Top 10 Creative Writing Courses in 2023 (Updated)

Creative writing is a form of writing that’s dissimilar to technical, academic, professional, etc. It emphasizes the construction of plot, narrative, and characters and uses literary tropes or various forms of poetry and poetics.

Both fictional and non-fictional write-ups can come under this category. As the definition of creative writing is so flexible, it can be considered the original expressiveness of oneself. This article lists the top creative writing courses. Read now.

Types of Creative Writing

Creative writing can be broadly classified into two categories i.e. fictional and non-fictional. Here we’ve mentioned various types of fictional and non-fictional writings.

Fiction

1. Novels: A novel is a fictional story that consists of about 60,000 to 1,00,000 words. However, it can be as short as 40,000 words or can go beyond 1,00,000 words too. Stories that are too short to be considered short stories and not long enough to be considered a novel are called Novellas. They usually consist of 10,000 to 40,000 words. A novelette is a term used for a write-up that’s worded between 7,500 to 19,000 words.

 2. Short Stories: They are like short novels that range between 5,000 to 10,000 words. Like novels, they narrate a story that has characters, conflicts, and at least one theme. If a story is less than 1,000 words, it’s termed flash fiction.

3. Poetry: Poetry as a genre is very open-minded. It doesn’t require a definite length. Rhyme is also not a necessity. There are different kinds and forms of poems like sonnets, blank verse, free verse, haikus, etc. A poem doesn’t require to have to follow a certain set of regulations unless one is trying to write a specific type. However, it must invoke emotions in the reader. A poem when set with music becomes a song.

4. Plays, TV Scripts, Screenplays: Plays are meant for stages, TV Scripts are meant for TV Series and Screenplays are meant for movies. These forms of writing have a lot in common with novels and stories ie. evoking emotions and expressing themes.

The only exception is that plays, tv scripts, and screenplays are performed rather than read and don’t consist of lengthy descriptive passages. They rely much more on dialogues. Each script required its type of formatting.

Nonfiction

1. Personal Essays: A real story told through a narrative framework is known as a personal essay. It can be interpreted as a recollection of events with insights about them with narrators’ personal feelings wrapped in it.

2. Literary Journalism: It can be seen as journalism enhanced with the usage of creative writing techniques. Literary journalism reports on factual incidents but in such a way that they seem like personal essays or just short stories.

3. Memoirs: Memoirs are like a novel of personal essays. It is a book-length collection of personal memoirs. They are often centered around a specific story that often works into the narrative in the form of opinions, epiphanies, and emotional insights.

4. Autobiographies: Autobiography is a book written about one’s own life or oneself. Often, they highlight a particular key event in their life or any grand achievement or any important aspect of their life. They are pretty similar to memoirs, but rather than being focused on a specific set of memories and events, it covers the whole life of the author in a linear narrative.

5. Humour Writing: Startup comedy, political cartoons, and humor can be taken as humor writing.

6. Lyrical Essays: Under lyrical essays, conventional grammar and stylistic rules are broken to write about a particular concept, event, place, or feeling. In other words, they can be considered essay-length poems. They are seen as essays and not long poems as they generally provide more direct analysis of a matter than a poem does.

Learn some effective Creative Writing Tips to brush your skills.

Few Essential Parts of Creative Writing

The following are some parts of a creative write-up that are vital. That being said, not all these parts need to be present in writing. However, these are of critical importance and need to be paid attention to:

1. Character development
2. Plot development
3. Point of View
4. Dialogue
5. Literary Devices

What isn’t Creative Writing?

Not every piece of writing can be considered a piece of creative writing. Here’s a list of what isn’t included in creative writing:

1. analytical essays
2. persuasive essays
3. academic writings
4. emails
5. social media posts
6. official company statements

However, blog posts, personal essays, etc. can not be bifurcated as they are broad categories and have diverse matters they deal with.

How to Enhance Your Creative Writing

There’s no set of rules and regulations that check the quality of a creative write-up. However, here are a few suggestions which you can adopt to make your content authentic and strong in general:

1. Identify your audience
2. Add real-life details
3. Use literary devices like metaphor, alliteration, etc to exhibit your creativity
4. Try to make thought-provoking stories
5. Plot a story arc

One must understand that there is no ‘perfect write-up’ when it comes to creative writing. There are a lot of genres and they can’t be compared. A fantastic horror story and a highly recommended romance novel can not be equated. Hence, every individual sees things in a different light and might develop incomparable stories.

Creative Writing Courses

Here are some of the creative writing courses that you can take up to become efficient in this skill:

1.  IIM Skills

IIM Skills provides one of the best creative writing courses out there. The Content Writing Course is a 4 week-long course. It includes 16 hours of lecture, 60 hours of practical assignments, and tools worth 35k free.

They also provide 10+ hours of internship lectures and freelance opportunities. The internship here is for 3 months or so. They provide Lifetime technical support and consulting. They help in the development of portfolios of job seekers and freelancers. This is a certified course.

The Curriculum:

1. web development
2. blog creation
3. introduction to content writing
4. keyword research
5. content writing
6. duplicate content detector
7. content distribution using email
8. google local page set up
9. content marketing using social media
10. freelance content writing

This course can be taken up by anyone who has a knack for writing and is interested in showcasing their skills. Other write-ups that they teach include articles, blogs, e-books, business listings, press releases, etc.

Through this course, you’ll get into the habit of writing regularly, become more confident in your writing and write more efficiently, learn the significance of researching, create material that is free of errors and easy to understand. The price of this course is Rs. 12,900 (excluding GST).

2. British Council of India:

This Course will Help One:

1. develop a unique writer’s perspective
2. stimulate one’s creative and comprehensive thinking
3. to enhance one’s artistic expression
4. develop a critical appreciation of various writing styles

All these qualities make this course one of the best creative writing courses. Anyone who has an English language level above upper intermediate level and advanced level can apply for this course. The course duration is 36 hours which lasts for a span of 9 weeks. The medium of classes is online. Participants are entitled to certification after completion of the course.

3. Coursera: 

Creative Writing Specialisation on Coursera is one of its creative writing courses that is offered by Wesleyan University. This course is meant for beginners. It covers three major genres of creative writing namely: short story, narrative essay, and memoir.

They teach the techniques that make a write-up interesting. This is an online course which will fetch you a certificate.  The deadlines for the assignment are also flexible and can be adjusted. This course is 6 months long. This specialization has the following courses:-

1. Creative Writing: The Craft of Plot
2. Creative Writing: The Craft of Character
3. Creative Writing: The Craft of Setting and Description
4. Creative Writing: The Craft of Style
5. Capstone: Your Story

The courses mentioned here can be taken up in any sequence.

4. Udemy: 

Udemy offers a range of creative writing courses that can help you enhance your write-up and drafts. The price usually ranges from Rs. 455 to Rs. 468. Their ‘Write a Book! Creative Writing Skills for Beginner Writers” is a bestseller right now.

This course covers various aspects of basic writing like punctuation, sentences, paragraphs, and essays. It will teach various advanced writing techniques such as foreshadowing and cliffhangers. Here one can also learn to write short non-fiction books more quickly and easily.

5. Edx: 

Creative writing courses here can be taken to improve one’s skills in storytelling, essay writing, grammar, business writing, etc. There are about 12 courses conducted by renowned universities like the University of Cambridge, Berkeley, University of Washington, etc. over here. Most of these courses are self-paced. ‘Internationalised: Creating Digital Content for the World’ offered by the University of Washington is free of cost while others are available at a fee.

6. Skillshare:

Skillshare is known to provide useful study material on a lot of topics. Here, one can also find creative writing courses. These courses teach about various techniques, tools, and topics like the outline of the story, storytelling, character development, and creating an interesting plot.

Beginner or not, anyone can take up courses here. These tutorials can help you improve your creative writing abilities through exercises. Some courses over here are genre-specific. Hence, you can take courses over here even if your stories depict a slice of life or are based on thriller adventure.

7. Future Learn:

Like Skillshare, Future Learn also provides various creative writing courses. The courses are conducted by various renowned universities. These include the University of York, the University of East Angelia, and the University of Huddersfield. In all, there are 7 courses related to creative writing. Below are the time duration of these courses for your aid.

1. Start Writing Fiction– 8 weeks; 3 hours per week
2. Stylistics: Explore Texts and Meaning with the help of Linguistics- 4 weeks; 4 hours per week
3. An Introduction to Screenwriting- 2 weeks; 3 hours per week
4. Content Marketing Strategy and Advertising Week– 2 weeks; 3 hours per week
5. How to Write Your First Song– 6 weeks; 3 hours per week

8. Oxford:

Oxford is a renowned university for providing education, especially in those topics that are related to the English language and literature. ‘English Literature and Creative Writing Summer School’ is one such course that can help you in enhancing your creative writing. It is one of the best creative writing courses.

The techniques used to teach over here are tried and tested and are known to provide the best results. There are a total of six courses based on age groups and areas. Applicants can take up the course that suits their requirements. The class has a maximum strength of 8 students. These classes are designed in such a way that students can interact and learn while observing.

Some more courses 

Technical Writing Course

SEO Course

GST Course

Digital Marketing Course

9. Study.com:

It provides interactive exercises to the students to learn about content writing. If you’re learning content writing for academic purposes then this is the right place for you. Here the videos are free of cost. It’s a 5-minute long video that explains what creative writing is, its definition, meaning, and examples.

10. Henry Harvin:

Henry Harvin offers one of the best creative writing courses out there. It is ranked no.1 for its Certified Creative Writing Specialist course. The course is 100% practical-based training. Here students get to learn about creative writing from experienced creative writers in Asia.

Through their well-structured syllabus that is specifically focused on helping writers and novelists, one can start writing stories, poetry, scripts, etc. In addition to all this, one also gets a year-long gold membership in a writing academy. Under this, one receives live projects, recorded videos, weekly job support, guaranteed internship, etc.

Tips to Get Better at Creative Writing

As mentioned above, creative writing does not have any definite set of rules. But here are some suggestive measures that you can take to enhance your creative writing.

1. Read as much as Possible: Writers can be a great source of inspiration for others. One shall read a variety of genres written by different writers to see which one best suits them. This will help them to explore more deeply and gain new ideas.

2. Start Diary Writing: Journal writing or diary entries can help in letting out one’s creativity. Writing about anything that has been a major part of your day will make you (1) write more and (2) observe more. The more regularly you do this exercise the more confident you’ll become in your writing. It can also significantly help in idea generation.

3. Practice Usage of Literary Devices: To make the writing more descriptive, imaginary, and vibrant, one must try to add an adequate amount of literary devices like alliteration, simile, metaphor to their writing.

Practicing them regularly will help one get better at it. One can use random objects to experiment and practice these devices. For eg: describe an object using 5 literary devices. This exercise can help one understand the usage of these.

4. Write as much as you Can: Writing is the most important step when it comes to being creative. Start writing whatever is on your mind, be it a character description or an arc. Once you start writing these kinds of stuff, you’ll begin to develop this skill. If you don’t have any writing ideas, look around to find prompts and inspirations. The more you practice unleashing your creativity the easier it would be to write.

5. Embrace Rewriting: No one gets anything to write in a single go. It’s necessary to have flexibility in the content. Sometimes one may even have to strip off a section, eliminate what does fit right, or start all over again.

Frequently Asked Questions:

1. How much do creative writers earn in India?

A: The average salary of a creative content writer in India is Rs. 46,718.

2. Why should one learn creative writing formally?

A: Other than being able to earn. Creative writing lets you pour out your emotions which otherwise isn’t possible in the case of other forms of writing. It also helps one develop creative skills that are swiftly becoming an important aspect of this competitive world.

3. Is creative writing a formal or informal way of writing?

A: Creative writing can be seen as both formal and informal. Essays, for example, are often used to inform the audience. They are creative yet formal. However, poems, on the other hand, are considered informal as they don’t follow a format and usually convey a feeling or emotion.

Conclusion

Creative writing is increasingly being seen as elite skill and those who can develop this skill are getting applauded. In this article, we listed a few creative writing courses that one can take up to develop these skills. Creative writing is seen as an essential technique that is used to develop young minds. However, it can be taken up even at a later age.