language, universal themes, sustained mystery and memorable characters. Stimulate your imagination.
Poetry began thousands of years ago and remains a living path through writing & life. Start the journey.
The Soundtrack of Your Life: Writing About Music, Memories and Mix Tapes
In a song inspired class, write several essays about the music that has moved you through life: the emotions, the relationships, the events, the outcomes.
The Wandering Heart: Tales of Connection
Wander through the rooms of your own life to discover stories of deep connection, reconnection or loss of connection and fashion your findings into stories suitable for blog posts, essays, short memoirs, short plays, scenes in screenplays, or chapters of novels.
Word Flashes & Eye Snapshots: Sketching Your Life Awake
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.
Writing Circle Workshop: Finding Community and Creativity in a Challenging Time
Write out the storm: Join supportive, friendly faces in twice-weekly virtual community writing circles.
Writing Circle Workshop: Writing for Happiness, Healing, and Health (Session 2)
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.
Writing Fiction: A Seminar for Young Writers
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.
A novel writing preparatory course for the first-time novelist.
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 PowerSchool. It's designed to be simple and usable for people without a technical background. You'll be sent instructions for joining your class in PowerSchool 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.
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!
Our Online Writing Class Format in Detail
Most of our courses take place on an online learning platform called PowerSchool Learning. We also offer some workshop-style courses through Zoom, which will be clearly marked in the course description. The details below are for our PowerSchool-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 PowerSchool classroom.
You'll access the entire course within PowerSchool, 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!