Online Short Story Writing Courses

Choosing the Best Online Short Story Writing Courses for You: 8 Things to Know

by Sean Glatch

Online short story writing courses can help you write the stories stuck in your pen. But it’s not always easy to find the right class for your writing needs. If you’re uncertain of where to begin, read more for advice on finding the best online short story writing course for you.

We’ve honed the short story writing classes at Writers.com to sharpen your writing, build community, and open new doors for your writing journey. But wherever you’re looking for an online short story writing course, consider the following advice before you enroll.

The Best Online Fiction Writing Classes: Contents

What to Know Before Taking Online Short Story Writing Courses

If you’re considering enrolling in an online short story writing course, keep the below tips in mind before you buy.

1. The Best Online Short Story Writing Courses Involve Independent Learning

In any online short story writing classes, you’re in charge of your learning. Your course will typically include a mix of readings, lecture material, and assignments, but the more work you put into your course, the more you’ll get out of it.

This isn’t to say you need to be a highly-motivated self-starter. But online short story writing courses aren’t the same as the classes you took in high school or college. Many of them don’t come with grades or certificates, so the goal is simply to learn what you need.

In any online short story writing class, you can expect the following:

• A weekly or regularly scheduled craft lecture that offers in-depth advice on the craft of good fiction.
• A weekly or regularly scheduled writing prompt, typically inspired by the lecture.
• Workshopping opportunities to give and receive feedback on your writing submissions.
• Readings that help you explore new possibilities for your own short story writing.

Don’t put the expectations of perfection on yourself, but do give yourself the time and space to engage deeply and thoughtfully with your online short story writing courses.

2. The Best Online Short Story Writing Courses Are a Lot of Work—and a Lot of Fun

We think that the best online short story writing courses make the learning enjoyable. We all come to these classes because we love the written word, the craft of fiction, and the possibilities of narrative. The class you take should hone that love simply by making the craft fun.

This isn’t to say that the craft of writing isn’t work. We just think the work should be fun! Showing up to do the work often includes:

• Reading the course lectures and assignments—and mining them for inspiration towards your own work. (See: reading like a writer.)
• Offering feedback and suggestions on the work of other students, which is a great way of thinking through your own ideas about successful short stories.
• Learning widely and reading voraciously, including the kinds of short stories you might not be trying to write. There is something to be learned from everything.
• Being open to the feedback you receive—and also knowing when not to implement some of the feedback you get.

The point is to give yourself the time, space, and dedication to sharpen your craft, and to give in to the pleasure that the craft of short fiction affords. Online short story writing courses are a great place to do this!

3. The Best Online Short Story Writing Courses Have You Read As Much As You Write

You can’t write good fiction without reading good fiction, too. The best online short story writing courses introduce you to great fiction, from which you can find new ideas and discover the possibilities of the craft.

It might seem counterintuitive to take a writing course just so you can read. But writers write their best work when standing on the shoulders of giants. What we appreciate most in the classes we’ve taken is what the readings have unlocked in our own creativity.

Don’t ignore the readings in your courses, even if what you really want to do is write. You might find that you can’t write what you need to write until you read what you need to read.

4. In the Best Online Short Story Writing Courses, There is No Single Standard of “Good Writing”

There is no singular way to write good short stories. In other words, the best online short story writing courses don’t tell you what to write or how to write it—they empower you to use your own voice.

In fact, dispel any notion of “good” or “bad” when it comes to the craft of short story writing. While there are general rules for how to make a story work, there are always examples of stories that break those rules, and break them well. Additionally, your online short story writing class serves to help you enhance and discover your work, not to change your voice and identity as a writer.

Also, don’t worry too much about how “good” or “bad” any other student’s writing is. We all come to classes to improve our work. Workshopping helps us identify how to make our stories better, but playing the comparison game won’t help you. We are all on our own writing journeys, and “good” more an arbitrary matter of taste than anything else.

5. The Best Online Short Story Writing Courses Include Constructive Criticism on Your Work

What draws so many writers to online short story writing classes is the feedback they receive on their work. Having a published, successful writer offer their insights on your writing can help you figure out what your story still needs to be finished.

Of course, there’s such a thing as bad or unhelpful feedback. In our experience, constructive criticism on your work looks like:

• Acknowledging the story’s strengths, so you know what to build on and preserve in the writing.
• Focusing on opportunities for development, as opposed to weaknesses—workshopping is about finding doorways, not about tearing down “bad” writing.
• Actionable feedback that guides you through how to revise the work, rather than merely gives a list of positives and negatives.
• Comparisons to other existing short stories, which will further inform and inspire the work you are trying to write.

If you don’t receive feedback that includes any of these elements, then it might not be feedback that has your best interests at heart. Again, we find that, in the best online short story writing classes, the instructor helps you hone your voice—rather than giving you a voice to write with.

And, don’t be scared of receiving constructive criticism. It can be anxiety-inducing to have someone tell you “what’s wrong” with your work, but really, workshop is not about right and wrong, good and bad, or artistic and derivative—it’s about creating new doorways that help you discover and finetune your writing.

6. Leave Your Ego at the Door in Your Online Short Story Writing Courses

Part of why feedback is scary is because it feels personal. If something is wrong with the writing, that means there is something wrong with me, or so the feeling goes. Alternately, there are writers who go into workshop expecting only praise for their work, and end up devastated at the slightest critique.

Both mindsets make it hard to properly benefit from your online short story writing courses. No matter how close we feel to our work, workshop is an opportunity to hear perspective from other writers about how the work lands on the reader. If we want to be successful writers, we have to know how our work is being received.

That’s not to say we have to follow every piece of feedback we receive. Part of honing your craft is knowing when to listen to criticism, and when to follow your own instincts. But our own egos often get in the way of this knowledge, as we create a psychic barrier between ourselves and what we need to hear so that we don’t feel hurt by feedback.

There is certainly such a thing as unhelpful feedback. But when you enter a workshop space, try to listen to the feedback you receive before you argue with it. There is even something to be learned from feedback you disagree with, as it tells you how people are reading your story—even if they read it the wrong way.

7. Research the Instructor Before You Enroll in Online Short Story Writing Classes

It’s a good practice to know who your instructor is before you enroll in any online short story writing course. The teachers of fiction craft vary widely in genre, philosophy, experience, and you want to know that you respect the work of the instructor before you learn from them.

Before you enroll, research the following:

• What kind of writing has the instructor published? (And: does their writing make you want to learn from them?)
• What is the instructor’s professional background—where did they learn their craft, where have they published, are they known and respected in the writing world?
• Does the instructor have experience specifically working within the genre / style of fiction you want to write?
• Has the instructor taught elsewhere, and if so, how do other students review their experiences?

If you can’t find those answers, try to message the instructor directly! Most instructors have public contact pages and websites, and many creative writing schools also offer ways to contact their instructors.

8. The Best Online Short Story Writing Courses Build Community

While the main goal of any writing class is to help you improve your craft, a secondary goal should be to build community with your fellow students.

Community is often what sustains us as writers. When the writing life gets lonely, or hard, or when we lack creativity and inspiration, our communities help drive and motivate us to keep returning to the page.

We’ve found that the best online short story writing courses don’t just help you write, but they help sustain your writing life by building community. The students in these classes often form relationships that last long after the final workshop, and we’ve seen students go on to form their own writing groups and critique circles after the course has ended.

These communities form naturally when the classroom is an open, encouraging, and communal space. While not all classes go on to create long-term communities, it’s a good sign when students come away as friends and creative peers.

Take an Online Short Story Writing Course at Writers.com

We think we offer some of the best online short story writing courses on the internet. Take a look at our upcoming short story classes, which help instruct writers of all genres, backgrounds, and experiences in the craft of great short story writing.