If you’re looking for a creative writing course to take in Melbourne, then you’ve come to the right place. Whether you’re looking for a beginners course or a short course, we’ll find you the best one!
Melbourne is a city that inspires the artistic streak. Especially with so many hidden cafes down laneways, perfect for typing out plots on keyboards on rainy days.
Creative writing is also one of the most versatile forms of professional writing and journalism, used by freelance writers, journalists, and other people in the creative writing industry. That makes this skill a great source of career opportunities on top of being a great mode of expression. This is a field for aspiring and existing local writers who contribute to magazines, blogs, and many different platforms for written content. It’s also great for those who are looking to write novels or books in the creative nonfiction category as well.
Writing, as you must have already come to know, is also a branch of the creative arts. Combining both schools of thought (no pun intended), it is only logical that you enrol under the best possible course to craft yourself into a better creative writer.
If you’re also looking to start out and hone your writing skills or further improve your creative practice as a writer, here are some of the Australia’s best creative workshops options that could be a great fit for you.
Melbourne Young Writers’ Studio | RMIT University | Writers’ Studio | Melbourne Polytechnic| Faber Writing Academy | CAE | Australian Writers Centre
1. Story Studios Australia
Story Studios Australia, previously Melbourne Young Writers’ Studio, is the go-to place for creative writing and storytelling courses for young and emerging writers. They offer term based creative story writing clubs, private mentorships, school programs (incursions, excursions and online), and holiday programs for writers 7 – 18. As well as a rotating roster of short courses and events for adult writers.
At Story Studios, they take a story-first approach to teaching creative writing as the attention is on character, story craft, and empowering writers to express themselves and bring their ideas to life. From there they help writers of all ages hone their professional skills.
Courses for writers aged 7 – 18 include:
• Creative Story Writing Groups (in-person and online)
• Private Mentorships (1:1 and 1:2, in-person and online)
• School programs (incursions, excursions and online)
• Holiday programs (in-person and online)
Courses and events for adult writers include (but are not limited to):
• Story and the Self: awaking the writer within
• Intro to Screenwriting
• Thursday Write Night
• Screenwriters Club
Story Studios Australia is based in Carlton and online and offers a beautiful dedicated writing space, industry professionals as coaches, and a holistic approach to teaching stories and inspiring creative minds.
Address: 170 Elgin Street, Carlton
Website: mywritersstudio.com.au
2. RMIT University Short Writing Courses
The RMIT University Short Courses are developed for people looking to do quick creative writing workshop offers and courses.
RMIT University has established a reputation for itself as being an expert in media and communication. That puts them in an excellent position to offer such courses to the general populace.
What they do, in essence, is to identify the basic models of all creative writing and teach them to their students. That way, every student can quickly adapt to any form of creative writing that they might face.
The short courses on display at RMIT include:
- Writing Creative Fiction
- Comedy Writing
- Screenwriting
- Non-fiction Writing
On top of that, they offer their creative writing students a shot at Feature writing with Sian Prior – a PhD holder in creative writing with over 25 years of artisan experience in journalism.
If you’d like to move to professional writing courses after your short courses, they have provisions for that too.
3. Unlocking Creativity by Writers’ Studio
Perfecting its creative writing courses over 25 years, Writer’s Studio has made the Unlocking Creativity’ writing workshop is one of the best out there.
Designed to span four weeks, their creative writing program gives young writers the freedom of access from anywhere since it is based online. Likewise, interested students can get up to USD$50 off when they cop the course early enough.
Refining the course over the years, Writers’ Studio has landed upon a teaching formula that has turned out a good number of professional writers out of their creative writing graduates. This comes in the form of:
- Helping writers recognise and embrace their imagination
- Exploring limits in the way of maximum creative potentials
- Developing a practical understanding of character development and know-how of classical story structure
- Practical assignment to assess the student based on what has been taught so far
This form of teaching and feedback system has proven successful for students of this course. You could be the next!
4. Melbourne Polytechnic – Diploma of Professional Writing and Editing
For those who are looking for full-time, professional writing courses in Melbourne, you might have to look no further than the learning environment at the Melbourne Polytechnic.
The course takes things a notch further than many online courses, offering you a fully-integrated and structured learning experience. Interested students will be taught the concepts of editing. That not only makes them a better writers but gives them an additional skill too.
From the course contents, students are set up to develop their skills in:
- Professional writing
- Advanced editing
- Design for print/web publishing (digital media skills)
If we haven’t mentioned this already, the course is taught by a variety of top performers: Edwin Preston (author of The Inheritance of Ivorie Hammer which garnered rave reviews), Alex Senior (sPh.D. student under the Creative Writing discipline) and so much more.
At the end of the course, students will be conferred with a Bachelor of Arts degree. If interested, make sure to check out the entry requirements below.
5. Faber Writing Academy’s Creative Writing Courses
The Faber Writing Academy offers a wide range of creative writing courses to students, all within the Melbourne area. The sessions are also spaced out, allowing each student to take on as many creative writing courses as they hope to handle.
We also love the way this academy provides a place for those looking to get professional writing courses in the Melbourne area.
Taking a quick look at the course information on their website, options to be enrolled for include:
- Creative writing for children and young adults
- Courses on developing substantial biographies and autobiographies
- Novel-writing courses, and so much more.
They also have different pricing plans to take care of each dedicated form of writing.
6. Beginning Creative Writing at CAE
CAE believes that ‘Every good story begins somewhere,’ and they plan to be the place where all of your great stories will start from.
Their Beginner Creative Writing course is designed to be a fun and exciting writing class for people who are unsure of where to start. That makes it ideally suited to beginners who might be sceptical about trying their hands at creative writing in the first place.
What this project does is take beginners through a series of steps that allows them to find themselves before doing any other thing. That sort of generic model helps writers focus on creative writing styles and models they will settle for in the end.
With multiple teaching and learning sessions to boot, the overall course aims at helping writers:
- Find the inspiration to write
- Build their characters and associated voices
- Develop better plots and structure
- Form winning dialogues
- Get better at rewriting and editing and
- Avoid clichés in writing
This course is also made better in the way the instructors prefer to show rather than tell.
7.Australian Writers’ Centre
The Australian Writers’ Centre (AWS) has been around for a while now. Their creative writing course has been able to develop writers with better creativity to tell compelling stories.
More than being a general professional writing course, the AWS offering has carved a niche for itself for being a great novel writing course in Melbourne. Other reasons why this course features on this list owes to its being:
- Highly flexible in allowing students to take classes online or on-site (in Melbourne)
- Uniform pricing across different locations and offerings.
- Tailored to writers at different stages of their writing development and so much more
The teaching methodology allows fellow writers to tap into personal creative prowess too. That is as opposed to being forced to conform to a particular template. Taking you by the hand through various models and different genres of creative writing, you are sure to get the best out of it.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Is a creative writing certificate worth it?
If you’re passionate about storytelling and want to sharpen your skills, a creative writing certificate could be a great stepping stone. It’s a chance to learn from professionals, build your portfolio, and connect with other writers who share your goals. Whether it’s worth it depends on how much you’re willing to put into it and how it aligns with what you want to achieve.
Is creative writing a hard degree?
Creative writing isn’t “hard” in a traditional sense, but it can be deeply challenging because it pushes you to be original and vulnerable. You’ll need to commit to regular practice, face constructive criticism, and develop the discipline to refine your work. If you love expressing yourself through words, though, it’s a fulfilling challenge that helps you grow as a writer.
Conclusion
So there you go, Melbourne’s best creative writing classes, featuring everything from short stories to copywriting, making your creative writing journey worthwhile. We’ll keep this list updated regularly and keep adding more information to it with time.
Is there a course that we’ve missed? Drop us a note in the comments below.
1 Comment
Hi there,
I live in Melbourne and rather than online, I’m looking at writing my life story but need to attend a course that will help me create this project.
Do you have anything that would help me accomplish this or do you know of where else I could go?
Thank you so much. Sue