Top 7 Udemy Creative Writing Courses for Beginners
Do you have a flair for writing? Have you heard the term “creative writing” before? Chances are, if you are aware of the term creative writing, you’ve probably also heard about the courses being given by some professionals in creative writing. If you’re looking for some great courses, Udemy is the place. They offer many insightful classes by some experienced teachers that cover every type of creative writing for a beginner. These udemy creative writing courses are some of the top-rated ones on the site. They all come with full lifetime access.
What is Creative Writing?
Creative writing is unlike other forms of literature, which are just written to fulfill a purpose. That means the writing with an objective in mind i.e. journalistic writing, academic writing, professional writing, or technical writing not considered to be creative writing.
Creative writing is done to express oneself through the power of words in an artistic language. Creativity is at the forefront of creative writing with an emphasis on imagination to help tell a story. The purpose of this type of writing is to create an emotional impact on the reader’s mind through visualization of the written words.
To put it simply, creative writing uses words creatively to leave the readers with a strong visual and emotional impact whereas other forms of writing only focus on delivering facts and information.
Types of Creative Writing
Udemy Creative writing consists of both fiction and non-fiction works, as well as poetry and screenwriting, and playwriting as well. Let’s learn more about some of the popular types of creative writing you can learn.
Fiction: Novels, Novellas, Short Stories, Etc.:
Fiction writing is a type where the writer creates imaginative original stories with three-dimensional fictional characters. It has many genres and subgenres including both novels and short stories, containing different varieties of forms such as horror, romance, mystery, science fiction, etc.
A novel is generally the length of a book i.e. 90,000 words while a novella is a shorter version of a novel containing 10,000 to 40,000 words. A short story as the name suggests ranges between 1,000 to 10,000 words.
Biographies:
A biography is an account of a detailed description of someone’s life. A biography highlights various points in a person’s life, including intimate details about the experiences of these events. It’s an analysis of the person’s personality. It compels the writer to be imaginative and create an engaging story piece of someone else’s experiences.
Poetry:
Poetries are songlike writing pieces used to evoke an emotional response through specific language. The different forms and structures are narrative, dramatic, and lyrical.
Scriptwriting/playwriting:
Scriptwriting and playwriting have different types such as romantic, comedy, mystery, etc. Both scripts and plays are written for actors to perform and intended to be shown to audiences. While a play is performed live, a script is written for a show or a movie to be shown taped. Both of them are written with limitations in mind and as creative as can be in that scenario.
Blogs:
While blogs generally don’t use creative writing, they can by using creative writing skills for storytelling by telling an engaging story to their audiences. These online personal essays can creatively tell an interesting story or an update on their daily lives.
Personal Essays:
Personal essays are daily journeys in the life of the author. Instead of feeling like an autobiography, it is a casual rundown of the events that occurred in their life.
What are the Elements of Creative Writing?
Creative writing just like any other form of writing has some elements that make it true to its name and unique in its ways. You will learn about these elements and how to use them in these udemy creative writing courses listed. Here are these elements:
Character Development:
Characters in creative writing transform by the end of the story, through narrative arcs, and throughout the story, they develop their personalities. The audience goes on a journey with the character and gets to understand them by emotionally engaging with them throughout.
Plot Development:
Plots make up the story. Without a plot, it might be just plain old writing with facts and figures. Creative writers have unique ideas that they convert into a creative plot structure to be followed throughout their story. Every plot has an underlying theme that they follow to be considered creative writing.
Point Of View:
The narrator often tells the story and conveys the information to the readers. Their perspective is considered the point of view. There are 3 different types of points of view, namely first person, second person, and third person. The third person is used mostly in creative writing.
Literary Devices:
To make writing more descriptive and vividly imaginative, writers often use metaphors, alliteration, or similes in their writing.
Best Udemy Creative Writing Courses
1. Creative Writing Course by Brian Jackson
This Udemy Creative Writing Course is one of the most popular on the site. You’ll learn writing to tell your story, components of successful storytelling, and write sentences, paragraphs, and essays in Microsoft PowerPoint.
Course Details:
There are 294 lectures divided into 38 sections of varying lengths. The course can be completed in approx. 30 hours with full lifetime access available.
Eligibility:
Students who want to hone their writing skills and learn how to write and publish a book on Amazon successfully can take this course. If you want to understand the fundamentals of writing and tell your story, you should take this course.
What You’ll Learn:
- Writing using proper punctuation, and writing sentences, paragraphs, and essays
- Writing short non-fiction books
- Discover your writing style
- Advanced writing techniques like foreshadowing and cliffhangers
- Using dialogue to draw readers’ attention
- How to self-edit your book manuscript
- Self-publish a book on Amazon
Course Fee: Rs. 1,299
2. How to Write a Children’s Book by Barbara Burgess
If you want to learn how to write a children’s book, this course is for you. Do you have a great idea for a children’s book or want to know how to generate ideas for a children’s book? This course will help you get the idea out of your brain and onto the page.
Course Details:
This udemy creative writing course will be delivered in 31 lectures, and ideally will take 2h 12m to complete. This course will only cover the writing part of writing a children’s book, other parts such as formatting and publishing are covered in other courses.
Eligibility:
You just need a working knowledge of elementary grammar to be eligible to start this course.
What You’ll Learn:
- Writing a pre–k to k children’s book
- How to identify story ideas versus concepts and map out a story.
- How to outline, draft and finish a children’s book
Course Fee: Rs. 1,299
You may also be interested in Short Story Writing Courses
3. Creative Writing by Tracy Baines and Louise C
This Udemy Creative Writing course will teach how to get started with writing daily and get past any mental blocks you might have when first starting to write. The course is delivered by a creative writing professional who will also teach how to get paid for your writing. You’ll learn to write poems. And get creative writing tips from start to finish.
Course Details:
This udemy creative writing course will be delivered in 33 lectures over 5 different sections. It can be completed in approx 1 hour. It’s a basic course that mainly goes through how to get creative in writing and build upon it. You will get confidence with your writing and write freely. The course is short but comprehensive on different facets of writing. It goes through how to get started with writing, unlocking your creativity, how to get ideas, and finally finishing your writing with a bang!
Eligibility:
This course is for anyone willing to learn creative writing. If you lack the confidence and don’t know where to start then take this course. If you want to write poetry or prose and want your writing to get published, then this course will help you.
What You’ll Learn:
- Writing while having fun!
- How to make time for your writing
- How to build confidence in your writing
- How to get past writer’s block
- Earn money through your writing
- Write short stories, novels, poems, and prose
- Avoid making beginner mistakes
- Create beginning and end scenes, and fantastic plots
- Forming well-rounded characters and scenes
Course Fee: Rs. 3,499
Check out Creative Writing for Social Media
4. Creative Writing Full Course by Trace Crawford
This Udemy Creative Writing course is designed to give you the full overview of creative writing i.e. fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and drama. Find your writing voices using literary devices, writing techniques, and specialized skills taught in this course.
Course Details:
The course includes 43 video lessons and each lesson comes with an assignment and a practical application project. It’s 12 hours long. There are also 37 review quizzes to strengthen your understanding of the major concepts. Notes will be provided for every lesson.
Eligibility:
You should join this course if you have a desire to write and are willing to learn.
What You’ll Learn:
- Four genres of writing- fiction, non-fiction, drama, and poetry
- Discover your writing style, perfect it and share
- Writing techniques, specialized skills, and literary devices
- Writing assignments targeted on your skills
- Publishing opportunities, and podcasts and creating a writing portfolio
Course Fee: Rs. 1,999
5. Creative Non-Fiction Writing by Trace Crawford
This course, by the same instructor as above, is focused on non-fiction creative writing. It uses literary devices, writing techniques, and specialized skills to help find your unique writer’s voice.
Course Details:
The udemy creative writing course includes 26 video lectures into 7 lessons with an assignment and a practical application project in each lesson. There are 7 review quizzes to strengthen your understanding of the concepts discussed in the class. The course is almost 2 hours long with 16 graphics, templates, notes, assignments, and outside resources.
Eligibility:
Anyone with a desire to start non-fiction creative writing can take this course.
What You’ll Learn:
- Creative writing in the non-fiction genre
- Secrets of good storytelling applied to writing, even blogs
- Writing techniques, specialized skills, and literary devices
- How to write confidently to become successful
- Writing projects targeted on your skills
- Discover your writing style, perfect it and share
Course Fee: Rs. 1,299
Read More About Non-fiction Writing Courses
6. Video Game Story Writing by Emilio Padulo
This is a narrative design masterclass where you’ll learn to write stories for your games. Learn world-building, plot theory, character development, dialogue, and more. Students will be able to ask questions about story building and other topics related to their games.
Course Details:
The course is 6.5 hours long with 96 lectures divided into 9 sections. Apart from the first introductory section, 8 main sections teach about introduction to narrative design, concept/pitch, world-building, character, story, and dialogue, bringing all of them together to understand narrative design and a bonus section on how to break into the industry as a narrative designer.
Eligibility:
This course is for writers, game designers, narrative designers, indie game developers, and game developers.
What You’ll Learn:
- Fundamentals of narrative design
- How to create In-depth character
- World building
- Writing dialogue that captivates
- How to create a story in video games
- How to break into the game industry
Course Fee: Rs. 3,499
Recommended Read: Online Content Writing Courses
7. Creative Writing Masterclass by Phil Ebiner and Brian Birmingham
This course is one of the highest-rated Udemy Creative Writing courses. It focuses on story writing in essays and books. You will learn how to properly structure, write proper grammar and publish your stories.
Course Details:
This is a short 4-hour udemy creative writing course delivered over 47 lectures in 13 sections. The course takes you through every part of creative writing from writing tips, and types of writing to editing your work to make you a proficient creative writer.
Eligibility:
Anyone who wants to write and tell a story through creative writing.
What You’ll Learn:
- Learn the key elements of good writing
- Learn the grammar aspect of creative writing
- Learn how to find and develop your unique style
- How to choose the right medium for your story
- Difference between fiction and non-fiction writing
- Core elements used for storytelling
- Write more using tips and strategies and create a routine
- Write and edit your first draft
- Outline your story from the plot, synopsis, character, and formatting
Course Fee: Rs. 3,499
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Q.1 How to start creative writing?
Read– For creative writers or any type of writer to get started with writing you should read a lot anytime you can. Start by reading some famous authors in the area of creative writing you want to pursue. You’ll start learning more about the art form as you keep reading some of the great works.
Write– No amount of reading will be sufficient if you cannot put it into words. Writing using literary devices, such as metaphors, similes and rhymes can improve it effectively. Keep a notepad or write on your devices, and set a goal for writing practice and try to maintain it.
Attend a writing workshop- Writing classes expose you to writers in different fields and literature and you can gain insightful tips and constructive criticism or feedback on your writing to enhance it further. You meet new as well as experienced writers in these workshops and get to interact with them.
Q.2 What are some good creative writing exercises?
Know your audience- All types of stories are created with a target audience in mind. To connect with your audience, tailor your writing according to them. Research the audience to get to know about them.
Creativity- Write creatively to understand where you are lacking to enhance your skills. Writing is the best practice to learn good creative writing. Use literary devices to improve your creativity.
Imagination- challenge your imagination beyond the boundaries of what you can already perceive. This exercise helps develop the writing further by enhancing the pre-existing skills and learning new ones.
Q.3 Can creative writing be taught?
Of course. Creative writing is a popular subject for university students as it enhances your brain activities and improves your mood. Creative writing is shown to have positive effects on your brain and hence enhances the mood which, in turn, creates a sense of positive feeling in the students about themselves and increases self-esteem.
Conclusion:
Although creative writing is not being taught in schools and universities as frequently as it should have been, it is still an amazing medium for students to learn self-appreciation and discipline as it requires patience to excel. Creative writing was once taught in prisons as well as it improved the inmate’s behavior and made them more civilized as opposed to their past selves. Learning some of these Udemy creative writing courses will prove beneficial and improve your skills as a writer as well, no matter which field of writing you’re interested in. Creative writing nowadays is mostly used in films and books, and it is greatly appreciated for the talent that it requires.
