There are many beginner professionals who want to improve their writing skills and get ahead in their writing careers. Moreover, it is also not feasible for working professionals to go back to school and improve their scribing skills. Thankfully, you will find many online writing classes on the Internet that help you polish and enhance your writing and authoring skills.
Following is a handpicked list of the Top Online Writing Courses & Certifications to gather knowledge about this subject. The list contains both open source (free) and commercial (paid) courses.
Best Free Online Writing Courses for Creative Writers & Beginners
Good with Words: Writing and Editing Specialization
Specs: Duration: 4 hours a week | Pricing: Free | Certificate on Completion: Yes | Level: Beginner | Mobile apps: iOS and Android
Articles effectively communicate complex ideas and stories in a friendly, credible, and easy-to-follow way. This course, Good with Words, helps you learn how to write and publish an article of your own.
This free writing course explains how you can determine your writing approach, pitch your story to a publication, completely research your subject matter, and write and polish your article content. This course also discusses how you can submit a complete package to editors.
It is one of the best free online writing courses for new writers. It helps you to learn the skills you need to write a well-crafted article that connects with readers.
Creative Writing Specialization (Coursera)
Specs: Duration: Approx. 6 months to complete (1 hour/week) | Pricing: Free | Certificate on Completion: Yes | Level: Beginner | Languages: English, Arabic, French, Portuguese (European), Serbian, Chinese
This Creating Writing specialization course covers three important elements of writing genres: short story, narrative essay, and memoir.
In this course, you will master the techniques that any good writer uses to create a story full of memorable characters. This beginner’s writing workshop also helps you to analyze and constructively evaluate peer writing. It is one of the best writing courses designed for anyone, from aspiring short story writers to established novelists
Creative Writing: Crafting Personal Essays with Impact (Skill share)
Specs: Duration: 1 hour 1 minute | Certificate on Completion: Yes | Level: Intermediate
Creative Writing is an online proofreading course that shows how to give your writing more impact, regardless of its purpose. In this online course, the writer and journalist Tom Geller help you to search reasons for writing with the demonstration. The writer also teaches you how to use those reasons to drive the words you select and the tone you take.
The author of this course also shares his understanding of grammar and sentence structure for writing with maximum impact. After completing this free online writing course, you will be equipped with plenty of practical writing tips to make your writing clear and crisp.
Secret Sauce of Great Writing (Udemy)
Specs: Rating: 4.5 | Duration: 41 minutes of on-demand video | Pricing: Free | Certificate on Completion: Yes | Level: Intermediate
Secret Sauce of Great Writing is a course designed by Shani Raja. This course will teach you the four main concepts of good writing: Simplicity, Clarity, Elegance, and Evocativeness. It will also help you learn how to add those ingredients skilfully.
At the end of this online writing course, you will have a good grasp of how professional writers create powerful and beautiful prose. In this online writing course, you can quickly identify your writing weaknesses, understand the principles, and fix and improve it significantly.
Essay Essentials: Improve Your Academic Writing (Udemy)
Specs: Rating: 4.4 | Duration: 1hr 14min of on-demand video | Certificate on Completion: Yes
Essay Essentials: Improve Your Academic Writing is a video course that helps you learn how to write essays. This free writer’s course will help you find the essay writing success you deserve by learning essay writing foundations
Writing With Confidence: Writing Beginner To Writing Pro (Udemy)
Specs: Duration: 5 hours 50 minutes | Pricing: $24.99 | Certificate on Completion: Yes | Level: Intermediate | Mobile apps: iOS and Android
Writing With Confidence is an online course that helps you create ad copy that effectively conveys your brand and drives traffic to convert clicks into sales. The course designer Michael Duquet also teaches you the rules for writing ads for different platforms.
The author of this course, Clare Lynch, explains how you can change your message and tone according to your target audience and customer personality.
In the last chapters, you will learn about Create musical sentences that readers can’t resist.
Craft Your Cover Letter (Udacity)
Specs: Duration: Approx. 1 Day | Pricing: Free | Certificate on Completion: Yes | Level: Beginner
Craft Your Cover Letter is a short course where you will learn to use proven writing techniques to show why you are the best person to do this job.
In these writing classes for beginners, you will also learn how to research company values, target your writing pitch, and develop an authentic story. It offers the research and writing tools you need to show why you are the best person for the specific job!
Write a Book! (Udemy)
Specs: Rating: 4.3 | Duration: 30 hours on-demand video | Certificate on Completion: Yes
Write a Book is an online writing course offered by Udemy. This course explains how to organize and begin writing a short story, novel, or nonfiction book with concepts similar for each form. This online course is ideal for someone looking to grasp the fundamentals of writing using the English language.
The Complete Freelance Writing Course (Udemy)
Udemy offers a wide range of writing courses. This Complete Freelance Writing Course can be viewed on all devices connected to the Internet. You do not require any prequalification to take this course.
Udemy is an online platform that helps you create courses for business, writing, design, marketing, etc. You can develop new skills and achieve your goals by taking training and learning from the extensive library of various Udemy courses.
Online Creative Writing Classes (Skill share)
Skill share is an online course platform that is focused on education. It includes various topics related to graphic design, data science, e-commerce, analytics, etc. This online course will expand your horizons to learn more about creative writing. You can try these online classes that teach about creative writing techniques, tools, and topics like character development, outlining, storytelling, creating a compelling plot, and how you can make your words more artful.
This course helps you to enhance and helps you to create character-driven stories with creative writing prompts. This online class is broken down into short lessons that include hands-on projects to complete and share
CONCLUSION
In the end I would like to conclude this article by saying that Certificates from online courses can play an important role in job applications – as proof of job skills as well as to show your personal commitment as a learner! Online certificates also enable some differentiation from other applicants.