This course is designed for people who have an urge to write or tell stories but have no experience, lack confidence or need flexibility to study. Suitable for beginners.

It’s suitable if you: 

• Are completely new to writing and don’t know where to start
• Want to learn more about the basic principles of writing stories 
• Would like to build confidence in yourself and in your writing
• Feel the need to write about your life experiences
• Would like to record the life of your family, community or region
• Want to write about what you’ve learned from tracing your family tree
• Love to read and would like to try writing
• Write at work but would like to get more creative
• Can dedicate 5-7 hours per week for the duration of the course
• Want to join a friendly and supportive small group of learners

This course allows you to: 

• Start writing and find inspiration in real-life experiences 
• Recognise how to build an idea, event, memory or fact into a narrative 
• Appreciate the value of writing, rewriting, editing and critiquing
• Build confidence by expressing and recording a life experience 
• Value stories that emerge from the realities of life in your family, community and region
• Trust your instinct when selecting and developing ideas
• Become a more effective writer, for recreation and at work
• Develop the transferable skills writers require (eg discipline, attention to detail, ability to work to deadlines)
• Practise giving feedback to other writers and receiving responses to your work
• Build greater independence, autonomy and judgement as you work on a final assignment.

Our courses and training are carefully designed to support accessible and inclusive learning. 

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: Start to Write

Start by learning to overcome forces that might stop you writing, and set down some words on the page. Then learn how to think like a writer about real-life experiences, and turn them into stories people want to read. That means understanding the basic rules of storytelling. By the end of the session you’ll know how to find inspiration from your past and turn an event into inspiration for a story.

Session 2: Turning Experiences into Stories

In week 2, focus on how to turn your experience into a story by creating structure and crafting a beginning, middle and end. You’ll learn how to shape a story to keep readers engaged, and we’ll share tricks professional writers and editors use to work out how their stories can be improved.

Session 3: Polish Your Words

We’ll look at how to improve your use of language, and make your writing distinctively your own. You’ll learn how to create compelling scenes, write engaging dialogue, and find a resonating ending that leaves the reader feeling satisfied. And we’ll look at methods the professionals use to make their writing more effective.

Session 4: Edit Your Work

The final session will run over two weeks to give you time to write your story. You’ll learn how to effectively edit your work – the part of the process that makes you a real writer. We’ll explore how the process of writing can change how you understand your own experience, and consider how to use such changes. We’ll also look at ways to maintain the discipline to finish a project, and how, when you’re finished, to put your work forward for competitions, anthologies and reading events.

Join our alumni community 

After your course, you can join our online alumni community – a friendly group of writers supporting each other as they continue to explore and develop their writing. There’s no cost for this. It’s easy to access via the online classroom, where you can:

• Revisit all your courses materials, including tutor notes, feedback, videos, podcasts and forum posts
• Rejoin your classmates, and continue working together in a private space
• Meet alumni from other courses to find beta-readers and share work on our critiquing forum
• Network with other writers working in your genre or area of interest
• Take part in regular ‘sit and write’ Zoom sessions, to push forward with your work-in progress
• Join our monthly live alumni events with our expert tutors and industry guests, including agents, editors, publishers, competition and festival organisers, and prizewinning writers

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, please get in touch for more details.