how to do a creative writing workshop

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How to Lead a Creative Writing Workshop

A writing workshop has been described as a class that teaches itself. At their best, they can create an experience that exceeds everyone’s expectations – including the leader’s! Here’s how to give your next workshop the best chance of making that happen.   

As writers who have both attended and conducted writing workshops, we’ve seen firsthand how they can work well – and how they can fall apart. Every writing workshop is unique, and there is no magical formula to ensure success. But there are lots of things you can do to set up the session to have the best chance of generating some truly creative magic.

So much about your workshop’s success depends on the participants and how they work with each other as well as the exercises they are given. Even as the workshop leader, you won’t have complete control over these variables. But you can do your best to provide the right environment, ideas and support for the creative spark to ignite.

Choose a Conducive Venue

Getting the setting for the workshop right, if it’s not already determined as part of another event, is essential. You want a space that’s easy for people to find, with practicalities like parking, accommodations and refreshments covered. At the same time, it needs to be a quiet, self-contained space where you and your fellow creative writers won’t be disturbed.

If you are running the workshop to generate revenue, you may need to factor in costs like venue rental and hiring extra help. Training providers and creative companies will often be willing to rent out an unused meeting room at a reasonable rate, and libraries or even church halls can make good locations, too. So it’s a good idea to ask around before springing for an option that will look very swish, but will erode your profits.

Set Expectations

Give participants a good idea of what to expect before they arrive at the workshop. Let them know that they’ll be asked to write something during the session, and that their writing will be discussed in a nonjudgmental way by the group.

It’s important to communicate this up front, because some writers – however experienced – may be uncomfortable with the idea of writing spontaneously and sharing in a group setting. The writers that gain the most from workshops are likely to be those that are ready to take on a challenge and to push beyond their comfort zones in the hopes of developing their craft.

Lock Down the Practicalities

Inform participants about the length and overall structure of the session. A decent length of time per session is about two hours, typically broken down into an hour of writing followed by another hour of reading and feedback. Make sure the time and location are both clearly communicated beforehand, and that you have confirmation of the number of writers who will be attending.

In terms of numbers, five is probably about the ideal group size for this kind of workshop and timeframe. Many more than that, and there is the risk of running out of time before everyone’s had a chance to receive feedback on their work. Less than four participants, and it can start to feel a bit too intense, and lacking in varied opinions.

People sometimes forget to bring writing materials, too, so make sure you have a stock of spare pens and pads handy.

How to Structure Your Workshop

There are a number of different ways to structure a workshop, but whichever approach you use, don’t brief participants on the specific exercises you intend to give them. It’s vital that they arrive without any preconceptions about what they will try to write.

Warm-up and Rapport

Before starting any exercise, it helps to have a way to break the ice and generate a bit of group rapport, especially as some attendees may be strangers to each other and will understandably feel a little nervous about diving in.

A simple way to do this is to get the group to pair off and chat briefly about why they’ve come to the workshop and what sort of writing they do. Then, you bring everyone back together and ask each person to introduce not themselves, but whomever he or she talked to. Inevitably, the subject of each intro will want to chip in and clarify or supplement a few facts, and in this way people warm up and start interacting more freely.

From there, it’s straight into the exercise section!

The Single-exercise Approach: Pros and Cons

We’ve attended writing workshops where, after a brief introduction, everyone launches straight into a single, hour-long exercise. This approach has both benefits and drawbacks.

The main benefit is that it gives participants the time to attempt something ambitious and unconstrained. It’s comforting to know that you can always abandon your piece if it isn’t working, and still be able to produce something halfway decent by the end of the session.

The drawbacks are that, firstly, you’ve barely taken off your coat and uncapped your pen (or fired up your laptop) and you’re immediately expected to be creative – often the mind can freeze in such situations. Secondly, if you’re not inspired by the exercise you’ve been given, you’re basically stuck. So, this can be quite the risky approach, and we’d advise breaking up the writing part of the workshop into a number of different exercises to take some of the pressure off your participants.

The Multi-exercise Approach

A more common approach in writing workshops is for participants to begin with a short and simple warm-up exercise to get the creative juices flowing. This could be, for example, spending a minute writing down all the sounds they can hear. They could then extend this to imagine themselves in a forest or on a busy street and write down what they think they could hear now that they’ve extended the setting.

Another simple exercise to get people in the writing mood would be to ask them to use a couple hundred words to describe a recent meal, their journey to the workshop, or a room in their house or a view from a window. For an extra challenge, tell them they have to do it without using the word “I.”

These limited and circumscribed exercises can be followed by a more open kind of writing challenge, such as:

• Write a story in which each sentence begins with a different letter of the alphabet
• Write a letter to your younger self
• Think of someone you know well and write a scene from his or her perspective

Other classic workshop exercises require some preparatory work on the leader’s part. You might, for example, provide a list of odd and mismatched words and ask the participants to write a story containing all of them. Or, you might hand around images cut out from a magazine as inspiration for a story. There are lots of other weird and wonderful prompts you could draw on here, too.

The Cumulative Approach

Personally, we prefer to structure writing exercises so that the results flow into one another and contribute to, and help shape, a larger story.

For example, you might start off by inviting participants to select one object out of a variety: a hat, a pair of shoes, an umbrella, a pair of glasses, a walking stick, a wristwatch, etc. They would then be asked to write a paragraph describing their chosen object in detail. In the second exercise, the challenge is to describe the person who owns or regularly uses the object, including that person’s personality and life story. The next task is to describe the person’s relationship with the object – how it was acquired, why it’s important to the owner, how it’s used, how it can be personalized, and how it’s changed its owner.

Finally, after briefly discussing what the participants have developed so far, they are asked to begin a story featuring the person and the object. This could be the origin story of how the two first came in contact, a moment of triumph or pride when the object helped the owner achieve something, a significant event when the object first became important, or a moment of crisis or loss. With this approach, the exercises feed naturally into one other, with each adding to the next, giving writers momentum, so that when it comes to the final exercise, they have fewer doubts about the stories they wish to write.

The Feedback Session: Balancing Praise and Critique

When the writing part of the workshop is over, the leader will invite participants to read out some or all of what they have written. No one should feel compelled to read – although it might be worth gently reminding reluctant participants that a big part of the value of any workshop is the feedback one receives from one’s peers.

The leader usually facilitates the discussion that follows a reading by offering his or her views, which should always be positive and constructive to set the right tone. Everything written in the pressure cooker environment of a workshop is deserving of sincere and wholehearted praise, after all. We praise primarily to show that we understand what the writer intended and can appreciate the work from the writer’s perspective, on his or her terms.

When it comes to the critique part of the workshop, you have to be careful how you express things. Avoid speaking in definitive or objective terms (“this is bad writing”) and refer instead to aspects that didn’t work for you as a reader, or what the writer might expand on, with suggestions of things he or she might do differently or try in the future.

It’s important that the leader doesn’t dominate the feedback session, but also encourages the other participants to give their responses to the readings. The leader’s main role, after offering an informed opinion, is to keep the discussion positive and on-topic, to challenge harsh or unfair criticisms, and to sum up at the end. The leader should also keep an eye on the clock to ensure that discussions don’t run on too long and everyone gets a fair share of feedback time. Once everyone has shared his or her thoughts on the readings, or there is no more time left for the workshop, the leader should bring the session to a close with a few final summarizing remarks.

Watch the Benefits Emerge

Often the real benefit of a workshop will only become apparent after the fact. The exercises, along with the feedback, may have sown the seeds of a potential story, or maybe even a novel. The experience might encourage a participant to work on and improve an aspect of his or her technique. The exercises themselves can be reused or adapted as writing prompts in the future.

In short, no one can be sure exactly what will be gained from a creative writing workshop until jumping in and doing one! The simple act of writing spontaneously and then discussing the results will always throw out surprises, and the leader is likely to learn as much, if not more, than the participants.

About the author

Alex Woolf and Dan Brotzel are co-authors of a new comic novel, Kitten on a Fatberg (Unbound). As a reader of this website, you can pre-order Kitten on a Fatberg for a 10% discount – simply quote promo code KITTEN10.

Alex has written over 100 books for children and adults, published by the likes of OUP, Ladybird, and Heinemann and Watts.

Dan Brotzel

Dan Brotzel is the winner of the latest Riptide Journal short story competition, was runner-up in the 2019 Leicester Writes contest, and was highly commended in the Manchester Writing School competition 2018. Other competition shortlists include Flash500, Sunderland University/Waterstones, To Hull and Back, Wimbledon BookFest, Fish, Dorset Writers Award and Retreat West. He has words in places like Pithead Chapel, Ellipsis, Reflex Fiction, Cabinet of Heed, Bending Genres, The Esthetic Apostle, Spelk, Ginger Collect, and Fiction Pool. His first collection of short stories, Hotel du Jack, will be published early 2020. He is also co-author of a comic novel, Kitten on a Fatberg, now available to pre-order at Unbound (discount code Kitten10).

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10 Essential Lessons You’ll Learn in a Creative Writing Workshop

by Melissa Donovan | Jul 11, 2023 | Creative Writing | 9 comments

What can you learn in a creative writing workshop?

When I look back over all my years of formal education, from preschool through college, only a few classes stand out as truly educational in a life-changing way.

In sixth grade, we did a section on space, which fascinated me. I retained a lot of what I learned. Later, I took astronomy and learned even more about the universe. A class on women writers exposed me to a whole world of literature I didn’t know existed. And two writing workshops (poetry and creative writing) put me on the path to becoming a professional writer.

The main difference between a regular class and a workshop is that a workshop is interactive. You work together with your fellow students, critiquing each other’s work, asking questions, and exchanging insights. Whatever you can learn from a single instructor is multiplied by all the knowledge and wisdom you gain by sharing ideas with a roomful of your peers.

What You Can Learn from a Creative Writing Workshop

2. Find out what your writing strengths are. The best part about receiving critiques from your peers is that they tell you what you’re doing right, which is reassuring. When you know that your writing skills have a solid foundation, it’s easier to accept that you still have work to do.

3. Accept the weaknesses in your writing. No matter how good your writing is now, there are things you can do to improve it. When ten of your classmates agree that certain elements in your prose need touching up or that you need to hit the grammar books, all you can do is accept it and dig your heels in.

4. Learn to handle critiques of your work. The first few critiques might be a bit rough, but once you see how all the suggestions make your writing better, you’ll start looking forward to them. You’ll learn how to separate yourself from your work, and you’ll be able to not only handle but actually embrace (and look forward to) critiques. This will also prepare you for real-world critics and their reviews.

5. Help others improve their work. When other writers put your suggestions into action or express appreciation for your recommendations and then tell you that your feedback helped them improve their writing, it feels good, especially when the arrangement is reciprocal.

6. Meet people who share your passion. There’s nothing like sitting in a room surrounded by people who are just as excited about writing as you are. It’s not only inspiring, it’s comforting. Plus, it’s a great opportunity to meet like-minded people, some of whom may become lifelong friends, writing partners, or your future writing group.

7. Improve your writing. This, of course, is the main reason most people take a creative writing workshop. The ultimate goal is to become a better writer , and a workshop will definitely do the trick. You’ll also put a lot more effort into everything you write because you know it will be scrutinized, and this builds excellent writing habits .

8. Adopt new writing techniques. Between the instructor and your peers, you’ll discover all kinds of interesting new writing tools and techniques, often simply through the course of discussion as well as through observing everyone’s work.

9. Get access to a mentor. The person running the workshop should be knowledgeable and experienced in the world of writing. Maybe the instructor is a published author, or maybe it’s someone who’s worked as an agent, editor, or publisher. This access to a mentor is priceless. Take advantage of it!

10. Gain experience and get a lot of creative writing practice. This is one of the most valuable benefits of a creative writing workshop. When writers work on their own, they tend to procrastinate, get distracted, and generally don’t finish most of the projects they start. But in a workshop, you’re forced to get it done. This gives you lots of great experience and practice, and it also builds good writing habits.

Thinking About Taking a Creative Writing Workshop?

I definitely recommend taking a creative writing workshop if you can find a good one that suits your schedule, budget, and writing needs. If you’ve already taken a creative writing workshop or class, share your experiences by leaving a comment. Did you learn or gain anything? Would you do it again?

You have spoken along these lines before, Melissa, and this entry is, as all your posts, fascinating and carries a great deal of sense. However, and I know I am repeating myself, I am quite unable to allow others to trample over my work, however poor it is and however noble their (expressed) motives.

I cannot help but think of the vast number of ‘real’ writers, men and women who would not have entertained the thought that writing could be learned, like arithmetic, in a classroom.

I am a poor writer and have come to accept the fact I shall always be a poor writer; it is my belief that some things – like arithmetic – can be ‘brought to heel’ by sheer hatd work, while others, like music, painting and writing, will remain ever beyond the reach of some.

Further, I have seen very promising young tennis players taken up by organisations such as the LTA and coached, every shred of flair and originality brutally ‘ironed out’ of them, and my fear is that, for many of us, attending a writer’s workshop would be a similarly dulling experience.

I also realise, however, that there are those of a temperament to survive – and evn thrive in such conditions. Sadly, I am not one of them.

Again, my thanks for a fascinating and informative blog and may it go on to even greater success, but I think you should make it clear that not everyone who has pretensions of being a writer will see their dream come true.

I believe anyone can become a writer. It starts with believing in yourself. I would add that successful authors demonstrate a range of writing skills. Even a “poor writer” (which you are not) can eke out a career in writing. I’ve seen it done. The only way to be sure you will never succeed is to never try.

Writing can be intended for a wide audience but it’s reason for being is that the writer cannot bear not to write. Whether you are a Eudora Welty, basking in prayers se or an Ethel Jackson whose writing fills notebooks only she has seen, your work has much value

Our local university has leisure learning classes that are workshops. We not only get feedback on our work, but we also learn how to workshop a piece, looking parts of the writing process with a discerning eye. The instructors keep the focus on the work, not the author. It’s so helpful for all the reasons you mentioned, but also to learn how to look constructively at my own work before anyone else ever reads it. Being inspired by fellow writers talking about writing is my favorite part. I’m sorry that opsimath feels that way. Whose to say what’s poor writing or good writing? Of course, some is obvious, and the above comment isn’t bad writing. I found it to be well-crafted and conveyed what the author intended. Not everybody is Stephen King or F.Scott Fitzgerald, and there are some who would argue even they aren’t good writers. I had the fear that I would lose myself in critique, but even in that it’s a good exercise. One of my best lessons is that no matter what others said, it’s still my writing. I can choose to take their advice or not. Workshops are only helpful when the focus is on the work, though. It’s a criitique, not a criticism. I’ve been in bad ones and they can hurt more than help. I got out of them quick.

Yes! Everything you said is spot-on. Your experiences in workshop give all of us reason to feel optimistic about finding good writing workshops and the benefits that we’ll gain from them. Thanks so much for sharing your experience. I hope it inspires others to take the plunge and try workshopping for themselves.

You have talked thusly some time recently, Melissa, and this section is, as every one of your posts, interesting and conveys a lot of sense. On the other hand, and I know I am rehashing myself, I am very not able to permit others to trample over my work, however poor it is and however honorable their (communicated) thought processes.

I really want to think about the incomprehensible number of “genuine” essayists, men and ladies who might not have entertained the prospect that written work could be learned, similar to math, in a classroom.

I am a poor essayist and now acknowledge the actuality I should dependably be a poor author; it is my conviction that a few things – like math – can be ‘conveyed to heel’ by sheer hatd work, while others, similar to music, painting and composing, will remain ever past the compass of some.

Further, I have seen extremely encouraging youthful tennis players taken up by associations, for example, the LTA and instructed, each shred of energy and innovation mercilessly ‘resolved’ of them, and my trepidation is that, for a significant number of us, going to an author’s workshop would be an also dulling knowle

Hi Shamit. Receiving feedback and critiques is not the same as people trampling all over your work. A good critique is designed to make your writing better. If you want to be a better writer, you can certainly work toward that. It’s your choice. There are people who have a natural talent for writing. However, great writing requires a lot of different skills (grammar, storytelling, word-craft, etc.). Even the most talented writers will find some area of the craft where they need to learn skills they don’t possess. The idea that writing can’t be learned is simply not true, as evidenced by thousands upon thousands of people who worked hard to learn the craft and then became successful. The myth that talent is a requirement is an unfortunate one.

A writer is someone who writes. However, the object of writing is not necessarily to get published or make a living by writing. Read, for example, the notebooks of Thomas Edison. One of the best writers I knew was my grandmother, who maintained weekly correspondence with seven high school girlfriends for over 50 years.

That’s true, Ann. People write for many reasons and not only for professional purposes.

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How to teach creative writing even if you’ve never done any yourself

A successful writing workshop depends on respect, which is a two-way street, observes Toby Litt. Refrain from sneering at bad writing and offer praise to offset the critiques

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Let’s say you’re an English academic. English literature. A medievalist. And at very late notice you’ve been asked to run a workshop for a creative writing colleague who has just won a literary prize and needs to go and collect it, in Bremen. Or has just tested positive for Covid. You have three hours to prepare. This is for you.  

As part of my PGCE training , I did a teaching observation on a class taught by a fellow academic, and she did the same for me.  Her class was on the history of art. It was a conventional lecture with PowerPoint. Bullet points, questions at the end.  My class was a conventional creative writing workshop. Student stories submitted, discussed.

After her students all filed out, the first thing I said to her was: “That was so interesting. I learned a lot.”

After my students had all filed out, the first thing she said to me was: “That isn’t teaching, it’s more like…ego-management.”  

She was right.

Ego management is a perfect description; and a lot of how a creative writing workshop works or doesn’t work depends on the students’ respect or lack of respect for the tutor.  If the tutor has published lots of books, or a few successful books, they will get respect – for the first few minutes, anyway. The students will assume this person is worth listening to, because they’ve fulfilled the students’ ambition: to be known as a writer.

If you don’t have this publication record (prizes help, too), then you will have to earn the workshop’s respect another way.

Over the course of a few weeks, you can gain respect just by being a good, attentive tutor, as you are in an English seminar. Within two or three workshops, you can do this by managing their individual egos amusingly or tactfully. But if you haven’t got that much time – if you just have to walk into the classroom and start running a discussion on their short stories – then you’ll have to be more direct.

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Most of all you can earn the respect of the workshop group by having read more than they have, and by putting that lifetime’s reading immediately and practically to their use.  You and your knowledge are there for them, and you’re starting from where they start. Today, on this page, in this sentence. This might seem obvious, but it’s often not how literature is taught.

It’s likely that where you usually start is, say, the Penguin edition of Margery Kempe rather than, say, an Epic Tale of Sword and Sorcery featuring Ninja Squirrels Who Can Fly .

What students particularly respond to is your knowledge and love of the genre they themselves are writing. And if that doesn’t yet include Ninja squirrels, it does (because you’re a medievalist) include dream visions, battles between good and evil, fantasies of flight and basic story structures.

If you know where a student’s coming from – that they adore Sally Rooney or W. G. Sebald or Neil Gaiman – and you display knowledge of and respect for that writer, you will go up in that student’s estimation. Even if they don’t immediately take to you personally, they will feel reassured that you’re not lazily misreading or showing disdain for them or their work.  

Because of this, it is absolutely essential that you never slag off any published writers when speaking in a workshop.  Quite possibly, one of these “bad”  writers was what got a student into reading in the first place.

Among the first long books I ever read were Jeffrey Archer’s Kane and Abel and R. F. Delderfield’s Diana . In both cases, I enjoyed them and was proud of myself for finishing so many pages. If an authority figure had sneered at them, and by implication sneered at me for liking them, and done this in front of other people, I might have been done with reading forever.

With every writer that is mentioned in the workshop, you should focus on what they are good at and what can be learned from them. Archer is very skilled at getting the reader to keep turning the pages by use of big, catchy, high-stakes plots. Delderfield makes the reader care a great deal about the emotional life of the main character. How? Well, let’s look at how you’re doing it in your story…

No one ever became a better writer by sneering at other writers.

I’d suggest that the best view to take, in or out of a workshop, is that there’s no such thing as bad writing, only inappropriate or misplaced writing.

So when you start the discussion about a student’s story, ask the group what they thought it was doing right. What is already working? Then someone will say “but…” and you can take it from there. Don’t let the first student who speaks turn the tenor of the conversation to criticism.

Before the workshop, you should closely read each story, so as to identify at least three things to praise. Some neat characterisation here, some real emotional depth there or, as a last resort, the pacing and energy.  Just as with written feedback, a workshop discussion of a story should be a sandwich. Begin and end with enough praise to help the student assimilate the critique in between.

Toby Litt is an associate professor of creative writing at the University of Southampton. His latest book is A Writer’s Diary (Gallery Beggar Press, 2023).

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How to Run a Writing Workshop

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Participating in a writing workshop can be one of the most rewarding, and frightening, experiences of your writing career. A writer’s workshop is a chance for authors to learn from each other through receiving and giving critiques. A successful writer’s workshop will provide a supportive environment for developing one’s skills. This article explores how to run a writing workshop and make it a success.

What is a writing workshop?

A writer’s workshop is a collaborative environment where participants have a chance to create one or several pieces of work on a theme. The participants then get to critique others on their work and have their writing critiqued, too. One of the challenges of a writer’s workshop is that writers are told not to take the comments personally, but that is a difficult challenge for many because we are always intimately connected to the work we produce. A good writer’s workshop facilitator will make sure that all criticism is taken in the right way and in a way that encourages growth in the craft.

Why should I hold a workshop?

Writer’s workshops help create an environment where writers can see their work through a reader’s eyes. The reason for holding one might seem to be to help others, but the facilitator will often gain as much as everyone else when it comes to practical ways to improve their work. Usually, one thinks about creative writing when they think about a workshop, but you can hold a workshop for any other type of writers, such as bloggers, copywriters, nonfiction writers, or any other niche.

One of the challenges that almost any writer faces is that we tend to work in a vacuum. We create our work, publish it, and then wait to see if anyone buys it, clicks on it, or shares it. If our pieces are not performing the way we would like, or if we simply want to get better at what we do, we often lack insight into why our piece worked or did not work.

A writer’s workshop gives you a rare chance to get to see your work as your audience does. What’s more, they are a tool for fostering community among writers of the same type of work. You can share secrets, tips, challenges, and a few laughs. Receiving this type of honest criticism and feedback of your work can be intimidating, but knowing that everyone else in the room has the same feeling can help to ease the process a bit. After a few times, it becomes easy.

Components and Frameworks

Most writing workshops seem to follow a similar framework and structure. Here are some examples of how to run a writing workshop. The first thing you need is a list of good prompts that will challenge participants and help them grow. Some workshops for authors have participants submit something they are already working on, such as a short story or chapter of a book. In the latter case, you need to give participants lead time to prepare the work.

When it comes time for the workshop to begin, you can open by letting your audience know why you have something valuable to contribute. You do not have to be a best-selling author or anything of the sort. All you need to do is simply state your credentials, such as the number of years you have been writing or how many works you have written. It is not necessary to rattle off a long list of degrees and certifications because, in the writing business, it is your work that counts.

The second tip for your workshop is to make sure you establish clear goals and have some type of introduction that lets your audience know what to expect. Of course, you will want to start out with the information that you have learned from your writing career, but be sure to break it up with visuals and short activities. Your audience wants to do more than hear you talk or look at a wall of words in front of them. Make it engaging, and get to the meat of the workshop, which is the writing and feedback.

Participating and Engaging

The most important component of the workshop is the ability of participants to ask questions and engage with each other. It is not a lecture, so you should encourage interaction with you and with other participants. When it comes time for critique, it should be obvious that people should be nice and provide helpful advice, but this is not always a skill that everyone has mastered. One pro tip is that if you hear someone stating something in a way that is not helpful or that might be hurtful, you can try to rephrase the key points of what they have to say and restate it in a way that is positive and affirming.

As a facilitator, you should also participate as much as possible by sharing your own work and inviting critique. Also remember to keep sharing tips, from how to find a literary agent to how a thesaurus can improve your writing . Another tip: if it seems like the person giving the critique missed the point, don’t be afraid to break in and ask the author what his or her intent was in the piece. This can clear up quite a bit of confusion on everyone’s part.

One of the most common challenges new writers face is a lack of variety in their work. Our speech patterns are developed from early childhood, and our old habits can be our worst pitfall as a writer. If you feel like you are just rehashing the same ideas and structure, a writing workshop can help break you out of your daily grind.

Online Version

You might be thinking, is it possible to have an online writing workshop? If you know how to run a writing workshop, the answer to this is absolutely. People do it all the time. In today’s world, it is entirely possible to have a successful writing workshop online using web conferencing software. Webinar software can help you create an experience that is just as engaging, if not more so, than holding it in a physical location.

Participants can join from the comfort of their own homes, and this can encourage participation. This takes away the element of reading your work in an unfamiliar environment to a room full of strangers. Also, you can screen share and add visuals that might take more technical skill when you are using standard audio-visual equipment. A webinar workshop can add depth to the experience that face-to-face workshops might not be able to do. You still get peer feedback, only participants can work from the space where they do most of their work, which means they are more likely to transfer the skills learned into their daily writing practice.

Wrapping it Up

Now, you know how to run a writing workshop and make it a success. Writing workshops can be a lot of fun if you approach them with the right attitude. Learning to take helpful criticism is humbling, but it also offers the greatest opportunity for growth and mentorship. If you have been writing for some time, there is no reason why you should not plan to hold a writing workshop, either in person or as a webinar.

Follower of Jesus. Husband. Father. Founder of InspireFirst and Nao Media.

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How to Lead a Stand-Out Writing Workshop

Krystal N. Craiker

We’ve all been there. You’re excited about a particular workshop or breakout session. You’ve got your pen ready to take notes in your favorite notebook. But ten minutes in, your mind is somewhere else. What time is lunch? Did I remember to feed the cat this morning? I wonder where the presenter got her shoes?

Writing workshops can be chock full of valuable information, but if that information is not delivered in an engaging way, no one will get anything out of it. Time is our most precious resource, and there’s nothing worse than wasting someone’s time.

Leading lectures, workshops, and classes are a great way to diversify your writer’s portfolio. It’s a way to get your name out there and make connections. Speaking events are another way to make money. How do you ensure that you are leading a workshop that people will both enjoy and find valuable? I have seven tips for leading a great workshop.

1. Get Personal

2. establish clear goals, 3. use visuals, 4. facilitate activities, 5. ask questions, 6. manage your time, 7. have a back-up plan.

If you want people to listen to you, they need to care about you. At the beginning of every workshop or lecture, your introduction should do two things:

• Establish your credentials, knowledge, or expertise
• Humanize yourself as a presenter

First, people need to know why you are qualified to speak to them. I don’t mean that you need to rattle off every degree and certification. You don’t need to list all your Amazon rankings. Don’t be pretentious, but let your audience know why you have valuable knowledge to offer them. Here are some things you might say:

• I’ve been a freelance writer for four years
• I’m the author of two novels
• I’ve worked as a professional publicist for dozens of bestselling authors

But you are more than your career! Make yourself seem real and relatable to your audience. List off a couple of personal things about yourself. Don’t over-share, but tell your audience something interesting. When I lead workshops, I mention that I have a background in both anthropology and education, I love to travel, and I’m a proud dog-mom. My introduction slide has a few pictures of these things.

Don’t ramble. Keep it short and sweet. I get through my entire introduction in about one minute. The goal is to get your audience invested in you as a person so they want to listen to you.

Have you ever set through a workshop that you thought would be something else entirely? You stick around through information you don’t need, waiting to get to that one part that will be useful, but it never comes. It’s frustrating.

Remember, we don’t want to waste people’s time. Sometimes it’s hard to tell what a workshop will cover from its title or synopsis in a conference program.

Establish clear goals from the beginning of your workshop. Recently, I attended a session on book launches. I wanted information about hosting in-person events. The speaker immediately said that she would focus only on virtual book launches for that session. I appreciated that I wasn’t wasting my time looking for specific information.

List your goals or create a table of contents for your presentation. I also enjoy putting in flowcharts to explain how the workshop will progress.

Long walls of text on PowerPoints are out. They are intimidating and boring to your audience, and they accomplish nothing. Either your audience is trying to read everything while you’re speaking about something related, so they miss important information, or you are reading verbatim what your slide says. That’s redundant and dull and can even come across as insulting to your audience’s intelligence.

Use visuals. Graphs, charts, and templates are always useful. Pictures of books or people are other good options. You can even add funny memes or GIFs to your slide to break up information-dense sections. Free stock photos from sites like Pixabay, Freepik , or Unsplash can also enhance your presentation.

Visuals also help people process, comprehend, and later recall information . The human brain loves learning through images.

While it can be tempting to cram as much information as possible into a workshop, people have a hard time listening to someone just talk. No matter how great your public speaking skills are, people will zone out at some point.

Participants should leave a great workshop feeling like they accomplished something. Let them put your teaching to the test. Design short activities for your audience. It can be something as simple as listing goals or as complicated as making a plot timeline of their own work. If you have a short session, these activities could take as little as two to five minutes.

Place these activities throughout your presentation. If you wait till the end, people will get bored listening to someone do nothing but talk. You also risk going over your time and not getting to any of the activities at all.

Your audience will feel much more accomplished if you cover just a couple of things and let them put it into practice than if you just talked at them for an hour or more. It’s all about quality over quantity.

Your audience needs to feel like they are participating. Ask questions of your audience as you present. You can ask for examples or personal experiences.

Likewise, ask questions as your audience works on your activities. Circle through the room and ask how they’re doing. Many people won’t ask for help or clarity in front of a group due to shyness. Give them a chance to talk to you one-on-one. Ask about what they write; show that you’re invested in them so that they will be invested in you.

Asking questions leads me to my next point. Every workshop will have a person who likes to dominate the conversation. They will ask a ton of questions or ramble on about their own writing. While it’s great that someone is so engaged in your workshop, this is annoying to other participants.

When they stop for a natural pause, politely interject and say you need to move on for the sake of time. Offer to speak to them more after the workshop, or tell them you’d love for them to email you.

You should also watch your pacing carefully. Even if you’ve rehearsed your workshop, your pacing might be off on the day of the event. People have a tendency to either speak much faster or much slower than normal when they’re nervous. There are also factors like audience questions and technology hiccups that can interfere.

Wear a watch or have a small kitchen timer set up near your computer. Decide ahead of time which points can be rushed or expanded on if your timing is off. And keep an eye on your audience. If nearly everyone has finished an activity sooner than you anticipated, move on to the next part.

The first time I taught a writing workshop, I was so nervous. I even made my non-writer husband come along just in case there were hardly any people to ask questions and do my activities! I had worked hard on a presentation about planning a novel from idea generation to outlining.

The library couldn’t find the projector anywhere. I had the great idea to go paperless and give people a website to access the resources. Now I had no slideshow and no handout. I didn’t even have a whiteboard. And thirty people showed up!

I made it through. The librarian quickly printed my resource page. I apologized for having no presentation and did the best I could. Overall, it went fine. But this experience taught me to always have a back-up plan.

Technology is not always on our side. Every audience will be different. I spoke to a group of librarians about NaNoWriMo last fall. I was told I would be speaking to seventy-five people. There were six. I really had to stretch out that presentation on the fly to avoid awkward silences.

Final Thoughts

Overall, try your best. Create a workshop that you would be excited to attend. Give yourself grace when you mess up; most of your audience won’t notice. Writing workshops aren’t the Golden Globes.

Most importantly, speak to your audience with passion. Let them know that you care deeply about writing. The rest will come with practice and preparation.

What’s the best writing workshop you’ve ever attended? Tell us about it in the comments below.

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Krystal N. Craiker is the Writing Pirate, an indie romance author and blog manager at ProWritingAid. She sails the seven internet seas, breaking tropes and bending genres. She has a background in anthropology and education, which brings fresh perspectives to her romance novels. When she’s not daydreaming about her next book or article, you can find her cooking gourmet gluten-free cuisine, laughing at memes, and playing board games. Krystal lives in Dallas, Texas with her husband, child, and basset hound.

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How to Run a Creative Writing Workshop or Class

Whether it’s fiction , poetry, plays, or screenplays, all writers can benefit from a creative writing workshop. So how do you run one, or organise one with your friends and colleagues? 

I’ve taught, or run, creative writing workshops at university level, and I’m going to share what I’ve learned with you below.

The Technical Elements of Running a Creative Writing Workshop

Creative writing workshops can be any size you like. I’ve taught them to up to twenty students, and I’ve heard that they get a little unmanageable beyond that size.

Remember that for each additional member of the group, you will get more feedback , but you will also have less time to workshop each student’s work!

You can run a workshop in a formal class setting , such as at a high school, or university. You can also set up a creative writing workshop with your friends and colleagues / peers. They are organised in a similar way. 

Each week or session ask a certain number of writers to submit work for the group to read and provide feedback on.

The writers should submit their work at least one week before the workshop to give the class time to read and to think about feedback.

When a student’s work is being workshopped, all writers should be encouraged to provide some comments to create an atmosphere of sharing. Nobody wants to feel that they are giving more to the group than they are getting out of it. 

Create a Supportive, Positive, and Judgement Free Environment for Creative Writing Workshops

First of all, you want the students to feel totally safe to reveal their work to the group. Creative writing can be a very vulnerable experience, because the writer may be drawing on their own experience of life (they have to to some extent, right?). 

When people reveal their creative writing they often feel like they are revealing a part of who they are, or a little bit of their soul. So remember to always be encouraging, because self expression is a valuable and fragile thing! 

Remember to advise everyone to always start with a complement and end with one. Start by identifying what you like about the work, and what is working. 

Then move to comments that may be harder for the writer to hear i.e. harsher criticism . Then make sure to end on something positive as well! 

Remember that each person in a workshop will be there for a different reason and hoping to get something different from the experience.

Some very nervous students may be trying to build confidence, some very confident ones will be seeking the harshest criticisms they can find to test their writing in a cauldron of fire. 

Make sure to think about what the writer wants, and needs , and stay sensitive to the fact that every writer is different. 

Students are ready to hear different things at different times. If you sense the student isn’t ready for your super hot truth bomb, consider not dropping it on them, or giving them a little taste and letting them know they can approach you for further comments if they like. 

Remember There is no Right or Wrong in Creative Writing  

Ultimately, all assessment of writing , without a rubric, comes down to a matter of taste. Don’t’ tell writers that they are wrong, or that there is a better way of doing things. 

This is subtle, but suggest that they consider doing things in a slightly different way, if you believe their writing would benefit from experimentation in that direction.

Also direct the writer to what other authorities have said about creative writing. You might want to mention Heminway’s Iceberg theory for instance. 

Basically, just try to move away from the idea that there’s only one way of doing things, and find a happy existence in the gray zone!! 

Try to Help the Writer Achieve Their Own Goals, Not Yours

If the writer wants to writer Fast and the Furious Ten, then help them to do that. Don’t try to get them to write Hamlet 2. 

Another way of saying this is don’t try to get them to abandon their project and work on a better one. Try to see what they are striving to achieve and help them to achieve it. 

How do you Assess Creative Writing in a Formal Environment? 

If there is no right or wrong in creative writing , then how do you formally assess it, and give it a mark? 

Often in creative writing classes there will be a course component. The essay that accompanies that component will often form the majority or a significant amount of the final mark for the course , so most of the marks often do not come from the creative work itself.

If you do two rounds of feedback for your student, for example a workshop, followed by a submission of a final work for marking at the end of the the course, then the final mark can be derived largely from how well the writer has engaged with the comments of the workshop.

There is always a subjective element in marking creative writing . This is why it is generally preferable for the person marking the submission at the university level to have had some success as a creative writer .

Don’t worry at all though if you are leading a creative writing workshop at the school level and have not had work published yourself.

Writers at this level are generally not seeking publication yet, and are still being exposed to writing concepts that are foundational.

Try to guide your students to a better understanding of the core principles of writing like showing and not telling.

Creative writing courses will often provide a rubric which outlines exactly what is being assessed in the creative submission. This reduces the subject element involved in marking, because the marker is assessing how well you can perform a technical creative writing task, such as ‘creating subtext.’ 

Another way to reduce the subjective element of assessing creative work is to assess how well the creative submission embodies the lessons taught as part of the critical component of the course. 

When assessing creative writing it is also possible to assess the work according the criteria established by the writer themselves.

For instance, if a poet has submitted work written as a sonnet, you might want to assess how effectively they have utilised the poetic rules applicable for the sonnet form they have chosen. 

Creative Writing Workshops Should be Fun!

Creative writing should be fun. Don’t buy into the whole suffer for your art thing. If you don’t enjoy writing go do something you do enjoy. Life is short.

So make sure if you are running a workshop to make it fun for everyone involved, and I hope you have fun too 🙂

• EXPLORE Random Article

How to Behave in a Creative Writing Workshop

Last Updated: April 13, 2023 References

wikiHow is a “wiki,” similar to Wikipedia, which means that many of our articles are co-written by multiple authors. To create this article, 9 people, some anonymous, worked to edit and improve it over time. This article has been viewed 2,999 times.

A creative writing workshop can help you define and develop your writing style, refine your technique, and polish your manuscript. However, no writer's workshop is a "magic bullet" that, of itself, can make you a better writer. You have to do the work; you still have to write. Here's how to behave in a creative writing workshop so that you get the most out of it.

• Be aware, however, that some workshops fill up faster that their organizers can shut down registration for them. Always check for confirmation of your registration before setting out.

• If the workshop is based around a particular genre, you should be well-read in that genre to get as much as possible out of the workshop.
• If your workshop is led by a professional author, you should, if possible, read some of that author's work prior to the workshop.

• Be sure to address criticisms to the work instead of to the author, by saying things like "This section needs" or "This passage needs" instead of "You need to".
• Do not make statements on behalf of the workshop, as in "This is not the appropriate place for this work". You're a participant at the workshop, not a member of its staff.

• Stay quiet when people are giving you critiques. Don't defend yourself; people won't be able to critique as much if you are constantly interrupting them.
• Remember that you cannot please everyone. Some critiques will cancel out others.
• Take notes. Even if you don't believe that the critique will help or just don't want to use it, write it down. You may have to rely on it in the future.
• Also be prepared to receive critiques from others than are neither thoughtful nor positive. Not every critique you receive will have useful suggestions; some won't even be coherent.

• Don't not take a critique into consideration if you think it's too much work. Sometimes the only thing that can get you published requires weeks of work.

Expert Q&A

• Do not make any comments personal, and do not take any comments personally. Remember it is the work that is critiqued, not the author. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• Keep in mind that not every comment on your work must lead to an edit or change in the story. The other participants will have opinions, but the most important opinion is yours as author. Evaluate each comment carefully: if you feel suggested changes aren't suitable, don't make them. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• After the workshop is over, you may want to provide feedback to the workshop's organizers to suggest ways they can improve the workshop for future attendees. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

You Might Also Like

• http://learnmore.duke.edu/youth/creativewriter/academic.asp
• http://www.826michigan.org/workshops/
• http://www.cmmayo.com/workshop-10-tips-for-getting-most-out-of-your-writing-workshop.html
• http://www.writersworkshop.co.uk/blog/university-courses-in-creative-writing/
• http://www.writingforward.com/creative-writing/10-essential-lessons-youll-learn-in-a-creative-writing-workshop

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How to Plan Your Writing Workshop

Planning your Writing Workshop is no easy feat.  With a limited amount of time and a wide range of moving parts, having a great game plan is essential to teach writing well.  In the past two weeks of the Summer Writing Workshop Series , we have covered how to keep your students engaged and tackled the issue of time  in Writing Workshop .

Okay, so you’ve got engagement strategies up your sleeve and you are not going to let time get in your way.  So what’s next? What are you teaching? How are you teaching it? When are you teaching it?

Today, we are diving into 5 strategies to plan for Writing workshop.  These strategies are the overarching elements that drive everything you do in Writing Workshop. If you are looking for the specifics of each writing unit, including teaching points aligned to the standards, that would be in each of  my writing units .  

Let’s get started, shall we?

1// Identify your Core Beliefs and Values as a Writing Teacher.

A few years ago, I attended a 3 day summer workshop at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies and Journalism in St. Petersburg, Florida .  This workshop was ran by Roy Peter Clark and the amazing ELA department in our school district.  The purpose of this institute was to help us implement new-to-us Common Core standards (now Florida standards) without losing all that we already KNOW about teaching Reading and Writing.  At the very beginning of this workshop, we collectively created a list of what we knew needed to be happening in our classrooms to teach writing.  I am sharing this list with you below because standards may change, assessments may change, administration may change, curriculum may change, and ,of course, our students may change.  However, it is essential that we have sound and steadfast philosophies about teaching writing. When we are faced with any of these changes, we can always make decisions based on our core beliefs about teaching writing.  Therefore, we can always do what is best for our students.

Core Beliefs & Values

These core beliefs are the foundation of my classroom and basis for every writing unit.

• Students should read & write everyday.
• Students should see you writing.
• Drafting & revising helps us grow.
• We talk about our writing.
• Writing is connected to reading.
• We help students recognize the value of their own experiences. (reading is a source, their life experiences are a source for writing)
• Read like a writer. How does the author do what they do?
• We should know our audience and purpose for writing.
• Keep students OFF teacher welfare. (Donald Graves)
• Help students see the world as a storehouse for writing ideas.
• Share writing with peers and other audiences- PUBLISH the work of every student writer.
• Students should know what they are doing well.
• Students need to see us get excited!
• Conferring/Talking about reading and writing one-on-one or in a small group.

Why does this matter?

I think it is really important that we identify our core values and beliefs as teachers .  We need to know what we stand for and value in our teaching.  We have to remember that WE are teaching our students. Not anything or anyone else.  I invite you to be empowered by that and remember how much power you do have in your classroom.  When we identify our core values and beliefs, we can use this to guide our instruction and daily decision-making.

2//  Identify Writing Goals for Your Students

Before setting out to think about how you plan your year in writing (OR maybe your district tells you exactly what you are going to do), think about what goals you want for your students by the end of the year. What matters most to you? What results do you think are really important in terms of your students’ writing?

For me, it has never been based on numbers.  Sure, I want my students to write well and achieve a fantastic score on our state assessment.  But that number is NOT going to drive my passion and enthusiasm during my daily writing lessons.  Moreover, I cannot let that number determine my worth as a writing teacher or my students as writers.  We are more than a number.

So when I ask, “What goals do you want for your students?”- I don’t mean just numbers.  I mean how do you want them to feel about writing? Personally, this is what matters most.  I want my students to feel confident about writing, to enjoy the process, and eager to learn new things about writing.  

Of course I know that we also need to be setting tangible goals based on specific skills.  You know the deficits that come into your classroom every year that make teaching writing difficult for your particular grade level.  Let’s identify what goals YOU have for YOUR classroom. I could write all day about what I think is important, but this isn’t about me, it’s about YOU and YOUR students.

Let’s try this out by answering the questions below.

• List 3 (or more) Core Beliefs you have about writing. You can also choose your top 3 from my list.
• What do you want your students to feel, think, or believe about writing?
• Do you think you have achieved this goal in the past?  
• What writing skills do you think are the most important for your grade level?
• Based on classroom, district, or state assessments, what goals do you have for your students?
• What type of mindset do most of your writing students have? (i.e. enthusiastic about writing, lack confidence in their writing, indifferent about writing, do not seem to enjoy writing)
• What prerequisite writing skills seem to be lacking when students get to your grade level?

To make this even more fun and interactive, I’ve created a Google form for these questions.  Don’t worry, I am the only one that will see your responses. What you share will only be used to create more content and resources to meet your needs.  

Answer using a Google Form: 

https://goo.gl/forms/KzzUBxeBUiog4Ucw2

Now, you might be thinking, “Whoa, Jessica! That’s way too personal.”  I feel you. I am a pretty private introvert myself. Just get out a notebook and your favorite Flair pen to jot down your responses to the questions.    

Either way, just take the time to think about what is most important to you and your students when it comes to writing.

3// Begin with End in Mind

This is one of my favorites habits from Stephen Covey in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People .

Anytime we are trying to make a plan to do something, we can begin with the end in mind.  So what does that look like in writing?

If we consider our core values/beliefs and writing goals, then we can use this to guide our planning throughout the year.  Your core values and beliefs guide your day-to-day lessons and conversations with your students. It’s like your moral compass when teaching writing.

What does that look like for each unit? Think about what end goal you have for your students at the end of each unit.  What is the endgame? Most likely, it is some form of published writing. Maybe it’s an opinion essay, a personal narrative story, or an informational article.  Whatever type of writing that you want your students to do, provide a model at the beginning of the unit to study the structure and characteristics of that type of writing.  

This is where mentor texts come in.  Nothing gets students more excited about a certain type of writing than by sharing a picture book as a mentor text.   To do this, choose a mentor text that is an exemplar of the type of writing you will teach. This text will be used throughout the unit to teach specific writing skills.  

For example, when I am teaching Opinion Writing, I use A Pig Parade is a Terrible Idea by Michael Ian Black .  Not only is it hilarious, but it is a perfect model of the opinion essay structure. He gives his opinion and supports it with reasons and evidence.

Studying  a mentor text is typically the first lesson in the unit.  Below I have identified the steps I use when introducing a mentor text.

Reading a Mentor Text Steps:

1// Read once for the gist.  (Let students simply enjoy the book, but tell them this is a specific example of the type of writing they will do.)

2// Read a second time with purpose. Before reading, tell your students that they will be reading the text a second time to look specifically for characteristics of [insert genre].

3// Create a Chart.  You can create this chart as you have students take notes in their notebook, or use a pre-made chart. (see below)

Opinion Writing (Grades 3-5)

Narrative Nonfiction (3rd Grade)

Personal Narrative Writing Unit

This chart was created after a discussion to highlight the certain skills.  We had to move VERY quickly through this unit, so I made a chart specific to the needs of my classroom.  This went along with the text Those Shoes by Maribeth Boelts.

4//  Yearly Planning

This next section truly depends on where you teach.  I’ve taught in some places where the teacher has a lot of control and flexibility over the yearly scope and sequence of their writing.  I’ve taught in other places where you are expected to follow the district scope and sequence. So, I am going to address this area of planning your Writing Workshop by what I would do in an ideal world.  

Begin with Personal Narrative

Ideally, you want to start off with Personal Narrative.

Narration is the art of storytelling.  Besides the fact that half our Reading Standards are based on literature (STORIES) , storytelling is part of the human experience.  The art of storytelling is found in social, academic, and career situations.  I’ve got a whole blog post planned and entitled The Importance of Teaching Narrative .  I feel compelled to share these thoughts and points because I teach 4th Grade in Florida.  This is the first year students take the Writing Florida State Assessment.

It’s a big deal.  

However, the Informational and Opinion Writing Standards are the only standards assessed.  So, guess what is all too often not taught? You guessed it- Narrative.

Personal narrative is a way to not only build community, but it gets students engaged and excited about writing right from the start.  They care about what they are writing because it is about them .  

It is a natural human instinct to want to be heard, to share your story.  Look at the world of social media.  People are all over Instagram stories, IGTV, Facebook stories, and YouTube. No matter where our technology goes, most developments are made to deepen the human experience.  People want to share their stories. You know who else wants to share their stories? Your students. (Whether they know it or not.)

The first unit of the year would be Launching Writing Workshop. (coming soon to a shop near you!)  The purpose of this short, 10 day unit is to establish routines, procedures, and build community.  Throughout this unit, students will complete their first personal narrative so that they can get the overall writing process and understand how writing workshop goes.  As the teacher, you can also see what students are able to produce. This will also help you go deeper with craft in the second unit: Personal Narrative.   (NOTE: This unit is being updated on August 1st.)

While teaching Narrative, I also like to align the writing standards to the reading standards.  This helps to make connections across Reading and Writing. It doesn’t always fit perfectly, but when I can make it work, I go for it!  Below you can see two examples of how you might plan out your year trying as best as possible to align the Reading and Writing standards.

5// Step by Step

Last week we learned a writing lesson from Ant-Man.  This week our writing teacher comes from New Kids on the Block.

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ay6GjmiJTPM

This song always gets in my head when I teach my students this lesson.  As writers, we go STEP by STEP in the process. No matter what genre of writing I am teaching, we follow the same process.

STEP by STEP

• Get Ideas/Unpack a Prompt/Set a Purpose (if writing in response to text)  
• Make a Plan
• Write a Lead/Introduction
• Draft (Use Transition Words, Craft Moves, Organized into Paragraphs)
• Write an Ending
• Revise (Does my writing make sense? Is this my best work?)
• Edit (Spelling, Punctuation, Capitalization)

For each of these parts, I would absolutely have different teaching points on the genre and we go into depth on how to use various writing techniques. However, this is the very basic process we follow in writing.  Having a clear vision and structure helps students see the parts of their writing and make decisions about their next steps.

( Sidebar: Last year, I played the beginning of this song for my class to teach this lesson.  One of my girls knew exactly who this was.  Other guesses included Michael Jackson, Justin Timberlake, and the Beatles.)

6//  Your Writing Notebook

Setting up YOUR model notebook before you begin any writing unit will help you establish clarity and confidence in your own teaching, which will lead to your students’ success.  In reality, you might not have time to set the whole unit up at once inside your notebook. Honestly, I don’t have that much creative brain capacity to sit and do it all at once.  Plus, I find things along the way that I want to add in, change or make even better. Instead, I sit down a few times throughout the unit to reflect on what I’ve taught, the students sitting in front of me, and where I need to go next.  A huge benefit of setting up your notebook with examples of your own writing is that you can continue to use the notebook year after year. Sure you may have multiple notebooks with new writing, but that just means more material to teach from! 🙂

Using your Notebook as a Mentor Text

One of the best ways that I learned how to teach writing was by going through the process myself.  If there was something I was having specific difficulty with teaching, I knew I needed to go through that process so that I could understand the struggles my student would go through, but also how to push through the struggle.  

We don’t have to be the most amazing expert writers in the world.  We just have to be a step ahead of our students. In fact, the struggles we go through make us better teachers.  They need to see us make mistakes, play with words, and the thought struggle that goes with creating quality writing.  That’s part of the process and they need to see it. Be okay with not knowing answers. Your writing doesn’t need to be perfect.  In fact, it shouldn’t be. What a great way to model revision work!

To help myself (and my students) stay organized, I try to title what I am teaching on a specific page or on the page to the left so that I can go back to that again and again.

I hope you have found some great value in these planning strategies for Writing Workshop.  At the very least, I hope you enjoyed listening to some NKOTB!

If you are looking for more specific support in teaching writing, be sure to get on the waitlist for our Writing Membership site coming August 2018.

I’ll see you next week when we dive into one of my FAVORITE topics: How to Integrate Writing into Content Areas

Until then, you can find me on Instagram and Facebook. 

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Become a better writer and meet beta readers in our online writing group

Scribophile is one of the largest and most award-winning online writing communities.

Make your writing shine with feedback from other writers

You’ve spent a lot of time writing your story. But how can you make it perfect before you start thinking about publishing?

Scribophile is a writing group focused on getting you feedback on your manuscript. — in fact, we’re one of the largest online writing groups out there. Our points-based peer critique system guarantees you’ll get feedback from writers from all walks of life. You can then use that feedback to polish your writing before you take the next step in your publishing journey.

How Scribophile works

1 earn points by giving feedback.

Earn karma points by critiquing writing. Giving feedback to group members is fast, easy, fun, and helps improve your own writing, too!

2 Get feedback on your own writing

Spend karma points to post your own writing for critique from our writing community — anything from flash fiction to novels. Our writer’s group will give you detailed feedback on how to improve it, regardless of your specific genre, and all in a supportive environment.

3 Make friends and meet beta readers

As you participate in our writing group, you’ll meet and form relationships with many different kinds writers. They’ll become your inspiration, your encouragement, and even your beta readers, ready to help with your current manuscript, and your next ones too!

Scribophile was the first place I stopped when I went from being an I-wanna-be-a-writer to I-am-an-author. Now I have four international bestselling novels with major publishers, and when authors come to me I always send them to Scribophile. Genevieve Graham Tides of Honour and others published with Simon & Schuster

Join writing workshops and level up your writing

Our writing workshops are taught by bestselling authors, expert teachers, and industry insiders. We have workshops for writers of any skill level, where we cover everything from beginning topics to advanced techniques.

Our writing workshops are designed to be both comprehensive and transformational — they’re your fast track to leveling up your writing.

Some of our upcoming writing workshops

How to Start and Grow an Author Newsletter with Stuart Jaffe

Apr 27, 2024 • 1½ hour webinar

Author Stuart Jaffe shows you how to start and grow an author newsletter, one of the most critical components of selling your books today.

Writing Query Letters That Work with D.J. Butler

May 4, 2024 • 2 hour workshop, with instructor feedback on your query letter

Join author and Baen editor D.J. (Dave) Butler as he teaches you how to write hard-punching query letters you can use to sell your manuscripts to agents and editors.

Our writing group welcomes writers of any skill level

Our writing group welcomes writers of all skill levels — from beginners to published authors, and every writer in between.

Each critique you receive on your manuscript is a fresh perspective for you to incorporate. Our bustling writing forums feature writers discussing the craft twenty-four hours a day — share inspiration, ignite your creativity, get support, and connect with others no matter your genre. Plus, our extensive Writing Academy is full of insightful articles on the art — and business — of writing.

Scribophile played a major part in helping me polish my novel for submission. I learnt a huge amount from critiquing other people’s work, as well as from reading critiques of mine. I now have a wonderful agent and have signed a three-book deal in the UK, a two-book deal in Germany, and a TV option. The book was also shortlisted for The Debut Dagger! Roz Watkins The Devil’s Dice and others published with HarperCollins

Giving and receiving critiques on Scribophile made a big difference to the quality of my writing. I learned how to write a query letter here and that led to an agent and a book deal. Ruth Lauren Prisoner of Ice and Snow and others published with Bloomsbury

No more writing alone — meet your new community

Sometimes, the hardest part of the writing process is how lonely it can get.

That’s why the most important part of Scribophile is our community of hundreds of thousands of writers from all over the world. No matter what genre you work in, or how far along you are in your manuscript, the friends you make at Scribophile will give encouragement, accountability, and will finally take the loneliness out of our solitary craft.

My years on Scribophile have given me a master’s level education in writing. The critiques are great, but I’ve learned as much from reading and analyzing other writers on Scribophile. I don’t think I could have polished my novel to a publishable level without this site. I’m an addict. Laura Creedle The Love Letters of Abelard and Lily published with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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7 Steps to a Great Writing Workshop

Would you like to make your classroom a stimulating community of writers and learners? Set up a writing workshop! This instructional approach truly engages students by letting them write, read, interact, mentor, and take risks—all at their own pace. Follow these simple steps to create a writing workshop in your classroom.

Step 1: Set up a writing workshop framework.

A typical writing workshop session has four parts.

Step 2: Be a writer!

Teach by example, showing not only how you write, but also how to collaborate, respond to other writers, and make improvements based on responses.

Step 3: Create a writing community.

Help your students work side by side, learning from each other in much the same way that artists do in studios or cooks do in the kitchen. Provide spaces for individual work and spaces for small-group work.

Step 4: Provide many models and topic choices.

Models help students see how other writers have shaped their ideas in essays and stories. They also serve as springboards for minilessons and class discussions about specific writing strategies. ( See student models .)

Your students need to write about topics that interest them. When students have strong feelings about their topics, they stay with their writing longer and do their best work. ( See writing topics .)

Step 5: Let students work at their own pace.

On any given day, some students may be researching a topic; others may be drafting or revising; and still others may have finished one piece of work and started on another. As workshop manager, your job is to make sure that everyone is gainfully working on a project.

Step 6: Invite peer responses.

Your students need the feedback of their peers to develop strong writing and feel part of the writing community. Help them carry out peer response groups. ( See the peer response minilesson .)

Step 7: Offer your support.

Hold brief (2- to 3-minute) conferences with students as needed during independent writing time. During these conferences, don’t act as a fixer but rather as someone who listens and suggests and offers next steps.

Final Thoughts:

Effective classroom management is the key to implementing a successful writing workshop. You need to establish specific goals (such as the number of pieces to be completed per quarter), keep students on task (via the work check), and look for teachable moments to introduce specific minilessons.

Writing Workshop Resources

Writing Workshop: The Essential Guide by Ralph Fletcher and JoAnn Portalupi

About the Authors: Writing Workshop with Our Youngest Writers by Katie Wood Ray

In the Middle: New Understandings About Writing, Reading, and Learning by Nancie Atwell

The 9 Rights of Every Writer by Vicki Spandel

The No-Nonsense Guide to Teaching Writing by Judy Davis and Sharon Hill

www.writingproject.org (National Writing Project)

Teacher Support:

Click to find out more about this resource.

Standards Correlations:

The State Standards provide a way to evaluate your students' performance.

• LAFS.K12.W.1.1
• LAFS.K12.W.1.2
• LAFS.K12.W.1.3
• LAFS.K12.W.2.4
• LAFS.K12.W.2.5
• LAFS.K12.W.2.6
• LAFS.K12.W.3.7
• LAFS.K12.W.3.8
• LAFS.K12.W.3.9
• LAFS.K12.W.4.10

Related Resources

All resources.

• Forming a Focus
• How to Engage Your Students with Shared Inquiry
• Writing a "Showing" Paragraph
• Writing a Four-Star Food Review
• Drawing a Life Map
• All 3-5 Units (5 Seats)
• All 6-8 Units
• All 6-8 Units (5 Seats)
• All 3-5 Units
• Writing Essays
• Writers Express
• Write on Track
• Writers Express Teacher's Guide
• Write on Course 20-20
• Write for Business

About Our Writing Workshops

• Upcoming Writing Workshops
• Refund Policy

The Center for Fiction’s Writing Workshops explore a wide range of forms and subjects: fiction and nonfiction, memoir and translation, prose and poetry, history and social justice, and more.

Whether online or in person, we strive to make our classes the most inviting and rewarding available, offering an intimate environment to study with award-winning, world-class writers. Each class is specially designed by the instructor, so whether you’re a fledgling writer or an MFA graduate polishing your novel, you’ll find a perfect fit here.

Gain skill and confidence in your work, as well as key professional insights, under the guidance of award-winning authors and industry insiders.

Members of The Center for Fiction receive early access to writing workshops, as well as 10% off enrollment.

Recent Instructors

Jami Attenberg

Jami Attenberg has written about food, travel, books, relationships, and urban life for the New York Times magazine , the New Yorker, the Wall Street Journal, the Sunday Times (London), the Guardian , and others. She is a New York Times bestselling author of seven books of fiction, including The Middlesteins and All Grown Up , and, most recently, a memoir, I Came All This Way to Meet You . Her work has been published in sixteen languages. She is also the founder of the annual #1000WordsofSummer project, and maintains the popular Craft Talk newsletter year-round. She lives in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Lily Andrews

Lily Andrews is a writer from Minnesota, but she lives in New York. She is studying to be a high school teacher and enjoys reading children’s literature. While she doesn’t know yet whether she will ever be a memoirist, her work has been published or is forthcoming in Ghost City Review , Sonora Review , Ignatian magazine, and Rio Grande Review . She holds an MFA in Writing from Sarah Lawrence College and runs a post-abortion healing workshop called Hear Me Roar.

Stefan Merrill Block

Stefan Merrill Block grew up in Plano, Texas. His first book, The Story of Forgetting , was an international bestseller and the winner of Best First Fiction at the Rome International Festival of Literature, The Ovid Prize from the Romanian Writer’s Union, the 2008 Merck Serono Literature Prize and the 2009 Fiction Award from The Writers’ League of Texas. The Story of Forgetting was also a finalist for the debut fiction awards from IndieBound, Salon du Livre, and The Center for Fiction. Stefan’s stories and essays have appeared in the New York Times , the New Yorker Page-Turner, the Guardian , NPR ’s Radiolab , GRANTA , the Los Angeles Times , and many other publications. Stefan’s most recent novel, Oliver Loving , was released in 2018 by Macmillan/Flatiron Books, and is being developed for television by Participant Media. He lives in Brooklyn.

Conor Bracken

Conor Bracken is the author of The Enemy of My Enemy is Me (Diode Editions, 2021), as well as the translator of Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine’s Scorpionic Sun (CSU Poetry Center, 2019) and Jean D’Amérique’s No Way in the Skin Without This Bloody Embrace (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2022), a finalist for the 2023 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. His work has received support from the Community of Writers, Bread Loaf, the Frost Place, Inprint, Cornell’s Institute for Comparative Modernities, and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and has appeared (or will soon) in places like BOMB, Image, jubilat, New England Review, the New Yorker, Ploughshares, Sixth Finch , and West Branch . He teaches writing at the Cleveland Institute of Art.

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond is the author of the children’s picture book Blue: A History of the Color as Deep as the Sea and as Wide as the Sky , illustrated by Caldecott Honor Artist Daniel Minter. Named among the best books of 2022 by NPR, New York Public Library, Chicago Public Library, Kirkus Reviews , and The Center for the Study of Multicultural Literature, Blue  was honored with the 2023 NCTE Orbis Pictus Award® recognizing excellence in the writing of non-fiction for children, and it was nominated for an NAACP Image Award.

Brew-Hammond also wrote the young adult novel Powder Necklace , which Publishers Weekly called “a winning debut”, and she edited Relations: An Anthology of African and Diaspora Voices , of which Kirkus Reviews said in a starred review: “This smart, generous collection is a true gift.” Every month, Brew-Hammond co-leads a writing fellowship whose mission is to write light into darkness. You can keep up with Nana on Instagram at @nanaekuawriter , Twitter at @nanaekua , and Facebook at @nanaekuawriter .

Joanna Cantor

Joanna Cantor holds an MFA from Brooklyn College and a BA from Colorado College. Her debut novel, Alternative Remedies for Loss , was an Amazon Best Book of the Month for May 2018 and received coverage in Vanity Fair, Real Simple, Nylon , and elsewhere. Her writing has appeared in Literary Hub, Electric Literature, Departures, Fodor’s Travel, Greatist , and Willamette Week . Joanna was a recipient of a Vermont Studio Center Fellowship. She previously taught fiction writing at Catapult and is also a yoga teacher. She lives in Brooklyn. You can keep up with Joanna on Instagram at @joannacantor and on Twitter at @jojannna.

Elysha Chang

Elysha Chang is a writer and educator based in Brooklyn. Before moving to New York, she taught Asian American Literature and Creative Writing at Villanova University, University of Pennsylvania and Blue Stoop Philadelphia. Her debut novel, A Quitter’s Paradise , is about American immigrant inheritance and was published in 2023. She holds a master of fine arts from Columbia University and has received fellowships from The Center for Fiction and Kundiman.

Caroline Christopoulos

Caroline Christopoulos is a publicist with Gold Leaf Literary Services, a publicity firm that works exclusively with writers/authors. She also works part-time at Malaprop’s Bookstore/Cafe in Asheville, NC, where she has been a bookseller for twenty-two years and buyer for eighteen. She worked on the steering committee of the Asheville Grown Business Alliance and continues to be on the programming committee for the Carolina Mountains Literary Festival. In addition to bringing authors and their works the attention they deserve, her focus includes strengthening community and promoting local business. She and her husband live in Asheville and New York City with their daughter and their dog, Tiny Cakes.

Sarah Cypher

Sarah Cypher is a freelance book editor and author of The Skin and Its Girl (Ballantine, April 2023). She holds an MFA from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, where she was a Rona Jaffe Graduate Creative Writing Fellow in Fiction, and a BA from Carnegie Mellon University. Her writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Lit Hub , Electric Literature , New Ohio Review, North American Review, Crab Orchard Review , and others, and she has been a resident at the Headlands Center for the Arts and Vermont Studio Center. She grew up in a Lebanese Christian family near Pittsburgh and lives in Washington, D.C., with her wife. You can keep up with Sarah on Instagram at @sarahcypher and on Twitter at @threepenny .

Kavita Das came to writing ten years ago after working for social change and social justice for fifteen years. She writes about culture, race, gender, and their intersections. Nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Kavita’s work has been published in WIRED, CNN, Teen Vogue, Catapult, Fast Company, Tin House, Longreads, the Atlantic, the Washington Post , Los Angeles Review of Books, Kenyon Review, NBC News Asian America, Guernica, Electric Literature , Colorlines, the Rumpus , and elsewhere. Kavita’s second book Craft and Conscience: How to Write About Social Issues (Beacon Press, October 2022) is inspired by the Writing with Conscience class she created and teaches. Her first book, Poignant Song: The Life and Music of Lakshmi Shankar , was published by Harper Collins India in 2019. In the real world, she lives in New York with her husband, toddler, and hound. And in the virtual world, she can be found on Twitter: @kavitamix and Instagram: @kavitadas and at kavitadas.com .

Omer Friedlander

Omer Friedlander was born in Jerusalem in 1994 and grew up in Tel-Aviv. He is the author of the short story collection The Man Who Sold Air in the Holy Land , winner of the Association of Jewish Libraries Fiction Award and a finalist for the Wingate Prize. The book was chosen as a Sophie Brody Medal Honor Book and longlisted for the Story Prize. Omer has a BA in English Literature from the University of Cambridge and an MFA from Boston University, where he was supported by the Saul Bellow Fellowship. He was a Starworks Fellow in Fiction at New York University. His collection has been translated into several languages, including Turkish, Dutch, and Italian. His writing has been supported by the Bread Loaf Fellowship and Vermont Studio Center Fellowship. He is currently teaching Creative Writing at the MFA program at Columbia University.

Miciah Bay Gault

Miciah Bay Gault is the author of the novel Goodnight Stranger (Park Row, 2019), which was nominated for a Shirley Jackson award, longlisted for The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize , and selected for Poets & Writers’ First Fiction roundup.

Miciah is a Breadloaf fellow and a Vermont Arts Council creation grant recipient. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in Tin House, the Sun, Agni, the Southern Review, the Harvard Review, the New York Times ‘ Modern Love’ column, and other places. She teaches in the MFA in Writing program at Vermont College of Fine Arts and is coordinator of the Vermont Book Award.

David Gordon

David Gordon was born in New York City. He attended Sarah Lawrence College, holds an MA in English and Comparative Literature and an MFA in Writing, both from Columbia University. He is the author of seven published novels and a book of stories.His first novel, The Serialist , won the VCU/Cabell First Novel Award and was a finalist for an Edgar Award. It also won three major literary awards in Japan—Kono Mystery ga Sugoi, Mystery ga Yomitai and Mystery Best 10—becoming the first novel ever to do so—and was made into a feature film. In addition to Japanese, his novels has been translated into Chinese, Korean, French, German, Turkish, Russian and Polish. His most recent book, The Pigeon , is number five in the Joe the Bouncer series. A new novel, a neo-noir called, Behind Sunset , is forthcoming from Mysterious Press, as well as a video game co-written with Hampton Fancher, ( Bladerunner ). His work has appeared in Harpers , Paris Review , the New York Times magazine, the  New York Times Book Review , Fence , Brazenhead Review , Maggot Brain , LitHub , Electric Literature , and others.

Jakob Guanzon

Jakob Guanzon is the author of Abundance , which was longlisted for both the National Book Award and the Aspen Words Literary Prize in 2021, and has been translated into multiple languages. His shorter works have appeared in BOMB , the New York Times , and elsewhere. He holds an MFA from Columbia University, and has since taught as part of the Zell Visiting Writers Series at the University of Michigan. He lives in Harlem.

Lucinda Halpern

Lucinda Halpern is a literary agent with nearly 20 years’ experience in both the publicity and agency sides of publishing. Before founding Lucinda Literary, she worked in the Publicity division of HarperCollins, where she assisted on the media campaign for Freakonomics among other New York Times bestsellers. She later took a management role in Sales and Marketing at Scholastic before becoming a marketing consultant for Gretchen Rubin ( The Happiness Project ) and others, and then launching her career as an agent. She has worked with such publishers as HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, and Hachette, and currently represents authors writing in the categories of business, health, lifestyle, popular science, narrative nonfiction, memoir, and upmarket fiction.

Lauren Harr

Lauren Harr is a publicist with Gold Leaf Literary Services and has worked in the book world for twenty years—as a bookseller in Asheville, NC and Albuquerque, NM, an assistant at literary nonprofits in Santa Fe, an intern at Graywolf Press, and a marketing assistant and publicist at Coffee House Press. She spent eight years at Malaprop’s Bookstore/Cafe where her passions were connecting readers and books and assisting the events program. She lives in Asheville with her husband and daughter and holds an MFA from Spalding University’s School of Creative and Professional Writing.

Debra Jo Immergut

Debra Jo Immergut is the author of the novels You Again , named a New York Times Best of the Year and shortlisted for the 2021 Gotham Book Prize, and The Captives , a 2019 Edgar Award finalist and published in over a dozen countries. She has also published a collection of short fiction, Private Property . Her essays and stories have appeared in American Short Fiction, Narrative, the New York Times, PANK, Hobart , and elsewhere. A recipient of Michener and MacDowell fellowships, she has an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and lives in western Massachusetts.

Yahdon Israel

Yahdon Israel, a Senior Editor at Simon & Schuster and founder of Literaryswag, a cultural movement that intersects literature and fashion to make books accessible. He has written for the New Inquiry , LitHub , Poets & Writers , Vanity Fair , and the Atlantic . He teaches Creative Writing at the MFA Program at City College, previously served on the Board of the National Book Critics Circle, and founded the Literaryswag Book Club, a Brooklyn-based subscription service and book club that meets every last Wednesday of the month.

Seth Kaufman

Seth Kaufman is a ghostwriter and novelist. He is the author or co-author of five book proposals purchased by publishers, including autobiographies of basketball legend Rick Pitino, video game designer John Romero, and his own collection of music essays. He has collaborated on bestselling memoirs, biographies, current affairs, political and sports books. His work, under his byline or a clients’ byline, has been published by the Wall Street Journal , the New Yorker online, LitHub , Publishers Weekly , and many other national publications. His satirical work, The King of Pain , was called “one of 2012’s most enjoyable novels” by the New York Times . And Bleacher Report scribe Mike Freeman called Eat My Schwartz , the autobiography Kaufman co-authored (and also wrote the proposal for), “easily, one of the most unique and well-done books about NFL life I’ve ever read.”

Josh Krigman

Josh Krigman (he/him) is a writer, teacher, and facilitator in New York City. He has taught creative writing at Hunter College, the United Nations International School, 826NYC, The Writer’s Rock, and for National Geographic Expeditions. He has been awarded residencies from Vermont Studio Center, and his work has appeared in The Summerset Review, Akashic Books, Necessary Fiction , and elsewhere. He received his MFA in fiction from Hunter College. Through Little Nights , he hosts interdisciplinary events designed to make art-making more accessible to new audiences. He is also the co-founder and New York host of Club Motte , an international storytelling series that hosts live events in New York, Oakland, and Berlin.

Danielle Lazarin

Danielle Lazarin is the author of the short story collection Back Talk . Her fiction and essays can be found in the Southern Review , Colorado Review , Literary Hub , Glimmer Train , the Cut , Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, and elsewhere. Her work has been honored by the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Glimmer Train Family Matters Award, the Millay Colony for the Arts, The Freya Project, and the Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Prize. She lives and teaches in her native New York, where she is at work on a novel and a story collection.

Alcy Leyva is a Bronx-born multi-genre writer whose first two books in the Shades of Hell series, And Then There Were Crows and And Then There Were Dragons . His newest book, the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life , was released October 10th, 2023 by Green Writers Press. He is currently working on his Ph.D. in Creative Writing for the University of Birmingham and currently lives (and works) in New York.

Theresa Lin

Theresa Lin received her MFA in Fiction from Columbia University, where she was awarded the De Alba Fellowship by Writing Program faculty for an excerpt of her novel manuscript. She is represented by Janklow and Nesbit and lectures at The Cooper Union. She has previously taught at Fordham, Rutgers, and Columbia and her writing has been featured in the LA Review of Books , Off Assignment , Racquet , Oh Reader , Storm Cellar , Truthout , Smart Set , and Random Sample Review , among others.

Bruna Dantas Lobato

Bruna Dantas Lobato is a Brazilian writer and literary translator based in St. Louis. Her fiction has appeared in the New Yorker , A Public Space, the Common , and other publications, and has been recognized with fellowships from Yaddo, A Public Space, NYU, and Disquiet International. Her literary translations include Caio Fernando Abreu’s Moldy Strawberries (Archipelago Books), Stênio Gardel’s The Words that Remain (New Vessel Press), and Giovana Madalosso’s Tokyo Suite (Europa Editions). Other translations from Lobato have appeared in Vogue, Bookforum, BOMB, the Kenyon Review, Harvard Review, the Brooklyn Rail , and the American Scholar , among others. You can keep up with Bruna on Twitter at @bdantaslobato and Instagram @bdantaslobato .

Melissa Lozada-Oliva

Melissa Lozada-Oliva is the author of peluda , Dreaming of You and Candelaria . Her work has been featured in the Poetry Project, Harper’s Bazaar, NPR , Vogue, Vulture , and BBC Mundo. She received her MFA from New York University in 2020.

Jessie McCarty

Jessie McCarty (they/them) is an interdisciplinary writer and cataloger specializing in Irish, Southern, and LBGTQ+ folklore through new media and poetry. They are the author of The Bovine Huff , a research chapbook on The Shreveport Yellow Fever Mound in Shreveport, Louisiana and Ireland/Eire’s Tain Bo Cuailnge. The Bovine Huff was awarded the 3rd Best Poetry Book of 2022 in the Chicago Reader . In August 2023, McCarty co-authored the poetry collection Our Fairy Diary with multi-media artist Sarah Haines. This artbook of letters, written between Chicago and Shreveport, functioned as a study in fairy rings as a limited edition of 50. As of September 2023, Our Fairy Diary is sold out.

David McLoghlin

David McLoghlin is a prize-winning poet and writer of memoir and personal essay. His books are Waiting For Saint Brendan and Other Poems and Santiago Sketches . His third book, Crash Centre , will be published in May 2024 by Salmon Poetry. Apart from a major bursary (grant) for memoir from Ireland’s Arts Council, and a personal essay published in the anthology Others Will Enter the Gates: Immigrant Poets on Poetry, Influences, and Writing in America (Black Lawrence Press), he has published personal essays, short stories and memoir extracts in The Stinging Fly , Poetry Ireland Review and other journals. An essay on being mentored by poet Sharon Olds is forthcoming in This Glistening Verb (University of Michigan Press) as part of their “Under Discussion” series. He is currently at work on a book about his grandfather, the golf architect, Eddie Hackett, widely considered “the Father of Irish Golf Design.” In October 2023 he played one of his grandfather’s designs, Connemara Golf Links, and is writing an immersion piece for Golfer’s Journal in the USA. He has previously taught memoir for The Center for Fiction, and teaches creative writing in Ireland with The American College, Dublin, Poetry as Commemoration and Writers in Schools. While living in New York between 2010 and 2020 he was Resident Writer at Hunts Point Alliance for Children in the South Bronx, and an NYU Teaching Fellow at Coler Specialty Hospital; and a Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship Recipient (2023).

Leia Menlove

Leia Menlove’s writings have been published in Guernica , Fiction Magazine (CUNY), Narratively , the Harvard Review , the Evergreen Review , Catapult , Joyland , and others. She was a featured artist of The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Series, “Conversations with Contemporary Artists,” discussing her fabulist erotic work, How to Train Your Virgin . HTYV was released by Badlands and ArtBook in 2015, and was covered in BOMB , T magazine, Vogue , MSNBC’s Chrystal Ball Show , Hyperallergic , Sluttist , and many other forums. She is editing her first novel and beginning work on her second.

Kate Milliken

Kate Milliken is the author of If I’d Known You Were Coming , winner of the 2013 John Simmons Award for Short Fiction, and the novel, Kept Animals , which was long listed for the 2020 First Novel Award. Her work has been supported by the Tin House Writers Workshop, the Ragdale Foundation, and the Vermont Studio Center among others. When not at work on her next book, Kate is a freelance editor and writing coach.

Ruth Mukwana

Ruth Mukwana is a fiction writer. Her work has appeared in several magazines including Bomb , Solstice , and Consequence . Her short story, “ Taboo ” was a runner-up in the Black Warriors Review 2017 fiction contest. She’s the Co-Fiction Editor of Solstice Magazine . She is the Creator and Host of SAHA, Stories and Humanitarian Action, a Podcast that investigates whether fiction can raise awareness on the causes and consequences of humanitarian crises. Her works in progress are a collection of short stories and a novel that follows Queen, a middle-aged woman working for the UN, as she’s forced to confront a past, she wants to forget, and her quest for justice. Told through multiple points of view, the novel interrogates trauma and memory, and resilience and forgiveness. She’s a graduate of the Bennington Writing Seminars (MFA), a 2022 Bennington Alumni Fellow and a 2020 Center for Fiction/Susan Kamil NYC Emerging Fellow, and a former humanitarian worker with the United Nations. She lives in New York with her daughter.

As a fiction writer with an MFA from Bennington College and a humanitarian worker whose work and writing deals with social justice issues, she is passionate about writing for social justice and has a deep familiarity with both the research and questions of craft. Therefore, she offers a wide perspective and comparative approach.

Alison Mills Newman

Alison Mills Newman is a former child star from the ’60s, a singer/songwriter and recording artist with Taj Mahal, and has opened for Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, Weather Report with Joe Zavinul and Wayne Shorter, screenwriter, poet and award winning independent filmmaker and author of Maggie Three and the highly acclaimed Francisco .

Zeynep Özakat

Zeynep Özakat was born and raised in Istanbul, Turkey. Her writing has appeared in Glimmer Train Stories , where she won the Fiction Open Contest, in Black Warrior Review, Michigan Quarterly Review , and Gulf Coast Online . She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University, where she received The Shirley Jackson Prize in Fiction, The Leonard Brown Prize in Poetry, and a Graduate Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research and Creative Work. She has received scholarships and support from The Disquiet Conference in Lisbon, The Bread Loaf Environmental Writing Conference, The Juniper Summer Writing Institute, and The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, where she was a 2021-2022 Writing Fellow.

Soraya Palmer

Soraya Palmer is the author of The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts . She is a Flatbush-born-and-raised writer and licensed social worker. Her novel was named one of Today’s “38 Best New Books to Read in 2023,” one of the “Buzziest Debut Novels of the New Year” by Goodreads , one of the “Best and Most Anticipated Books of 2023” by Elle magazine, and one of “The Most Anticipated Feminist Books of 2023” by Ms. magazine. Her writing has appeared in Electric Literature , Hazlitt , Ploughshares, and elsewhere. She has been awarded a residency at Blue Mountain Center and graduated from the Virginia Tech MFA program. She lives in Brooklyn with her cat, Nicholas.

Daniel Saldaña París

Daniel Saldaña París is the author of three novels— Among Strange Victims , Ramifications , and The Dance and the Wildfire —and a collection of personal essays, Planes Flying Over a Monster . His work has been translated into several languages, and he has been included in Bogota39, a list of the Best Latin American Writers Under 40.

The recipient of fellowships and residencies from the Banff Center for the Arts, the Latin American Art Museum of Buenos Aires, Art Omi, and MacDowell, he has been awarded the Eccles Center & Hay Festival Writers Award in the U.K., and his latest novel was a finalist for the Herralde Prize in Spain. He was a 2022-2023 fellow at the NYPL’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, and has contributed to publications such as the Guardian , BOMB, Guernica, Aperture, Music & Literature, LitHub, Publisher’s Weekly , and KCRW’s UnFictional , among many others. You can keep up with Daniel on Instagram at @dsparis .

Dawn Raffel

Dawn Raffel is the author of six books, most recently Boundless as the Sky , a hybrid collection incorporating fiction, image, and early 20th Century history, amid the rise of both fascism and technology. The title novella, set at the 1933 Chicago World’s fair, is told through multiple perspectives, including “ordinary” people and sideshow performers whose voices have been lost to history books. Her previous book, The Strange Case of Dr. Couney , is historical narrative nonfiction based on deep archival research. Other books include a nationally bestselling memoir, The Secret Life of Objects , two story collections and a novel. She has taught creative writing at International Literary Seminars (previously Summer Literary Seminars) in Kenya, Russia, Lithuania, and Canada. You can keep up with Dawn by following her on Instagram at @dawnraffel , or on Twitter at @dawnraffel .

Juliana Roth

Juliana Roth was selected as a VIDA Fellow with the Sundress Academy for the Arts for her fiction and is currently seeking a home for her novel and collection of short stories. Her writing appears in the Breakwater Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Irish Pages , and Entropy as well as being produced as independent films that she directs. Her web series, The University , was nominated by the International Academy of Web Television for Best Drama Writing. Currently, she teaches writing at NYU and writes the newsletter Drawing Animals featuring essays, interviews, doodles, and podcast episodes celebrating our interconnection with nonhuman animal life. She also holds a 200-hour yoga teacher certification and is a current Emerging Writer Fellow at The Center for Fiction. She formerly lived out of a backpack in the La Sal Mountains and as a volunteer on an organic farm in Maine.

Buku Sarkar

Buku Sarkar is a fiction writer and photographer based in New York. Her first book has just been published in 2023, a collection of short stories titled Not Quite A Disaster After All . She has written for various magazines including NYRB , ZYZZYVA , NYTimes , Sewanee Review , Threepenny Review , and received the best short story of the year award from Sewannee Review . Her photography, has been shown at ICP, Art Basel Miami to name a few.

Alanna Schubach

Alanna Schubach is the author of The Nobodies (Blackstone, 2022). Her short fiction has appeared in Shenandoah , the Sewanee Review , the Massachusetts Review , Electric Literature , and more. She was an Emerging Writer Fellow with The Center for Fiction and a Fellow in Fiction with the New York Foundation for the Arts. She earned an M.F.A. in fiction from Sarah Lawrence College.

Amy Silverberg

Amy Silverberg is a writer and comedian based in Los Angeles. Her short fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories , the Paris Review , Granta , TriQuarterly , the Los Angeles Review of Books , and elsewhere. Her debut novel First Time, Long Time is forthcoming from Grand Central Publishing/Hachette. She also writes television, most recently The Movie Show on the SYFY Channel. She holds a Ph.D. in Literature & Creative Writing from The University of Southern California, where she currently teaches.

Javier Sinay

Javier Sinay is a writer and journalist. His books include Camino al Este , Cuba Stone (in collaboration), Los crimes de Moisés Ville (published by Restless Books as The Murders of Moises Ville in 2022), and Sangre joven , which won the Premio Rodolfo Walsh de la Semana Negra de Gijón, España. In 2015 he won the Premio de la Fundación Gabo/FNPI for his chronicle “Fast. Furious. Dead.,” published in Rolling Stone . His work has appeared in the newspapers La Nación and Clarín , in Buenos Aires, and on the website RED/ACCIÓN. He was also a South America correspondent for El Universal (Mexico) and the editor of Rolling Stone (Argentina). He has collaborated with Gatopardo (Mexico), Label Negra (Peru), Letras Libres (Mexico) and Reportagen (Switzerland). He lives in Buenos Aires.

Eraldo Souza dos Santos

A 2022 LARB Publishing Fellow, Eraldo Souza dos Santos is a Brazilian writer currently based between Paris and São Paulo. His first novel, to be published in 2024, is an autobiography of his illiterate mother and a meditation on the lived experience of Blackness and enslavement in modern Brazil. At the age of seven, his mother was sold into slavery by her white foster sister. It was 1968—eighty years after the abolition of slavery in Brazil and four years into the anti-communist coup d’état, during the month in which the military overruled the Constitution by decree. By weaving in extensive archival research and interviews, the novel narrates their journey to Minas Gerais—where she was born—and Bahia—the Blackest state in Brazil, where she was enslaved on a farm for three years—to investigate why the family that enslaved her has never been brought to justice. It also narrates his grandmother’s journey to search for her missing daughter. In March 2023, he offered a masterclass based on his novel at the prestigious UEA Creative Writing Course. You can keep up with Eraldo on Twitter at @esdsantos .

Mathangi Subramanian

Mathangi Subramanian is a neurodiverse South Asian American novelist and essayist. Her middle grade book Dear Mrs. Naidu won the South Asia Book award, and her novel A People’s History of Heaven was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and was longlisted for the PEN/Faulkner prize and The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Her picture book A Butterfly Smile was inducted into the Nobel Museum by economics laureate Dr. Esther Duflo. She is a guest artist at Denver School of the arts and affiliate faculty at the Regis Mile High MFA program. She holds a doctorate in education from Columbia University Teachers College.

Jenna Tang is a Taiwanese writer and translator who translates between Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, French, and English. She is a board member and chair of the Equity Advocates Committee at the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA). Her translations and essays are published in McSweeney’s , Latin American Literature Today , World Literature Today , Catapult , AAWW , Words Without Borders , the Paris Review , and elsewhere. Her book in translation, Lin Yi-Han’s novel, Fang Si-Chi’s First Love Paradise (HarperVia), will be out in May 2024.

Hannah Tinti

Hannah Tinti is the author of the bestselling novel The Good Thief , which won The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize , and the story collection Animal Crackers , a runner-up for the PEN/Hemingway Award. Her latest novel, The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley , is a national bestseller and is in development for television. She teaches creative writing at New York University’s MFA program and co-founded the Sirenland Writers Conference. Tinti is also the co-founder and executive editor of One Story magazine, which won the AWP Small Press Publisher Award, CLMP’s Firecracker Award, a 2020 Whiting Prize, and the PEN/Magid Award for Excellence in Editing.

María Alejandra Barrios Vélez

María Alejandra Barrios Vélez is a writer born in Barranquilla, Colombia. She was the 2020 SmokeLong Flash Fiction Fellow, and her stories have been published in Shenandoah Literary , Vol. 1 Brooklyn , El Malpensante , Fractured Lit , SmokeLong Quarterly , The Offing , and more. Her work has been supported by organizations such as Vermont Studio Center, Kweli, Caldera Arts, and the New Orleans Writers’ Residency.

Her debut novel, The Waves Take You Home , will be published March 19, 2024.

Sofia Warren

Sofia Warren is a cartoonist and writer based in Brooklyn. Her first book, Radical: My Year with a Socialist Senator , was named one of the top graphic novels of 2022 by Forbes , and was a 2023 Finalist for the Pop Culture Classroom Excellence in Graphic Literature award. Sofia has been a contributing cartoonist at the New Yorker since 2017, and her work has also been published in MoMA Magazine, Catapult, Narrative Magazine , and the books Send Help! and Notes from the Bathroom Line . She is a visiting professor at Wesleyan University. You can keep up with Sofia on Instagram at @sofiawarrenart .

Eleanor Whitney

Eleanor Whitney is a writer, editor, and content marketer. She is the author of Riot Woman , a collection of feminist essays examining the impact of the Riot Grrrl movement, and Quit Your Day Job , a business guide and an accompanying workbook for creative people. Microcosm will publish her fourth book, Spread the Word: Promote Your Book, Find Your Readers, and Build a Literary Community in the fall of 2023.

Throughout her career, Eleanor has worked to build communities, education programs, and marketing content strategies at museums, art organizations, and tech startups, including the Brooklyn Museum and the New York Foundation for the Arts. She holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Queens College, a Master’s in Public Administration from Baruch College, and BA in cultural studies from Eugene Lang College. She has taught writing at both Queens College and Eugene Lang College and in community workshops around the country. Hailing from Maine, she divides her time between Brooklyn and the Mojave desert. You can keep up with Eleanor on Instagram at @killerfemme and on Twitter at @killerfemme.

Joe Wilkins

Joe Wilkins was born and raised on the Big Dry of eastern Montana and now lives with his family in the foothills of the Coast Range of Oregon. He is the author of a novel, Fall Back Down When I Die , praised as “remarkable and unforgettable” in a starred review at Booklist . A finalist for the The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, Fall Back Down When I Die won the High Plains Book Award. Wilkins is also the author of a memoir, The Mountain and the Fathers , and four collections of poetry, including Thieve and When We Were Birds , winner of the Oregon Book Award. His second novel, The Entire Sky , is slated for publication in July 2024 with Little, Brown. Wilkins directs the creative writing program at Linfield University and is a member of the low-residency MFA faculty at Eastern Oregon University.

Diane Zinna

Diane Zinna is the author of the novel The All-Night Sun (Random House, 2020) and Letting Grief Speak: Writing Portals for Life After Loss , a craft book on the art of telling our hardest stories, forthcoming from Columbia University Press in 2024. She has led a free grief writing class called Grief Writing Sundays since the start of the pandemic.

Courtney Zoffness

Courtney Zoffness is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir-in-essays Spilt Milk , named a best debut of 2021 by BookPage and Refinery29 and a “must-read” by Publishers Weekly . She won the Sunday Times Short Story Award and received fellowships from The Center for Fiction and MacDowell. Her writing has appeared in the Paris Review Daily , the New York Times , Guernica , the Believer , and other venues. She’s an Associate Professor of English at Drew University, where she directs the creative writing program. You can keep up with Courtney on Instagram at @czoffness, and Twitter at @czoffrun .

We kindly ask those attending in-person workshops to review our Health & Safety Protocols before visiting The Center for Fiction. For refunds, please refer to our Refund Policy .

How to Run a Successful Writing Group

So you’ve set up your writing group. Now what?

Whether your group is newly formed, or perhaps it’s been running for a while, here are some ideas that can help you inject creative energy.

1. Create the right atmosphere

In order to get into the right creative space, you need to feel at ease with your fellow writers. Make sure new members are welcomed and introduced. And get everyone to say something in the big group at the beginning of every meeting so all members feel involved from the start.

Beginnings to break the ice could be :

• One good thing that’s happened for me in the last seven days
• One thing I’m looking forward to this weekend
• One accomplishment achieved in the last seven days (could be anything from cooking a curry to climbing a mountain).
• One new thing I’ve tried – it doesn’t matter whether it succeeded.

2. Have an agenda

An agenda that roughly follows the same formula each time means people will know what to expect.

You have options but it could look something like this:

• Welcome everyone and do a round the table check in (see above) that allows everyone chance to say something. This could include brief introductions if there are new members.
• The secretary or person in charge of correspondence gives news of writing events, courses, competitions that have arrived via post or email. Members add whatever they have heard of or spotted in magazines.
• A short spontaneous warm up writing exercise with read backs
• Refreshment break for informal friendly chat
• Read backs and feedback of pieces people have written at home. Or a group exercise designed to develop some specific writing skill with read backs.
• Anything else anyone wants to raise and date and time of next meeting.

3. Start on time and end on time

This will encourage latecomers to be prompt and enable members to plan the rest of their day or evening.

4. Share the organising

If one person does everything, the burden is awesome. Eventually you might consider appointing different people to share out the tasks.

These might include

• Secretary – a named person to receive and deal with correspondence and prepare agenda
• Someone to send out reminders of meetings. This could be the Secretary or a different person
• Facilitator to set exercises (or this might change for each meeting)
• Refreshments organiser
• Membership organiser – the role could be combined with…
• Treasurer/Accounts organiser to open bank account and collect fees, pay venue hire if necessary. Some libraries may lend you a room without charge
• Resources and library manager to look after any writing books purchased and owned by the group
• Events organiser to plan days out, theatre visits, invite visiting speakers/tutors depending on how social you want to be.

5. Set stimulating exercises

Some sources of ideas

• Beg, borrow or buy writing books and look for exercises that will develop specific skills. Try the library, bookshops, charity shops, Amazon and writer friends who may be clearing their shelves.
• Google ‘writing exercises for groups’. There are lots of ideas available free on the internet.
• Use old photographs of places or people, song titles, imaginary dialogue between two characters drawn out of a hat to trigger a story. Be creative. And enjoy!

Recommended books for writing exercises:

The Five Minute Writer Taking Reality by Surprise What If? Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers The Writer’s Block

6. Give honest feedback

One of the reasons people join a writing group is so they can have access to honest feedback. But they often report that their fellow-writers are either too nice or too negative about each other’s work. Both types of feedback can be equally unhelpful.

• Too nice is bland, boring and gives the writer no feeling of honest appreciation when they do produce something that is genuinely good.
• Too negative is discouraging and disheartening.
• What’s needed instead is a positive atmosphere in the sessions that evokes honest, sensitive and respectful feedback. Comments should be constructive and a good formula to follow is two positives and a negative.
• For instance, “I really liked the way your piece evoked atmosphere of the place (positive). And you built up a feeling of suspense and tension very well (positive). I think the dialogue could reveal a little more of the difficulties of the relationship, rather than using the narrative text to highlight the problems.

If people find it difficult to give feedback, brainstorm a list of criteria you might look at when evaluating a piece of writing and display it prominently. It might include:

• Does it begin well?
• What emotion/s does it evoke?
• What particular words or phrases do you remember?
• How do you personally relate to the piece?

You might consider appointing the two people sitting next to the reader to take responsibility for giving feedback before opening it up to the group.

Remember most writers have delicate egos and are fairly quick to criticise their own work. So you might introduce a ground rule that no one should be negative about their own writing, or apologise for what they read out. This will help generate a more positive atmosphere.

7. Celebrate your successes

When one of your members wins an award or a competition, or gets published in any small or major way, make it an excuse for celebration. A round of applause, a shared cake or bottle of bubbly. Do whatever works. And encourage your writers to aim for the stars. Who knows – one of them might be the author of the next best-seller.

For information on inviting Judi to run a session at your writing group, in person or online with Zoom click here

Writing Workshop: Can a Writing Workshop Help You Become a Better Writer?

by Joe Bunting | 0 comments

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How do you write beautiful, award-winning novels, memoirs, and short stories? One tried-and-true way is through a writing workshop, a program with other writers who can give encouragement, feedback, and support as you write, edit, and publish your writing.

But maybe you don't know how to join a writing workshop, can't afford the steep admission fee a masters-level creative writing program costs, or you don't live near one.

That's where an online writing workshop like The Write Practice Pro can help in.

In this post, I’m going to share what a creative writing workshop is and how you can use it to improve your writing habits, get feedback on your creative writing, and go on to publish award-winning writing. Then we’ll talk about how to find a writing workshop, whether online or locally, and how to get the most out of it.

What Is a Creative Writing Workshop?

Writing workshop is a method of guiding people through the creative writing process with a focus on publishing and/or sharing their writing.

The Six Elements of a Writing Workshop

There are six parts to writing workshops:

• Lessons on the creative writing process.
• Structured time to plan your writing piece and brainstorm story ideas
• Structured writing time
• Getting feedback from editors/teachers and other students/writers
• Revision time based on content/grammar/flow
• Publishing or sharing

The Limitations of Most Creative Writing Workshops

In the past, creative writing workshops haven’t been accessible to everyone. Here’s why:

1. Location Dependent

Generally creative writing workshops are done in school settings, from a Masters in Fine Arts (MFA) creative writing program to a middle school creative writing unit.

For example, one of the most famous workshops is the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, which is in Iowa City, Iowa. Hundreds of award-winning novelists and memoirists have either graduated from or taught at this program, including Pulitzer Prize winners Marilyn Robinson, Michael Cunningham, John Cheever, and more.

The problem is if you’re going to participate, you need to be in a specific location, namely Iowa.

Iowa isn’t the only excellent creative writing program (Poets and Writers has a full list of MFA programs ), and there are low-residency programs, where you can go in-person for just a few weeks per semester. But all creative writing programs require you to be in a specific location for at least several weeks and often several years.

If you can’t move your life to Iowa or some other city with a program, that rules out the possibility of improving your writing through this method.

2. High Cost

The average cost at an MFA creative writing workshop for a single class is over $3,300. The total cost can be as low as $27,000 and up to $108,000. That’s a lot!

If you don’t have an extra $50k lying around (and if you do, call me!), participating in a creative writing workshop is probably not possible.

3. Lack of Focus on Publishing

Writers write for readers. One drawback of some creative writing workshops is they spend so much time focusing on writing for other writers, professors, and a handful of university-funded literary magazines that they forget who their real audience is.

Without a strong focus on publishing, a creative writing workshop can get lost in the weeds of craft that sounds good in theory but doesn’t serve readers.

Can Regular People Participate in Creative Writing Workshops? Yes, in 3 Ways

There is huge value to the creative writing workshop process for all writers and aspiring writers, regardless of whether they’re in a formal school setting or not.

The great news is that now anyone can participate in this process and use it to improve their writing and get published.

There are three main ways that people can get involved with creative writing workshops, apart from local school settings:

• Local writing critique groups
• Online writing classes
• Online writing critique groups

Let’s look at two of those, local writing groups and online writing groups.

Pros and Cons of Local Writing Groups and How to Find Them

Local writing groups are groups of people interested in writing who meet regularly (often weekly) to critique each other’s chapters and short stories and talk about the writing process.

Sometimes these groups are filled with amateur writers working on their first books and pieces, but established writers often belong to writers’ groups too.

Famous examples of local writers’ groups include the Inklings , J.R.R Tolkien and C.S. Lewis’s writing group in Oxford; the Bloomsbury Group , Virginia Woolf and T.S. Eliot’s group in London; and the more informal Lost Generation , Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s group in Paris.

The benefit of local writers’ groups is that they give you a great chance to build relationships with other writers, and these writing friends can help you with more than just improving your chapters, but also how to get published and how to market your writing.

Here are some ways you can find a local writers’ groups:

• Google for local writing groups in your area
• Ask other writers you know locally if they are part of a group or know of groups
• Create your own

The drawback of local writers’ groups is that these groups only provide one aspect of the creative writing workshop experience: feedback.

Getting good feedback might be a valuable part of becoming a published writer, but it’s certainly not the only part. Structured brainstorming, structured writing time (like deadlines), focusing on revision, publishing opportunities, and even lessons on creative writing are also important parts of growing as a writer.

On top of that, you might not connect with your local group (I never have!). You might not be a good fit in terms of career level, with people either far ahead of you or behind you.

Even worse, what if you don’t live in an area with a local writers’ group at all?

If a local writers’ group isn’t a good solution for you, how can you get the full creative writing workshop experience?

That’s where online creative writing workshops like The Write Practice Pro can help.

How an Online Writing Workshop Like The Write Practice Pro Works

There are several online writing workshops that overcome the hurdles we talked about above. One of the best groups is The Write Practice Pro.

The Write Practice Pro is an online creative writing workshop dedicated to helping you become a better writer, write award-winning books and short stories, and ultimately become a bestselling author.

Here’s how it can help you get the full creative writing workshop experience:

1. Lessons on the creative writing process

At The Write Practice, we believe everyone can become a great writer through deliberate practice, and one of the most important aspects of deliberate practice is solid lessons.

Through The Write Practice Pro, you can get daily writing lessons, writing prompts, and exercises to help you become a better writer. For example, click here for the top 100 creative writing lessons .

We also host regular writing courses , like 100 Day Book , where you can connect with a mentor who will walk you through the process of writing a first draft (or second draft) of a novel, memoir, or non-fiction book.

2. Planning your writing and brainstorming ideas

It can take hundreds of hours to write a book, sometimes even thousands. If you’re going to invest that time into the writing process, you want to make sure that you’re working on the right idea.

That’s why getting feedback on your idea, not just your actual writing, is so important.

In The Write Practice Pro, you can go to the Book Ideas group , share your idea, and get feedback from other writers on whether the idea works or not.

3. Structured writing time

As someone who struggles with structure, one thing I’ve learned is that if I don’t have structured writing time, I will never finish my writing! I’ve written over ten books, but I wouldn’t have finished any of them if I hadn’t leaned into structure.

The best way I know to build structure for writing is to create deadlines that I can actually keep, and in The Write Practice Pro, we have a sacred deadline that the whole community lives by. We call in The Write Practice Pro challenge:

Write one chapter, story, article, or poem per week by Friday at midnight.

If you’re in one of our writing classes, like 100 Day Book or Write to Publish, you follow this deadline. And if you’re in The Write Practice Pro, you follow it too.

Why? Because as writers, we need deadlines. Even more importantly, we need a community that will encourage us to hit the deadline even if we don’t want to.

4. Getting feedback, from editors and other writers

At The Write Practice, we believe everyone can become a great writer through deliberate practice, and one of the most important aspects of deliberate practice is feedback.

To grow as a writer you need feedback both from your peers (other writers) and from experts (an editor or teacher).

Why does feedback work? Because good writing is rewriting. But studies have shown that when you rewrite without feedback, you generally focus on surface-level edits like fixing grammatical errors and typos. However, if you get feedback, you’ll focus on content-level edits, like rewriting a section to make it more readable or restructuring the piece entirely.

The amazing thing that these studies have shown is that peer feedback is almost as effective as professional feedback. So as important as it is to get professional feedback, even feedback from writers at your same level will help you become a better writer.

Below I’ll share how to get peer and professional feedback on your writing on The Write Practice Pro.

How to Get Feedback on The Write Practice Pro

1. Start by going to The Write Practice Pro groups screen . The Write Practice Pro is organized into several different critiquing groups, including a group for short stories and a group for novels.

2. Follow the group for your piece. If you’ve written a short story or writing practice, click “Follow” next to the Writers Workshop: Short Stories group. If you’ve written a chapter of a novel, click “Follow” next to the Writers Workshop: Novels and Books group.

I’m writing a Pirate Story and so I’m going to be sharing in the Short Stories workshop .

3. Click to your group and then copy and paste your piece into the editor. Then click submit and wait for your piece to publish!

I copied and pasted my Pirate Story (from Pirate Ipsum ) into the Short Story Workshop below. Once the story is published, my story will be assigned to other writers and I can start to get feedback.

4. Complete your critiquing. Some groups in The Write Practice Pro, like the Short Story Workshop, pair you with other writers to critique. This is a great way to get to know the work of other writers and make new writer friends. Here’s what a match looks like:

Now, I will follow the links to those three stories, read them, and give feedback to the writer.

Other groups, like the Novel and Books Workshop, allow you to choose whom you will critique.

But all groups ask you to read and give feedback on three other pieces in your group before you can view the critiques on your own story (this requirement expires after fourteen days). That way everyone gets the feedback they need to improve their writing!

There are two ways to give feedback:

• Critique the story as a whole, following our critiquing guidelines and using the Oreo Method .
• Give inline feedback by highlighting text and clicking the comment icon. This is great for spotting typos, grammatical errors, or other inline issues.

After I finish my matched critiques, I will be able to view feedback on my own story.

5. Upgrade for Professional Editor Feedback. If you want a professional critique, click the “Upgrade” button (see screenshot below) and send your story to The Write Pro’s team of Story Grid certified editors for a content-based critique.

I want an editor’s feedback on Pirate Story, so I click the upgrade button. Then I’m taken to a page describing the kind of feedback I’ll receive and the cost, which is 1.5¢ per word.

I can also enter any special area of focus for the critique. After I click submit, a member of The Write Practice Pro’s team will follow up and I will receive my professional critique within one to three weeks.

5. Revisions Based on Content, Grammar, and Readability

After you get feedback, you need to edit your writing and revise it based on content, grammar, and readability.

Often this is the hardest part of the writing process, and I usually have my biggest struggles and moments of self-doubt during the revision process.

However, that’s why it’s so great to have an encouraging community of other writers. When you feel stuck, share your struggles with the community in The Write Practice Pro’s Café group. This is a great way to get tips and encouragement from the community.

6. Publishing or sharing

This is the end goal. As writers, we don’t just write . We share our writing with the world.

The Write Practice Pro makes it easy to publish. Through their partnership with Short Fiction Break literary magazine , you can publish your writing instantly on the website, sharing your writing with the world.

Here’s how it works:

How to Publish Your Writing on Short Fiction Break Literary Magazine

Note: publishing is currently only available for pieces posted in the Short Stories Workshop.

1. After your piece has been thoroughly edited, navigate to your writing piece on The Write Practice Pro . If you can’t find it, go to your profile and find your story in your feed.

When I click on my profile, I can easily find my story in my activity feed.

2. Click the “Publish” button beside the story title. Note that you must complete your three critiques before the “Publish” button will appear.

After you click Publish, a dialogue box will appear, asking if you agree to Short Fiction Break’s publishing guidelines and terms. When you confirm you’re ready to publish, you will see this message with a link to your story:

Here’s the story LIVE on Short Fiction Break:

That was easy! Maybe I should write a real story now!

Will the Writing Workshop Process Help You Become a Better Creative Writer?

So what’s the verdict? Will participating in the Writing Workshop process help your writing?

Yes! Even if you only participate in a local writers’ group and just get feedback, that feedback will help you become a better writer.

Even better, if you enroll in an MFA program or join an online writing workshop like The Write Practice Pro and go through all six steps of the workshopping process, you will become a better writer even faster.

One thing to remember, though: these workshops do not make the writing process easier. In fact, in some ways it will be harder, because you are growing in each step in the writing process.

After all, growth never comes without discomfort.

But if you follow the process and press in to that discomfort, you will become a better writer.

Ready to start the writing workshop process? Join The Write Practice Pro and get started now. Click to join The Write Practice Pro .

What is your favorite part of the writing workshop process? How has being part of a workshop helped you? Let me know in the comments .

Ready to practice the writing workshop process? Here’s a writing prompt to help:

Write about a writing critique group gone wrong. Maybe two of the members are dating and get into a massive fight. Maybe one member can’t take feedback and erupts in anger. Maybe the teacher is secretly gaslighting everyone.

Whatever your writing group gone wrong looks like, write about it for fifteen minutes . When your time is up, participate in the workshopping process by posting your practice in the comments section for feedback. And if you do post, please be sure to give feedback on at least three other pieces.

Happy writing!

Joe Bunting

Joe Bunting is an author and the leader of The Write Practice community. He is also the author of the new book Crowdsourcing Paris , a real life adventure story set in France. It was a #1 New Release on Amazon. Follow him on Instagram (@jhbunting).

Want best-seller coaching? Book Joe here.

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What Is Writing Workshop?

An essential part of the responsive classroom.

If you’re new to teaching writing, you may have heard discussion about writing workshop but not be entirely sure about what it is or how to use it in your classroom. WeAreTeachers is here with the answer.

What is writing workshop?

Writing workshop is a student-centered framework for teaching writing that is based on the idea that students learn to write best when they write frequently, for extended periods of time, on topics of their own choosing. 

To develop skills as a writer, students need three things: ownership of their own writing, guidance from an experienced writer, and support from a community of fellow learners. The writing workshop framework meets these needs and streamlines instruction in order to meet the most important objective: giving kids time to write. The workshop setting supports children in taking their writing seriously and viewing themselves as writers. 

The four main components of writing workshop are the mini-lesson, status of the class, writing/conferring time, and sharing. There is not a prescribed time limit for each component, rather they are meant to be flexible and determined by students’ needs on any given day. 

1. Mini-lesson (5 – 15 minutes)

This is the teacher-directed portion of writing workshop. Mini-lessons should be assessment-based, explicit instruction. They should be brief and focused on a single, narrowly defined topic that all writers can implement regardless of skill level. According to writing guru Lucy Calkins , mini-lessons are a time to “gather the whole class in the meeting area to raise a concern, explore an issue, model a technique, or reinforce a strategy.” 

Sources for mini-lessons can come from many places. Many teachers follow the scope and sequence of a prepared curriculum or use the state or national standards as a guide. Ideally, topics for mini-lessons come from your observations as you conference with your students and become aware of their needs. 

The four parts of a mini-lesson:

• Connection (activating students’ prior knowledge)
• Teaching (presentation of the actual skill or topic)
• Active engagement (giving students time for supported practice of the skill)
• Link (helping students figure out how the topic pertains to their individual writing piece).

For a helpful description of the mini-lesson process, read Writing Workshop Fundamentals by Two Writing Teachers.

2. Status update (3 – 5 minutes)

Meant to be a quick check-in, status update is a way to find out where your students are in the writing process— pre-writing, drafting, revising, editing, evaluating, or publishing.

Status of the class doesn’t have to happen every day and it needn’t take up much class time. It can be a quick verbal check-in or “whip” around the classroom. Or you may want to use a clip chart, notebook, or a magnet chart.

SOURCE: Polka Dots and Pencils

Another great idea is to use a pocket chart. Students show which step they are on by putting the appropriately colored card in their pocket.  

SOURCE: Teaching My Friends

Status update lets you as the teacher evaluate how your students are progressing. It also creates accountability for the students and motivates your community of learners.

3. Writing (20 – 45 minutes)  

The majority of writing workshop is devoted to simply giving students time to write. During this time, teachers can either be modeling the process by working on their own writing or conferencing with individual students. In all reality, the majority of your time will be observing and helping students. A good goal during a typical week of writing workshop is to aim to work individually with every student in the class at least once.  

Remember, the main priority of conferencing is to listen, not to talk. But to prompt your students to share their progress with you, here are a few questions to ask from Teaching That Makes Sense . 

Once your students get the hang of what a helpful conference looks and feels like, they can use peer conferencing to help one another. 

4. Sharing (5–15 minutes)

It can be tempting, when time is running short, to skip this last element of writing workshop, but don’t!  It can be the most instructionally valuable part of the class, other than the writing time itself. When students grow comfortable seeing themselves as part of a writing community, they are willing to take more risks and dive deeper into the process. In addition, kids often get their best ideas and are most influenced by one another. 

Some tips to keep sharing time manageable: 

• For whole-class sharing, keep a running list of who has shared and when, and h ave students share only a portion of their writing—maybe what they consider their best work, or a part they need help with.
• Let students share in pairs—one reads aloud and one listens. 
• Have students swap work and read silently to themselves. 

At first the concept of writing workshop may seem overwhelming. But once you establish your routine, you’ll be surprised how easy it is to implement. Because writing workshop gives students so much time to write, their writing skills will improve dramatically. And hopefully, being part of such a dynamic writing community will instill in your students a lifelong love for writing.

Got any hot tips for using writing workshop in your classroom? We’d love to hear about them in our WeAreTeachers HELPLINE group on Facebook.

Plus, check out 5 Peer Conferencing Strategies that Actually Work .

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How to Run a Successful Writer’s Workshop

Procedures and classroom management.

Many people are concerned about Writer’s Workshop because of the different type of students they have in their class. Here are things that you may be concerned about, but that Writer’s Workshop will be effective with:

• Large class size (33)
• Needy students that struggled to work independently
• Chatty, off task students
• ELL students and students below grade level

Writer’s Workshop is fantastic with all students with proper procedures and practice. Here are a few things you will need to put into place for a successful writer’s workshop:

• A Writer’s Workshop Time: Set aside a block of time daily or every other day for writer’s workshop. The more you do writer’s workshop, the better your students will become at the task.
• Structure Your Workshop Block: (See more below): Set a schedule for your block and follow it each time. Students work better when they know the schedule and what to expect during the writing block. This also allows for continuation of the successful workshop block if you cannot be in your classroom for any reason.
• VIP Supply Bucket or VIP Table for students to use that do a great job during WW.
• Fun supplies for all students to use: I provide lots of colored markers, pens, and highlighters and use color-coding in my lessons.
• Friday recognition: I recognize one student that has done a great job during writer’s workshop this week. I give them a praise pin to wear and a no homework pass.
• Redirect students or move proximity: If you have students that just cannot focus during writer’s workshop, move them to a desk closer to your small group area so that you can easily redirect them without interrupting your small group.
• Give consequences if necessary: I always prefer positive reinforcement, but sometimes you have to go a step further. Give students consequences if they’re purposefully not doing what they’re supposed to be doing, and redirecting isn’t working. I often call and schedule a meeting with parents and the child where we review the writer’s workshop’s purpose and procedures. I stress that they have a very bright child and that this process will prepare them for working independently in school and their future career.

Structuring Your Workshop Block

I’ve read many different books and blog posts on Writer’s Workshop, and this schedule is what has worked well for me. I run my workshop in the following order:

• Mini-lesson (20%): When we first begin writer’s workshop, I teach one part of the writing process each day. Students that get ahead can get the next lesson in small group, or they may be able to go to the bulletin board and complete that step just from the information there. For example, on day 1 I do a mini-lesson using a graphic organizer for brainstorming. I do my own example while the students help give me ideas.
• Independent Work Part 1 (20%): Students work on doing what we learned in the mini-lesson for their essay. They continue on in the writing process if comfortable. I use a few minutes this time to look for 2-3 students with exceptional work to share with the class during our work sharing portion. You can write down the students’ names, or give them something to indicate that they will be sharing their work. The rest of this time I use to pull a small group of students that are struggling.
• Work Sharing (20%): I use some of this time to have the students I chose with exemplary examples share and the rest I use for students to share a piece of their work that they want feedback on with their partner or group. I model active listening and how students can provide helpful feedback because kids really struggle with this.
• Independent Work Part 2 (20%): Students get back to working on their essay. I usually open up small group to students that have questions. Sometimes I hold a small group during this time for my advanced writers that need a challenge.
• Wrap-up (20%): We use the last part of workshop to review any notes we took during workshop and to reflect on the day’s work. We also talk about what the mini-lesson is for the next day, and how they can prepare themselves for it.

Mini-lessons

Think of the mini-lesson as your whole group writing lesson, just condensed. During mini-lesson time, I have my students come back to the carpet with a rolling whiteboard and anchor chart paper (it’s a bit of a tight fit with 33 students, but it can be done!) with their writing notebook. They take notes, draw organizers, and more during this time.

The most difficult thing is deciding what to do for a mini-lesson. The first time I teach a specific type of essay, I do mini-lessons of the writing process tailored to that essay type. Here’s an example of mini-lesson topics based on opinion writing:

• What is opinion writing and what do we need to have in our opinion essay?
• Brainstorming for an opinion essay
• Organizing your brainstorming ideas for an opinion essay
• Writing an introduction for an opinion essay: Writing great hooks (leads)
• Writing an introduction for an opinion essay: Writing a thesis
• Writing an introduction for an opinion essay: Putting together the introduction using connecting sentences
• Using your organizational notes to write body paragraphs
• Beginning your body paragraph with a transition sentence
• The parts of a conclusion & why a call to action is so important
• Revising your opinion essay
• Editing your opinion essay
• Publishing your opinion essay

Conferencing vs. Small Group

I do a lot of small groups when we first start the writer’s workshop. Once my students get really good at it, or if we’re towards the end of the essay, I also do conferences during their independent work. During conferencing, I have a clipboard that has a printed spreadsheet with student names and the skills they need to learn with the particular type of essay they’re doing at their particular grade level. When I conference, I call students back individually and we look at and discuss their writing to see what they have mastered and what they still need help on. This helps me structure my small groups and also gives me an idea of what we need to review during the mini-lesson time.

Guiding Writers

I’ve mentioned many times in this post that students may go ahead in the writing process (and may be behind if they’re struggling writers or were absent). I manage this using the Writing Process Bulletin Board that has the different parts of the writing process labeled and described. Having this visual has really helped me cut down on the “helpless hand raisers” that used to really put a wrench in my small group and conferencing time.

I also provide a printable version for each essay so that students can check off each part they have done. This prevents students from skipping a step and being finished early when they’re not really finished. 

Celebrating Success

At the end of your first essay, your students will have come so far. They’ve done what seems like a hundred different things to create and improve upon their essay. It’s time to celebrate their success! Throw a “Publishing Party” where you display their published essays and every student can walk around and read them. I have students hang theirs at eye level somewhere in the classroom. We put on our [literal] party hats, eat treats, and take about 45 minutes to walk around the room and read some of the essays and talk about the process. I buy 40 party hats on Amazon for about $10 (aff. link) and students decorate them for the first party with messages about writing. They put their names on the inside and I store them to reuse for the next publishing party.

I send a letter home about a week before our publishing party asking for donations of healthy treats, party decorations, and family participation. I invite families in to see their student’s work and many are gracious enough to bring the supplies to make the party fabulous. I usually do it the last hour of the day on Friday to make it more convenient for parents to attend.

Lastly, enjoy your students’ success with writer’s workshop and the fact that the next time around will be so easy. Your students are now well trained in the art of writer’s workshop and you can take a step back to admire your new independent writers!

Featured Resources in this Article

Writer’s Workshop Bulletin Board Print, Laminate, and Done!

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About the Author

April smith.

April began her career as a 5th grade teacher in 2008 and quickly developed a passion for creating engaging educational materials to share with fellow teachers. She now works with districts around the country, training their teachers and leaders on how to implement research-based strategies and differentiation techniques that meet the needs of diverse learners.

FREE Centers Guide

Introduction to Creative Writing

Course description.

Introduces the craft and practice of creative writing. Engages with both contemporary and classic authors within the primary genres of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. May also include exploration of other genres such as drama, screenwriting, digital storytelling, film, and performance genres. Develops use of craft elements discussed in class to compose original work in at least two genres. Covers revision practices for voice and purpose. Audit Available.

Course Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to: 

• Identify the basic craft elements of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction writing. 
• Read critically to analyze poetry, fiction, essays, and other written works. 
• Write original poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction works. 
• Participate in workshop method of critiquing creative writing. 
• Revise works within the creative writing process.

Suggested Outcome Assessment Strategies

The determination of assessment strategies is generally left to the discretion of the instructor. Here are some strategies that you might consider when designing your course: writings (journals, self-reflections, pre writing exercises, essays), quizzes, tests, midterm and final exams, group projects, presentations (in person, videos, etc), self-assessments, experimentations, lab reports, peer critiques, responses (to texts, podcasts, videos, films, etc), student generated questions, Escape Room, interviews, and/or portfolios. 

Department suggestions: Original poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction works, peer workshop, written analysis of creative texts.

Course Activities and Design

The determination of teaching strategies used in the delivery of outcomes is generally left to the discretion of the instructor. Here are some strategies that you might consider when designing your course: lecture, small group/forum discussion, flipped classroom, dyads, oral presentation, role play, simulation scenarios, group projects, service learning projects, hands-on lab, peer review/workshops, cooperative learning (jigsaw, fishbowl), inquiry based instruction, differentiated instruction (learning centers), graphic organizers, etc.

Course Content

Outcome #1: identify the basic crat elements of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction writing..

• point of view
• symbolism/allegory
• figurative language
• rhyme scheme
• speaker vs poet
• basic poetic forms (i.e. sonnet, haiky, villanelle, sestia, acrostic, ballad, ode, free verse, limerick, etc.)

Outcome #2: Read critically to analyze poetry, fiction, and essays.

• identiry genre
• identify main idea/point/purpose
• describe structure
• impacts of author choices
• annotating a text
• making claims
• summary vs analysis
• in class workshop
• instruction in constructive feedback (both written and verbal)
• crafting question as feedback

Outcome #3: Write original poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction work.

• Brainstorming
• writing journal 
• acrostic prompts
• hermit crab/mimic forms
• written description of images
• timed freewriting
• at least one fiction draft
• 2-5 poem drafts
• at least one creative nonfiction draft

Outcome #4: Participate in workshop method of critiquing creative writing.

• set community standards for in class workshop
• written drafts submitted in advance
• instruction on constructive and polite feeback
• guided workshop process
• both verbal and written feedback among peers

Outcome #5: Revise works within the creative writing process.

• reverse outlines
• cut & amp; rearrange
• scan and highlight
• revision checklists
• diction/word choice
• consistent point of view
• shifts in verb tense
• sentence/line variety
• paragraph breakdown
• integrate insights from workshop process in revision work
• integrate insights from readings in revision work
• write self-assessment of revision process

Suggested Texts and Materials

• OER Text:  Write or Left: An OER Textbook for Creative Writing Classes. Compiled and written by Sybil Priebe, an Associate Professor at the North Dakota State College of Science.
• OER Text:  the anti-textbook of writing (remixed). By Sybil Priebe and students.
• OER Text:  Introduction to Creative Writing. Linda Frances Lein, Alexandria Technical and Community College – Distance Minnesota
• OER Text:  Creative Writing, Creative Process. Matthew Cheney, Plymouth State University

The Best Free Online Writing Courses for Creative Writers, Fiction, and Nonfiction

by Tom Corson-Knowles | 63 comments

All of us want to improve our writing skills, hone our craft, and get ahead in our writing careers.

Not all of us can go back to school and get our MFA in writing—heck, not all of us want to!

Thankfully, the internet makes it possible to take great online writing courses for free (no matter where you live, what your circumstances, or your budget).

Taking a writing course online can help you polish your writing to be the best it can be—a critical step before either self-publishing or submitting your manuscript to publishers .

Through these free writing courses, you’ll gain practical tips and strategies to help you improve your writing—both for your current manuscript and for future projects.

Free Online Writing Courses

The more you learn and practice, the easier writing will become and the better your books will be. And that’s key to attracting and growing a devoted audience and becoming a full-time author !

How to Choose an Online Writing Course

You’ll want to choose a course that meets your needs, which means you need to know your needs first.

Identify Your Goals

When picking a course, ask yourself what specific areas you’re looking to improve:

• Do you want to pick up basic writing skills, like improving your grammar?
• Do you want to learn more about how to create gripping plots?
• Do you want to learn to create realistic, vivid characters?
• Do you want to learn how to add value to your nonfiction writing?
• Do you want to turn your life experiences into a book that has meaning for a broad audience?
• Do you want to learn how to earn a living off a specific kind of writing?
• Do you want to dive deep into a specific area of craft, like dialogue construction?

All of these goals—and many more—make good reasons to choose an online writing course!

Set Your Course Budget

Next, you’ll want to ask yourself what you’re willing to commit to a course, both in terms of time and money. There are some great free courses out there, as well as other courses that charge a fee. You might consider starting with a free class to make sure that you can handle the online learning format, then stepping up to a more advanced paid class later.

Pick a Commitment Level

Any course or class, no matter whether it’s online or not, requires dedication to actually make a difference in your life. You’ll need to be ready to listen to lectures, read papers and presentations, follow through on assignments, and engage with your classmates.

Some online courses are completely self-paced, which means you work through the material on your own, taking as long as you like. This is great for people with busy lives, jobs, and family commitments—but it also means you have to take responsibility for structuring your time and doing the work.

Other courses have weekly assignments, sometimes even monitored or graded by an instructor, along with class chat sessions, feedback opportunities, and other ways to have a full classroom experience without actually going to a university.

These types of courses are less flexible, as they often require you to log in at certain times, and they demand that you do your work on time! But they also offer a lot of benefits in terms of helping you manage your time and devote energy to improving your writing and to working with other writers to start forming a community.

Once you’ve figured out what you’re looking to learn, what you’re willing to commit (in terms of time, energy, dedication, and money), and how you think you’ll learn best, you can get started with your writing course!

Of course, you might not be quite ready to take the plunge into paying for an online writing class just yet. Will you be able to keep up with the assignments? How do online lectures work, anyway?

To help you get started in the world of online learning, we’ve rounded up some of the best free online writing courses out there, regardless of your focus: creative writing, fiction, and nonfiction.

Ready to find the right course for you? Let’s check them out!

Free Creative Writing Courses

Creative writing courses are amazing because they can be applied to just about anything you want to write, from memoirs to novels…even nonfiction!

These classes teach you the basic skills you need to write fluidly, fluently, and with style—essential no matter what your genre or field.

More advanced classes help you find your writing voice, learn the secrets of creating an author brand and ecosystem, and improve your technique.

English Composition Class

About the Course

In order to be a great writer, you have to have solid basic writing skills!

Arizona State University’s Introduction to English Composition class will help you master the basics so that you can improve every aspect of your writing, no matter what your focus is.

Over the eight-week intensive course, you’ll learn a variety of useful skills that can serve as the building blocks of your future writing career, helping you gain mastery over the English language and learn to write in a way that others respect and admire.

You’ll be asked to complete several writing assignments, as well as writing a reflection piece on each of them. You’ll also have the opportunity to engage with other learners and get feedback on your work as you develop your skills.

In this course, you’ll learn:

• How to target your writing to your audience’s needs
• How to think critically about reading and writing
• How to use style conventions and techniques to improve your writing
• How to use technology to write more effectively and efficiently
• How to unlock your creativity
• How to develop good writing habits

This is really a class on building the fundamental skills you’ll need to be a successful professional writer—it’s a fantastic resource for anyone, no matter where they are in their writing journey.

Adam Pacton holds a PhD in Rhetoric and Composition and is a lecturer on creative writing, English, and composition techniques at Arizona State University.

Free! You can also pay $499 to add a “verified certificate” if you want to show the course as a credential on a resume or to an employer, but most writers will do great with the free version.

The Crafty Writer’s Creative Writing Course

The Crafty Writer is a service started by fiction author Fiona Veitch Smith to help teach aspiring and current writers how to master their craft and publish better books that get better results in the market.

As part of that mission, they’ve developed The Crafty Writer’s Creative Writing Course , a self-paced introduction to creative writing. The class walks you through the basics of becoming a dedicated creative writer, including looks at several different styles and genres.

• How to uncover your personal writing style and voice
• The basics of writing a short story
• How to choose an effective point of view
• How to use vivid imagery to bring your ideas to life
• How to find and use writers’ groups, competitions, and communities of writers
• The basics of publishing and marketing your work

There are set assignments and tasks to complete, but you don’t need to attend any live chats or sessions. There’s no individual feedback from instructors or coaches, and you won’t get feedback from other people taking the class, but you’re encouraged to ask questions if there’s anything you’re struggling with. Mostly, you’re given the tools and resources to begin finding and building your own community of support and to assess and revise your own work.

If you’ve always wanted to dip a toe into the writing world, but weren’t quite sure where to begin, this could be the ideal online option for you!

Fiona Veitch Smith is a prolific author whose work includes several novels, a biography, a children’s book series, and more than 100 articles published in magazines as diverse as  Sports Illustrated  and  Plain Truth , where she is the New Writing editor. She holds BA and MA degrees in writing and is pursuing her PhD while also teaching creative writing both online and off.

Free! The class suggests recommended reading that you can buy or borrow from your library.

DIY MFA Writing Class

DIY MFA does exactly what it promises—it helps you learn the skills taught in a formal MFA program at home on your own!

The course walks you through the three major areas that big-name master’s programs focus on: writing, reading, and building a community of fellow authors, mentors, and devoted readers.

Along the way, you learn how to select and read books that can help you improve your own writing, whether because they act as source material, give you an idea of the state of your genre, or help you broaden your horizons and learn from great writers.

You’ll also get practical tips for writing better, including strategies for outlining, hints for how to pace the flow of your book, and ideas for creating memorable phrases in both fiction and nonfiction that will hook your reader instantly.

Founder Gabriela Pereira created DIY MFA after she graduated with her master’s in writing and saw all the other writers struggling to feel like pros without that experience…and realized that she still didn’t feel quite like a pro even with it! Gabriela teaches at conferences and online, and she’s helped hundreds of writers get the MFA experience without having to go to an expensive school.

Free! Just sign up at https://diymfa.com/join to get the free starter pack and begin your online MFA journey. You can also check out great tips and tricks on the site’s blog for more in-depth looks into how to improve your writing starting today.

Free Fiction Writing Classes

If you’ve already started on your career as a novelist and are looking to take your skills to the next level, a fiction-specific writing course might be best for you!

Start Writing Fiction

Looking to start your career as a novelist the right way? This may be the class for you!

Offered through The Open University, a world leader in distance learning, Start Writing Fiction takes you from zero to novelist in eight weeks.

You’ll listen to lectures from renowned novelists, develop your skills through writing prompts and assignments, and get personalized feedback from your classmates and instructor during the class.

• How and why to keep a writing journal
• How to write better dialogue
• How to do better research
• How to structure a plot
• Why reading matters as a writer
• How to self-edit your work

The course is taught by Dr. Derek Neale , an award-winning short story author and novelist whose works include The Book of Guardians . Dr. Neale is the Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at The Open University and splits his time between teaching, supervising PhD students, developing new courses, and working on his own fiction projects.

Free! However, you can pay a small fee (£39, or about $50) to upgrade to a version of the course that gives you unlimited access to the lectures and materials after the eight-week session ends.

How to Write a Novel

Ready to write your first novel? Consider taking this class first!

How to Write a Novel will give you the tools you need to actually finish that first draft—and go on to revise it and publish it successfully!

You’ll learn:

• How to keep track of your fiction ideas
• How (and why) to outline your novel
• Basic worldbuilding techniques
• Character development tips and tricks
• How to create a daily writing habit

By the end of the 10 daily lessons, you’ll be ready to roll with your first novel, crafting worlds and characters that set the stage for your career as a successful fiction author.

Ben Galley is a bestselling fantasy author and self-publishing consultant who helps authors create amazing stories and then sell their books around the world.

Free! Just sign up with your email to start the 10-day class.

How to Craft a Killer Short Story

Whether you’re an established fiction author or just getting started, short stories are a fantastic tool to have in your arsenal as a writer. But they involve some very different skills than writing longer fiction.

That’s where How to Craft a Killer Short Story comes in!

This 10-day email course will show you what you need to know in order to create tight, gripping stories, like:

• How to pick a great short story topic
• How to trim the fat from your writing
• How to edit short stories
• How to sell your stories to literary journals, anthologies, and magazines

Follow along every day and within two weeks, you’ll be ready to tackle the short story in all its glory!

Laura Mae Isaacman  is a full-time editor; she’s worked with major authors, including Joyce Carol Oates, T.C. Boyle and Noam Chomsky. She has also lectured on the topics of writing and publishing and is the co-founder of  Tweed’s Magazine of Literature & Art.

Free Nonfiction Writing Courses

Ready to hone your skills at turning real-life information, tips, techniques, and situations into enthralling prose that changes your readers’ lives?

Take one of these free nonfiction writing courses!

The Non-Sexy Business of Writing Nonfiction

Writing nonfiction can be very rewarding, but it doesn’t necessarily have the same glow around it as being a novelist.

Still, the skills you’ll learn as a nonfiction author can help you no matter what you write or what you want to do with your career.

The Non-Sexy Business of Writing Nonfiction walks you through the good, the bad, and the ugly of writing, publishing, and marketing nonfiction books.

In this 10-day course, you’ll get an email each day walking you through some critical aspect of writing and publishing nonfiction, covering topics like:

• How to get started on your book
• How to do targeted market research
• Tools and strategies to maximize your productivity
• Tips for outlining

By the end of the class, you’ll have a toolbox to help you write and publish your first nonfiction book!

Publishing coach Azul Terronez is the founder of Author’s Writing Academy and has helped dozens of authors make their books a reality. He has also coached seasoned writers like Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income, and Dana Malstaff of Boss-Mom.com.

Free! Just sign up with your email.

Writing What You Know

Writing a nonfiction book is all about translating the real world to the page, bringing readers with you as you explore a topic, event, or strategy.

Writing What You Know is an amazing introduction to the power of words to translate your experience to something that other people can learn and grow from.

This eight-hour course covers topics including:

• Using life experiences in your writing
• Creating vivid imagery
• Constructing and pacing scenes
• Using memories to structure narrative
• Turning the everyday into the memorable

By the end of the class, you’ll be able to craft engaging narratives capable of transporting your readers to another time, place, or situation—using the power of what you observe every day.

The Open University doesn’t reveal who developed its courses, but their content is on par with the best massively open online courses (MOOCs) in the world. You’ll learn techniques and skills that bestselling nonfiction authors have used to advance their careers and be able to quickly start improving your own writing.

Free! You can even download the course materials in the format of your choice to refer to later.

How to Write a Business Book

If you’ve ever wanted to write a business book, share your journey as an entrepreneur, or help others make money doing what they love, then How to Write a Business Book may be the class you’re looking for!

This 10-day email course will teach you the fundamentals of business writing, including how to make sure that your book resonates with your audience and helps add value to their business or life. This course will help you make your book more than just a business card—it will help you write in a way that changes your readers lives while enhancing your own career. Topics covered during the class include:

• Important questions to ask before writing your book
• How to outline and structure
• How to set manageable goals
• How to build your audience

Alison Jones  is a publishing partner for businesses and organizations. She provides executive coaching, consultancy, and training services to publishers and regularly speaks and blogs on the publishing industry.

Start Taking Free Online Writing Courses

No matter where you are on your writing journey, there’s always something new to learn. That’s the great thing about this path—we can learn, grow, and stretch ourselves in new and different ways every day!

One or more of the online writing courses we’ve covered here is sure to help you develop your skills and move to the next level as a writer, regardless of what genre you’re focused on or what your goals are.

Pick a class or two, sign up, and try it out! Apply the new techniques and strategies you’ve learned to your next writing project and see what a difference practice and development can make for you.

Then pick another class and keep on going!

Want to learn more about honing your craft as a writer? Check out these great resources:

• How to Write a Nonfiction Book
• How to Write Better Fiction and Become a Great Novelist
• 11 Writing Tips for Improving Readability and Communicating Better

Tom Corson-Knowles is the founder of TCK Publishing, and the bestselling author of 27 books including Secrets of the Six-Figure author. He is also the host of the Publishing Profits Podcast show where we interview successful authors and publishing industry experts to share their tips for creating a successful writing career.

63 Comments

How to join the free English learning course I have not found any link

I want to develop my email writing skill. Do you have any better solution?

Hi Mirko, we actually have a few posts on how to write an email , but you might also find these business writing courses helpful for writing emails too.

I’m trying to find a class to help me with a book I’m trying to write, but I’m a minor and it’s hard to find one that interests me but I can understand and works around my schoolwork. What would you recommend?

Hi Sierra, have you checked out any of these free courses? They’re online, so you should be able to do them in your free time/around your school work.

I think I will try Start Writing Fiction. Thank you for these great courses!

That’s great, Sierra! I hope you enjoy the courses :)

Thank you very much for providing valuable courses. I will surely pick one of my kind to get in the world of writing.

We’re glad you found it helpful Robin. Best of luck to you!

This article is very helpful for me, thank you so much for sharing this information. And here is also some important information so go here and check.

Glad you found this article helpful! And thanks for sharing the information!

Hi, Kaelyn: Lots of interesting classes here. That many are free is quite a treat.

I’m interested in learning more about creative non-fiction. I write pretty decent memoir and essays, but it’s time to dig deeper.

Would you please steer me on this.

I’m also curious what you may think of this genre in terms of earnings on Medium.

Thank you! Roy

Hi Roy, thanks for your comment! We have a post on creative nonfiction that you might enjoy. I don’t have hard numbers on potential earnings through Medium, but it’s an increasingly popular genre for online writing (and one of my personal favorites), so I think there’s definitely a market for it.

Hi, I have taken beginner creative writing class, now I want improve my creative writing more. So, what should be my next step? Are there any further courses for creative writing.

The ASU English Composition link doesn’t work. Please provide a new one. Or, a similar course.

Thanks Mitch, I updated the link!

I can’t find any link

Sorry, not sure what happened there. should be fine now!

Hi Sushmita, you might try practicing with our creative writing prompts or writing a short story :)

I would like to know if a fee is required for classes and if so how much.

Hi Cathy, the courses listed in this post are all free!

I would like to improve my business and day-to-day writing skills including grammar. Which is the best course for me to take pleae?

Hi Princess, you might actually want to check out our list of business writing courses . sounds like those might suit your needs better! :)

I am a sophomore in high school, I love writing and I want to improve so I can write short stories and poetry. What do you suggest for me? Thank you.

Hi Lena, any of the creative writing classes on this list would be a good start, but practice is also one of the best ways to improve. Consider entering a poetry or short story contest! :)

What about writing feedback? A writing course can only thrive with writing and more writing rather than talking the world out of styles and author-lectures. What is the price for feedback driven courses, if any

Hi Rashul, the ASU and Future Learn courses in this list include feedback from instructors :)

[email protected]

Thank you for all these wonderful recommendations. Can you recommend quality courses aimed specifically at writing for children, free or otherwise?

Hi Anna, thanks for your comment! None of the courses on this list are really aimed at kids, but it would depend on the age and learning level of the child. However, we do have these writing prompts for kids that you might find helpful! I’ll also work on making a list of courses for kids :)

Thank you for listing the free courses, but which one to chose is uncertain. I have worked on my manuscript and thought I was at the point for beta readers, only to find out from their comments I am far from publishing my books. I have the experience of online schooling, for I just received my masters. However, my writing skills need much improvement. I know I have a problem with telling not showing. And yes, I am a fictional writer. I also have a problem with moving back and forth with past and present tense. I am looking for the course that will help with these trouble areas.

Hi Allison, thanks for your comment! I think I would recommend the “Writing What You Know” course for your needs. We also have a post on how to show don’t tell that you might find helpful. And don’t feel discouraged, it’s a beta reader’s job to point out areas for improvement — they’ll help you get one step closer! :) Best of luck!

I am quite happy to have come across this website. I really want to take a short course on writing and acquire a certificate after completing it. Where should I go?

Hi Anthony! The ASU course offers a certificate, but so do a lot of Udemy courses. It depends on what kind of certificate you’re looking for

My writing intent is to share my Spiritual journey of the past 40 years most of which was spent learning and living the Medicines Ways of my Elder. I have a developed intuitive sense but I lack structure, form, and a deeply expanded vocabulary that would better capture in prose what I intuitively ‘feel-see’ but the results often end up being disjointed and lacking in a natural unforced flow which always leaves me not quite satisfied with the end result.

Hi Ron, thanks for your comment! yes, a lot of new writers struggle with structure, but with practice and the insights from some of these courses you can definitely make progress :)

hi do you know any free magazine writing workshops?

Hi Samantha, I don’t know any specifically for magazine writing, but any of the free nonfiction courses here will likely teach you some of the important skills you’ll need for magazine writing too:)

I’m a creative writer, I need work on my grammar ,spelling, ect ,editing my work and I want to write books what’s the best free course or courses?

Hi Jennifer, it looks like the courses on the list don’t really focus on those basic elements specifically, but we do have a lot of grammar posts that I hope you will find helpful. And if you have any specific questions, please let me know, I’m always happy to help!

Your last sentence is a run on sentence. I thought you’d want to know.

Thanks for pointing that out, Barbara. I usually don’t focus on grammar conventions when I’m answering questions. I just try to be helpful and answer as soon as possible. I’ll try to be more conscious of it :)

I am looking for a mentoring program for my 10 yr old who loves to write. Basically somebody who can go through her work and offer feedback. Thanks!

Hi Dharub, that’s so great that your daughter loves to write! you might consider signing her up for a writers’ group, or talk to a writing coach who can guide her :) However, lots of online classes, like those listed above, also feature opportunities for direct feedback from the instructor. I hope that helps!

I have always had a passion for reading and writing. I would really love to write about my life experiences, I just think it might be a little sad. Writing a novel sounds like maybe more fun but I would definitely need help creating characters with depth. I’m wondering what you would recommend as far as some free courses.

Hi Juana, the “How to Write a Novel” course on this list can help you with character development :) We also have quite a few blog posts on the subject, like how to create and use character profiles . I hope that helps :)

I really need to better my grammar. I’m quite rusty.

Hi Amanda, you can try one of these courses, or check out one of our many posts on writing tips and grammar :) I hope that helps!

Interested in Creative Writing

Hi Sonny, that’s great! There are lots of courses on this list that can help you. If you want more practice you can also try these creative writing prompts :)

Hi! I want to help my 10-year-old daughter to read and write with passion, not to write a book, she will see if she likes it, but to have an ease of communication that is not learned in school, there are courses for children ?

In my own research I stumbled across this website. Hopefully this will be of good help to your daughter.

https://outschool.com/classes/semester-long-ms-writing-course-*flexible-schedule*-IFIZxWK7?sectionUid=efcd703b-23a8-4d60-8408-a1f32077ee15#abkiqu8k90

Thank you for sharing this, Janet! :)

Hi Pamela, this Udemy course looks like a great option for kids: https://www.udemy.com/course/theultimatemysterywritingcourseforkids/ , as well as Janet’s suggestions below :)

Your courses are timely for anyone who desires to write books in any genre. But can one register for two or more courses and running concurrently? Please help.

Hi Clement, yes, you can definitely take more than one course at once. I would just recommend you make sure you have the time to dedicate your attention to each one :)

When I was much younger I wanted to be a journalist. The next Nora O’Donnell !! Now that I’m retired I want to write a fiction. I have so many ideas in my head I need to learn how to focus them and put them on paper

Hi Dianne! I can definitely relate – I used to dream of being a journalist too! Luckily, my current work allows me to practice writing, and I’m loving it. I hope you have time now to follow your new dream of writing fiction! You can try a writing course or check out some of the writing tips we share on the blog, such as our post on how to write a novel . If you ever have questions or there are more resources we can send your way, please let us know! :)

I would like to develop my writing skills, I want to learn the pros and cons of writing depending on its specific kind of writing or genre. I he I can find help for free workshops.

Hi Monalisa, here’s a list of writing workshops you might find helpful: https://www.tckpublishing.com/online-writing-workshops/

i would like to take the course on how to write a novel

Hi Dolly, that’s great! You should definitely try it :) best of luck with your writing!

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Special writing workshop series: Build a Robust Writing Habit

Career & Tools

The series contains three individual workshops which can work as a sequence or as standalone sessions. They are open to all graduate students, and space is limited to 20 participants per session. Bring a writing project-in-progress that you can work on during the timed sessions and learn how to create better writing habits for yourself.

Join us for a special series with Dr. Emily Troscianko, a visiting scholar with the English department at UCSB this year, as well as a coach, writer, researcher, and creator of Oxford University’s first writing program. The series is intended to work as a sequence, so please feel free to sign up for all three but they will also work well as standalone sessions. They are open to all graduate students, and space is limited to 20 participants per session. Bring a writing project-in-progress that you can work on during our timed sessions and be prepared to be without your phone, social media, and email for the duration, including the breaks. A communal phone tin will be provided!   These events are sponsored by UCSB’s Graduate Division in collaboration with the Office of Research and the Literature and Mind Center’s Trauma-Informed Pedagogy project. They will contribute to campus-wide learning about how to help the classroom be more conducive to learning and thinking.  As such, they will involve information-gathering from event participants after signing up for an event, as well as at the start and end of the event. You can read more about the project  here . If you decide to register for one or more events, you will be asked to read the information carefully before deciding whether to take part. Please  contact Emily  if you have any questions.

Click the image below to sign up for each event: