Our FAQs

We are the UK’s first online writing school. We have decades of experience teaching writing online having set up the world’s first fully online postgraduate writing course back in 2009. 

Since then we’ve tried, tested and tweaked our teaching methods and online platform with publishers, universities and creative companies, honing a uniquely effective asynchronous way of teaching writing online.

We know what you need to do to develop both your craft skills and an independent practice suited to a rapidly changing publishing world, and that’s what we teach.

We’ve created online writing academies for the publishers Faber, Granta and Bookouture, for talent-development agency New Writing North and literary consultancy Cornerstones. With John Yorke Story we run training for writers, script editors and documentary makers for the BBC, Channel 4, Netflix, Sony Animation and many more broadcasters and TV / film production companies.

Our graduates have been published by the Big Five publishers and leading indies, literary magazines like Granta and The Stinging Fly, The New Yorker, The Guardian and numerous international newspapers and academic journals. Alumni have also been shortlisted or won prizes including the Bridport Prize, Bath Novel Awards, European Press Prize and Fitzcarraldo Editions Essay Prize.

We teach differently to most online providers, focusing on asynchronous active learning, tight deadlines and professional skills. 

This is education best-practice: you learn by doing, discussing and revising – mastering the skills that help you identify when your writing is working well, and what to do when it isn’t. 

We don’t rely on pre-recorded video lessons or long Zoom sessions – these forms of learning can be quite passive and are not an effective way to fire up your creative brain and learn new skills.

Instead you join a small group of fellow writers (up to 15), supported by a tutor and moderator, working on practical tasks to tight deadlines. This is asynchronous learning – so everyone is working on their own timezone and whenever works best for them, fitting learning around work, caring and life.

You work through assignments together, week by week, with plenty of opportunity to ask questions, discuss ideas, try out concepts, and share your writing with participants from all over the world. We find this builds the trust and person-to-person connection that’s so essential to a fulfilling writing practice.

We work with partners to provide bursary opportunities for a selection of our courses. Find the latest info on our LinkedIn feed. 

We currently offer two fully-funded bursaries for our Fiction Foundations course. These are sponsored by Penny Batchelor for ADCI (Authors with Disabilities and Chronic Illnesses) – find out more here.

For each of the workshops we run with Granta, one fully funded place is available for a writer who would otherwise not be able to join. Just fill in the box on the course application form. 

Here is a list of other funding opportunities for writers: 2025 edition

With us, writing isn’t solitary – you join a small group of up to 15 writers to learn together. Our courses are all about building a close bunch of peers you trust to read and offer feedback on your developing writing alongside the input from tutors, authors and industry experts. 

Our goal is to help you build a network of contacts and make life-long connections to support you whatever you choose to do next in your writing career.

We keep group sizes small – usually around 10-15 writers – to build a friendly and supportive learning experience and allow the tutor plenty of time to engage with your work. 

We’ve tried and tested bigger and smaller groups, but this number of writers easily works best. 

You can continue to work with this small group after the course ends, in a private forum in our alumni community (there’s no charge for this). Lots of writers keep writing, feeding back and beta-reading each other’s developing work here.

Yes, we deliver courses in collaboration with partners including Granta, Cornerstones Literary Consultancy and John Yorke Story.

You can secure your place on any of our courses with a down payment of £100, then pay the balance in regular monthly instalments.

Just choose the down-payment option when you book, and we’ll be in touch to arrange your payment plan. If you have any questions about paying in instalments, please get in touch.

You don’t need any formal qualifications to join our courses. We believe that great writing comes from creativity, dedication and practice – not from a specific academic qualification or prior experience in writing. 

Our courses are open to anyone with an interest in writing, whether you’re looking to explore a new hobby or take the first steps toward a professional writing career.

Our courses are designed to welcome writers at all levels, including complete beginners. You don’t need any prior experience to join – just a passion for writing and a willingness to learn. 

As a recommendation, we designed our Fiction Foundations course especially for anyone curious about writing fiction who wants to know how to get started. And our Creativity course might suit you if you’re looking to try out new creative skills, whether in your writing, for work or to support your mental health.

All our tutors are seasoned professionals who will guide you step-by-step, helping you develop new skills and grow in confidence. 

Many of our alumni started with no formal writing background and have gone on to achieve incredible success – see our Community page for writers we’re proud to have taught.

For our advanced level courses, we ask you to submit an application to make sure you’re at the right stage to get the most from the experience.

Once we receive your application, we’ll review it and get back to you to let you know the outcome. This will be after the application deadline for the courses we run for Granta Workshops. 

If we don’t think you’re quite ready for the course you’ve applied for, we may suggest another course to get you up to speed, or offer some suggestions about where to go next with your writing.

Yes, if a course is already full, or the next start date has yet to be announced, you can sign up to the waiting list on the course page. We’ll be in touch as soon as we have a new start date. 

Likewise, if a course is starting too soon for your schedule, just email us and we’ll let you know about future dates. And for any other questions, please email us at [email protected]

We recommend enrolling on one course at a time to make sure you get the most out of each course experience. Most of our courses run a few times a year, so there are usually opportunities to join a future group once you’ve completed your first course.

But it really depends on you as a learner and how much time you have to devote to your writing. We’re happy to advise on an individual basis – just drop us a line on [email protected]

We host the courses on our VLE (virtual learning environment) which acts as our digital campus and community. A few days before your course begins, you’ll receive a welcome email with everything you need to get started, plus an invitation to log in and create your profile on the VLE.

On most of our courses that’s completely up to you! There’s no need to log in at a set time – sessions open to a timetable and you have until the end of each session to work through the materials and assignments in the online classroom.

So you can read the tutor notes and listen to their podcasts, watch videos, analyse extracts, react to prompts and work through the mini-exercises at any time of day or night that best suits you. You can also contribute to discussions on our forums 24/7, making the online classroom feel like a rich and lively shared experience.

Most people fit learning around their work and caring responsibilities, which is why we teach in this non-synchronous way. It also suits those studying in another language, and offers advantages in terms of accessibility and different learning styles. We ask that you submit your final exercise in each session by the deadline, then read and critique the work of some of your peers.

Most of our courses include occasional live group Zoom calls. Your moderator will let you know the timing – we tend to organise this once we know the timezones of everyone in the group. 

If you can’t make a Zoom call, you can send in questions in advance and catch up with the recording afterwards. Recordings remain available throughout the course – and in the alumni area afterwards – so you can revisit them at any point.

On some of our longer courses we offer one-to-one tutorials. You can book these via our tutorial scheduler to fit your timezone and other commitments.

We also run one-off live workshops: check out our LinkedIn feed. 

Everyone who teaches on our courses is a practising writer, published in their field. Many are award-winners, working at the top of their game. Usually, they are also experienced online teachers, also working at universities, as editors or mentors, or training in the creative industries.

Your tutor is supported by a moderator, who is also a writer and looks after housekeeping, scheduling and day-to-day queries, to free up the tutor to respond to your work at set points during the course.

Your course was devised by a Course Director, the subject expert who designed the approach, structure, progression and pace of the topics, and created the learning materials to guide you towards the course learning aims and outcomes. Theirs is the overall vision of the course.

The Course Tutor is the author who shepherds you through the materials session by session, offering feedback at key points, meeting with you over Zoom, and working with you and your small group of writers on your developing projects.

The Course Director and tutor team continually revise and develop the course materials in light of student responses – informed by forum conversations, work produced during the sessions, and our formal survey at the end of each course.

Each course is designed as a slow-burn process because we find participants progress most effectively when working to incremental goals. 

So, we deliberately open sessions one-by-one to keep you focused on the structural and craft foundations outlined in the session aims. 

Following the course sequentially helps you identify your strengths and weaknesses, and hone your critical judgement of ideas and skills. Each session builds progressively on the previous one, gradually building your skills week by week.

Don’t worry if you have a holiday booked or something unexpected pops up – this happens for most people on our longer courses.

That’s why we have built-in flexibility, plus a moderator to help with deadlines. We allow extra time for holidays in our course timetable, and if you’re away for an extra week or so your moderator can give you early access to session materials or extended deadlines as necessary – just drop them a line.

You’ll have access to all the course materials, recordings, readings and assignments after the course ends, in our Alumni area. Many writers use this extended access to work through exercises and readings they didn’t have time to complete during the course timetable.

We understand that plans can change, so if you need to cancel your course, please get in touch with us as soon as possible via email at [email protected]. 

Our cancellation policy varies according to the course and timing, so do review the specific terms and conditions provided at the time of booking. If you have any questions, our team is here to help.

If you’re looking for an alternative to a course, we offer a range of more personalised support from our experienced tutors: feedback reports on a short story or novel opening, manuscript reviews to get your draft submission-ready, one-to-one mentoring or submission-package reviews. 

We put peer critiquing at the heart of our teaching quite simply because it’s the most effective way to become a better writer. Actively engaging in critiquing embeds the learning more quickly and soundly than responding to tutor feedback – by helping you put new skills into practice. 

Critiquing other writers develops your focus, self-confidence, judgement and a self-sufficient writing practice. Put simply, it helps you turn a sharper lens on your own ideas and develop a keen eye for what works, and what doesn’t.

Peer critiquing also helps to build a close-knit group you can trust to give you honest and insightful critiques. And while you can’t take your tutor with you after the course, you can take this group of supportive peers. Many of our alumni are still ‘meeting’ virtually to share their work many years after they completed their original course, working together through common hurdles, from lack of time to writer’s block.

Many people have busy work and home lives and may not be able to post ahead of a deadline. Wait until the deadline for critiquing is up and, if you still haven’t received feedback, do approach someone whose work you find interesting and offer to exchange critiques.

This is also a good way to build the group dynamic: the more people talk to each other, the merrier the class. Do also reach out to your course moderator.

Be reassured that every time you read and offer feedback to your peers, you are refining your own skills and writing practice.

It’s extremely valuable to read feedback for fellow participants. The points raised will inevitably be relevant to your own work: if not now, then in the future. And since all feedback is available to everyone and archived on the site, it’s easy to look back whenever you need to find tips to apply to your own work.

It sounds counter-intuitive, but our decades of experience and academic research show that if we offer the right materials and ask the right questions to a group of learners, the discussions quickly lead everyone to the learning point – even if the group is made up of beginners. Where this doesn’t happen (and it’s rare), the tutor will drop in to offer a steer.

This teaching method is really effective in producing learning that sticks. If the tutor or an expert steps in to give you the ‘right’ answer at the start of the learning process, it tends to close down debate, fixes people in the role of ‘beginner’ and makes it less likely that you’ll hone your ideas and writing practice.

In our face-to-face workshops, tutors tend to facilitate group feedback rather than offering their opinions on each individual’s work. Detailed tutor feedback at every stage is more often part of a one-to-one mentoring model.

Our online courses give you detailed personalised feedback (from fellow participants) on your work in every session. All this feedback is archived on the site, so you can refer to it at any time as you progress through the course.

We’ve built in the amount of feedback you need to progress through the sessions and meet their learning aims and outcomes. And, perhaps more importantly, to equip you with the skills to continue developing once you leave us.

Within academic circles there is continuing debate about tutor feedback – there’s a fine line between making learners dependent on their tutor and giving them the confidence and competence they need to effectively engage in an independent practice.

If you’d like to work one-to-one with a tutor after the course finishes, you might consider our mentoring scheme, where we pair you with someone working in your field or genre. Do get in touch if you’d like to discuss this option: [email protected]

No, none of our courses feature exams. Instead, we focus on practical, hands-on learning: you explore writing prompts, try out exercises, discuss your thoughts with the group, and receive personalised feedback from your peers and expert tutors. 

The goal is to help you grow as a writer in a supportive and collaborative environment, without the pressure of formal assessments.

The CPD Certification Service is the world’s leading and largest independent CPD accreditation organisation. It reaches globally recognised CPD standards and benchmarks for active learning that develops professional skills, competence and career aspirations.

All students who complete one of our CPD certified courses receive a Certificate of Completion evidencing their learning hours.

After your course finishes, we’ll enrol you in our online alumni community – a friendly group of writers supporting each other as they continue to explore and develop their work. 

Access to the alumni area is included in your course fee. You’ll be able to keep accessing all your course materials (there’s no time limit on this) and working with your group in a private online area. You can also join our regular meet-ups, sit-and write sessions, and monthly live guest Q&As on Zoom with authors, editors, publishers, agents and other industry professionals

We specifically focus on the submissions process as part of our Finish Your Draft and Edit Your Novel courses, but all our course tutors are experts in their field and happy to discuss the publishing industry and their experiences with agenting and submissions.

When you’ve completed a course, you’ll have free access to our Alumni community area, where you can join live events with guest agents, editors and publishers. And there are several previous Q&As with agents to watch in our Event Library. 

You can also read articles from our publishing experts and writing community, including exclusive interviews with authors, agents, publishers, editors and people adapting books for the screen.

A huge number of our writers have been published, across formats and genres, from literary novelists to crime writers, YA and middle grade authors, short fiction writers, memoirists, essay and nature writers, narrative journalists and more – check them out on our Community page. Please reach out if you’d like to be included; we love to hear success stories from our alumni. 

We share publishing news stories within our alumni community, on our LinkedIn feed and via our monthly newsletters – do sign up to our newsletter. 

We also invite alumni – traditionally published, self-published and indie authors – back to share their journeys to publication or run short workshops as part of our Alumni Events programme.