Introduction to Writing Short Fiction

Course director, Helen Shipman has devised this course to help you take your story idea, step-by-step, to a completed piece of short fiction. Our course tutor, Mark Jervis, will guide each session as you learn about the components of short fiction, how to develop your characters, the importance of setting and point of view, and how to play with time in your writing.

During the course, you’ll evolve into someone who understands what makes short fiction work and how to shape an idea into a story.

We teach this course in our online classroom, which is open 24/7 so you can fit learning around your work, family and friends. You’ll work in a small group of learners so you can discuss ideas, ask questions and share your writing as you progress through the weekly sessions.

You’ll learn from:

• Podcasts from Helen Shipman
• Written guidance from Helen explaining the conventions and techniques of short fiction
• Videos of authors and writing experts talking about how they craft short stories
• Specially selected reading and viewing lists
• Short quizzes and questionnaires to help you think about your own reading and writing, and develop your characters
• Writing prompts and exercises to help you experiment and practise your own writing, from the first session onward
• Online discussions with writers in your group and the chance to share and give feedback on each other’s writing

You’ll need:

• 5-7 hours per week to work through the course
• A notebook and pen or pencil, if you like to make notes by hand
• A laptop or computer* with:
  • A reliable broadband internet connection
  • Speakers or headphones
  • The latest version of Google Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Edge, or Safari
  • Microsoft Word. If you don’t have this you can download Open Office free
  • Adobe Reader, latest version. Download free
  • QuickTime Player, latest version. Download free
  • Adobe Flash Player 10 or higher

*You can access the course from a tablet or smartphone, but we recommend using a laptop or computer, as this makes it easier to share your work files with your writing group.

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• Rejoin your classmates on a private forum, together with access to an archived version of your course materials and forum posts
• Meet alumni from other courses and groups and share your writing for feedback
• Join discussions about reading, writing and ideas
• Retain access to our online resources area, which we constantly update with interesting and informative links
• Chat with other people in our online alumni chatroom. We also host live chats with guest tutors here

Taking things further

If you would like to continue on to another Professional Writing Academy course, you'll receive a 15% discount.

Try a free course session

If you’re curious about how our online writing courses work, you can try our free taster session.

It shows you what our online classroom looks like, how our courses are set up, and gives you the chance to read, watch and listen to a sample of learning materials.

To try your taster session, please get in touch and we’ll send you a link.

When you do this we’ll also sign you up to our newsletter. We never share your details with other people and we’ll only get in touch once in a while to tell you about nice things – such as news, events, competitions and offers. (You can unsubscribe if you decide it’s not for you.)