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Creative Writing for Teenagers

The course

Explore, experiment, and find your writing voice.

Develop your skills and discover your potential as a writer.

We’ll focus on what makes stories work, how to create memorable characters and immersive settings that draw your reader in, and how to edit and revise your work.

This six-week online course is aimed at 13-17 year olds. Guided by an experienced tutor, you’ll work as part of a small group in a fun, safe online classroom. You tutor will offer detailed, practical feedback and advice on the writing process.

Please note, all students need a parent or guardian’s permission to join the course.

 

Rupert Wallis

Meet your course director

Rupert Wallis

Rupert is a YA and children’s author. He has published three novels with Simon & Schuster. He mentors novel-writers and has taught BA writing students and supervised MA final projects at Falmouth University. He is a Teaching Associate on the Master of Studies in Creative Writing at Cambridge University.

 

How it works

We give you the theory in the form of videos, podcasts, written lectures and reading extracts. In the case of our live workshops, this includes a live online seminar.

You put it into practice by completing the writing assignments.

You share your work with the small group of fellow writers and the teaching team.

Your tutor and fellow learners read your work and give professional-style feedback on your submission. Giving feedback notes helps to build your skills as an editor - a critical part of the writing process.

You reflect on the exercises with the group and share what you’ve learned.

You use what you learned from the feedback and discussions to review your work and improve it.

Things to know

Our online course is suitable for 13-17 year olds (please note, all students will need a parent or guardian’s permission to join the course).

During this course you will:

  • Explore where ideas come from, and how to find inspiration
  • Get better at plot, characters, setting and dialogue
  • Complete quizzes and try out practical writing assignments
  • Join other young writers to share and discuss ideas, and find out what makes stories work
  • Understand the writing process: read, write, revise, edit
  • Start reading like a writer
  • Quiz a professional fiction writer about anything
  • Start to understand your strengths and weaknesses as a writerIn the final week, you’ll work on a short story or the opening pages of a novel, which you will submit for feedback from your tutor at the end of the course.

Each course is divided into sessions. These sessions are released one by one (weekly or fortnightly, depending on the course). 

There’s no need to log on at a set time. You can work through the learning materials whenever suits you, day or night, wherever you are in the world. Just complete the assignments and join forum discussions by the session deadline. 

Our teaching method is based on the science of active learning: you read/listen/watch, try out, share and reflect. It’s a social experience – you become part of a small group, feeding back on each other’s writing to build a supportive bunch of readers you trust. Find out more here.

Session 1: Inspiration and ideas – Where do stories come from? We’ll look at how to tap into creative inspiration and get ideas from your head and onto the page. You’ll experiment with different ways to start coming up with ideas for stories.

Session 2: Creating characters – We’ll look at how to come up with ideas for characters, why it’s important to know who your characters are inside and out, and how dialogue and movement can make your characters stand out.

Session 3: Your story world – We’ll look at the role setting and atmosphere play in your story and techniques for bringing your story world to life.

Session 4: Point of view – Whose story am I writing? We’ll look at different types of point of view and what they bring to a story, and how to work out who should tell your story.

Session 5: Shaping a story – This session is all about how to plan and shape a story. We’ll look at how to craft satisfying beginnings, middles and ends, and where to start a novel or short story idea.

Session 6: Write your own story – In this final session, you’ll bring everything you’ve learned over the past few weeks together to work on a longer piece of up to 1000 words. You can either revisit one of your ideas from the previous sessions or start something new based on what you’ve learned. Your tutor will provide feedback on your work.

 

Join our alumni

After your course, you can join our online alumni where you’ll meet our growing network of past students. The alumni is a friendly group of writers who support each other as they continue to explore and develop their writing.

Within our online alumni area you can:

  • Rejoin your classmates on a private forum and access an archived version of your course materials and forum posts
  • Meet alumni from other courses and groups and share your work for feedback on our alumni critiquing forum
  • Join in on discussions about reading, writing, editing and ideas on our general discussion forum. This is also where we share news and useful info
  • Retain access to our resources area, which has interesting and informative links
  • Chat with other people online using the alumni area live chatroom. We also host live chats with guests here

Commission a report on your work

If you’d like to receive a personalised, detailed report on your final piece of writing from your course tutor, this is available at an extra cost. You’ll receive detailed written feedback assessing your ideas and writing, plus advice on what steps to take next.

Taking things further

If you’d like to continue on to another Professional Writing Academy course, we’ll give you a discount. Please get in touch for more details.

The team

Meet your course team

Rupert Wallis

Rupert Wallis

Young Talent Developer

Rupert is a YA and children’s author. He has published three novels with Simon & Schuster. He mentors novel-writers and has taught BA writing students and supervised MA final projects at Falmouth University. He is a Teaching Associate on the Master of Studies in Creative Writing at Cambridge University.

 

More about Rupert Wallis

Anna Youngs

Tutor

Anna Youngs has been teaching for 27 years. She is an experienced UK Primary School teacher, yoga teacher and therapist.

More about Anna Youngs

Fiona Dixon

Online Academy Manager

Start your journey

£395

Earlybird price

£356

(Including taxes)

I’m quite proud of having written my first short story!

Find out about our payment plans and get in touch.

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