online writers courses

online writers courses

The Impact and Benefits of Online Writers Courses

1. Introduction to Online Writers Courses

More and more people are learning how to write for newspapers, magazines, and online, nurturing dreams of becoming published authors of books and finding a comfortable place in the global writing community. People who have full-time jobs or are busy parents, or retired people living active lives in the community, are choosing to step into writing courses to nurture their passion for storytelling or to write articles and features for their favorite magazine or newspaper. Wannabe writers need support, advice, encouragement, and direction on their writing journey. Balancing the desire to improve their writing skills and investigate the possibilities of publication with the demands of everyday life is a difficult path to travel.

One of the most undervalued avenues a fledgling writer can take is to participate in online writers courses. Often, it is from these courses that we find our first steps into the heady whirl of the writing publishing world. They offer temptation after seductive temptation: exciting projects without end, secret contacts and places too numerous to articulate, other writers who understand the rollercoaster of emotions that often accompanies the business of writing. So how can such courses reap comfort, creativity, inspiration, writing skills, and business nous? Over the last three or so years, I have indulged in several courses in subjects as different as flash fiction, business of writing, and have found them all to be enriching and very much worthwhile.

2. Advantages of Online Writers Courses

Online courses involve students more actively in the writing process than do face-to-face courses. A student has more time to ponder, analyze and react to other people’s work, rather than trying continuously to think of “the right thing to say.” There are no pressures to “perform” in order to participate in discussions, and shy students are better able to express their opinions eloquently. The rising popularity of online courses has forced many traditional programs to offer at least a few web-based courses. And there are growing numbers of programs that offer traditional MFA composition studies. For this to happen, however, the writer must be computer literate. In addition, online writing courses should not be offered in place of traditional ones. Rather, MFA visionary programs should develop supportive and rigorous online compositions.

Writing at home: No sitting in a drafty college or far from friends and the support of home. It is a time-consuming business. Concentration is key to producing clear, effective essays. The student must surrender the support of wonderful professors and fellow students.

Consequently, online writing courses may help breed a new generation of writers with effective self-marketing skills. Here are some of the obvious advantages of online writing courses for writers who are able to access them with all the necessary computer hardware:

3. Key Components and Features of Effective Online Writers Courses

In contrast to traditional classroom-based writing education, online courses offer many unique instructional features, and there are also some difficulties to be found within web-based instruction and web-based writing classes. However, the increase in computer, Internet, and possible future adaptive instructional design capabilities has also brought about a corresponding increase in the number and quality of the safest and most effective web-based writing courses available, helping form the backbone of a potentially very valuable and flexible genre that offers programs, writers, and students the potential to truly evolve. Some of the design features of the best online writer training programs should offer a practical and pedagogically efficacious pepin. This article is concerned with the exploration of some specific creative writing instruction problems and a close examination of a set of suggestions for best designed, or should be best designed, online writing courses.

While all students excel in their own way, depending on their own reasons for enrolling, the best online creative writing courses all share certain key components and features. With the availability of hundreds of different creative writing courses, including an endless assortment of different free writing classes taught by professional and successful writers, some salient features have been developed and found to be effective. Moreover, although it is impractical to attempt a one-size-fits-all paradigm when designing online writing courses – courses that really do cater to the specific needs and professional goals of numerous diverse and creative students – all of the successful courses do a great job of incorporating as much as possible of the following key components and features.

4. Case Studies and Success Stories from Online Writers Courses

A professor told me that he had taken multiple courses in the subject matter I was teaching, and I was presenting a lot of new ideas that he hadn’t heard in those previous courses. A painter told me that the course was making her think for the first time in 40 years. Competitive titles in the subject matter were selling less than half as well as the author expected and the book was called “too far gone” by her agent. After learning some of the numerous infelicities hiding in her writing and re-implementing underwriting structures, the author was shocked to see her new manuscript in hand (12 months later). The “newly developed” project outlined in chapter 1 survived each subsequent stage of the writing process and was delivered on time. She emailed a letter to me, to stroke my ego, letting me know that her book had a substantial offer. The offer she received was for five times the amount for her previous two-book contract, part of which she had not even been able to tap. “The really cool thing is that the writing is so much better. Really much better. It feels like a book – dare I say that – a page turner. And here I was thinking ‘I want out’ before getting the offer. I am so glad I did the program.”

Another novelist had recognized on her own that her characters were all flat, but she did not know what she could do about it. She took the course to learn how to develop interesting characters and, learning that and more, she polished the opening of a manuscript which had previously come to the attention of an agent, but the agent had not taken the author on as a client because too little was occurring in the manuscript at the time. With freshly painted, interesting characters who were all involved in what was now the induction into a new group, the agent decided this time to work with the author. The opening was transformed minus the addition of anything but character.

A novelist I worked with took the course because she wasn’t sure why her agent was always complaining about her characters. In no time, she identified where the problem was occurring in her writing, made the necessary adjustments, and her manuscript was transformed. The result was a book that caught the interest of several houses, and one, the novelist’s first choice, which offered her a substantial contract.

5. Future Trends and Opportunities in Online Writers Courses

In lots of ways, amazing technological advances in communications and publishing create a huge opportunity for this genre. The volume of content being published online makes it easier for writers who have developed their craft as a direct result of studying online to get published. The course evaluation sections in this book show that facilitators want students to learn to be confident, discerning, self-critics, masters of craft who continue to learn and work hard, critically assess technical feedback, and grow from being with a group. The use of these attributes, and the development of an ongoing critical awareness, also bring competition back to center stage. Blogging and review-disseminating through social media are now every bit as important for building the career of an established author as any single promotional task.

Looking to the future, it seems clear that online writers courses will continue to grow and develop. Innovation, adaptability, and the use of new technologies look set to play a key role in steering new courses in an exciting and diverse range of styles, including the blended use of social media. If a question were to be posed at a meeting of online writers course facilitators, “Can online writers courses effectively use social media as part of a class?” the majority result would be “no”. Compatibility, reliable internet access, and reliable hardware can vary and can impact heavily on social media use. E-tools, on the other hand, while not necessarily central to the course, are invaluable aids that run smoothly if for some reason social media aspects do not work well. For example, Ning is a great tool for collaboration.