As a graduate of Writer's Digest's Novel Writing Course some years ago, I feel confident in recommending the many online classes now offered by WD through Writers Online Workshops. My experience was entirely positive, from the information-rich materials (which I still use) to the helpful advice I received from the course mentors.

You can create a novel, short story, or screenplay plot from beginning to end, even if you don't know what you want to write about yet. Want to write fiction but don't know where to start? Do you have a stack of 30-page novels that have stalled? Are you stuck in the vast morass of your novel's middle? Don't know how to figure out your ending? Or do you have the whole first draft done, with the sinking feeling that something's wrong with the story, but you don't know what, or where?...[more]

In Create A Language Clinic, you'll learn:

• To create a distinct sound for your language
• To build names that fit your cultures
• To use your languages to shape your fictional cultures and characters
• To generate story plots from language-building
• To develop concepts that do not exist in the English language (or any other)
• To work your languages into your fiction in ways that that will not alienate your readers
• To create working spoken and written languages

• Novelists
• RPG Gamers, Game Masters, and Game Designers
• Conlangers and other language ethusiasts
• And anyone who ever wanted to see how a language was put together by taking one apart, and then putting a whole new one together from the pieces...[more]

Create religions and philosophies, governments and lifestyles that are different than your own, that work together, and that feel real. Avoid cliches. Begin using your new culture in your writing.... All in about five hours. ...[more]

In Holly Lisle's Create A Character Clinic, you'll learn:

• What makes a character interesting (and what doesn't)
• Techniques for giving your characters compelling needs that resonate with readers
• How to use the seven critical areas of character development to prevent "cardboard characters" and address areas of your characters' lives you've never considered before
• Techniques for developing characters' individual voices
• Three ways of presenting your character to the reader, with proven techniques in each
• Fifteen huge sins writers commit with their characters, and how you can avoid them -- or better yet, turn them to your advantage and use them to surprise, excite, and delight your readers...[more]

In this book, you'll learn:

• How to plot under pressure
• How to set realistic, workable writing goals
• One way to approach writing short stories
• How to sharpen your talent and organize your research
• Several ways of making your characters more real
• A dozen approaches to plotting
• How to see the world you're writing in as if it were real, and how to make it breathe for your readers
• How to decide if that story that is making you crazy is salvagable, or if it must die
• How to resurrect old stories, how to revise your novel in one take, and much more

Life ain't gentle.

It can kick the wind out of you, drain your creativity dry, leave you rolled up in a ball under the table sucking your thumb. And sometimes it comes at you so hard and so fast that all you can do is grit your teeth and let it, and pray for better days.

If you write for a living, though, or want to, you need to know how to get out from under the table as fast as possible, to kick-start your creativity, and to turn whatever it was that just ran over you to your advantage....[more]

A Three-Day Plus 20 Minute Do-It-Yourself Writing Bootcamp
You want to write.
You've always wanted to write.
But you:

• Can't find the time
• Can't find the initiative
• Can't find the discipline

If you're currently making it through the day with a roof over your head, keeping yourself (and those who depend on you) fed and out of trouble, you already have the discipline you need to write and complete books....[more]

Beat Your Writer's Block!
Make Writing FUN Again, Today

You can be:

• Fully committed to breaking your block in ten minutes
• Discovering how to get past what was stalling you in ten more
• Generating fresh ideas and exciting twists and turns for your blocked story or a brand new one ten minutes after that
• Learning how to stay focused in under ten minutes more
• And writing your story, and having fun doing it, five minutes after that

Are You Writing? Just As Importantly, Are You Having Fun When You Write? ...[learn more]