Free Online Writing Courses

Learning to write well is probably one of the best skills you can learn that will help you to get on better in every aspect of your life, as well as improving your chances to earn money. Writing is also a great hobby, so learning to write better helps you to enjoy what you're doing more.

You want to learn: but you're probably thinking that courses cost money, or they're nowhere near where you live, or won't fit into your daily schedule. Well, there's an easy solution to all of these issues.

The Internet's become such a large and sharing place these days that now there are lots of free courses online for you to get involved with and achieve your dreams.

It doesn't matter if you want to write a novel, write a screenplay, write your autobiography, write for other people, or even if you simply just want to write articles like this one you're reading in order to make money online.

Once you have the skills you need as a writer, it's then up to you how you apply those skills. Maybe you simply want to write a better covering letter to accompany your resumé when you apply for jobs! Or perhaps you want to start writing a blog about your hobby—or improve your writing on a blog you've already started.

All these skills are quite easy to learn - and you can learn the skill of writing with free online writing courses.

Why wait for a course to start, fund a writing course, then have the cost of travelling there and back to their schedules - save that money and invest it in some good books that will progress your studies instead.

MIT: Introduction to Literature

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) offers a huge selection of undergraduate/graduate free writing courses online through its MIT OpenCourseWare initiative.

On the MIT website you'll find courses on everything from writing fiction, poems and essays through to analyzing just about every form of literature. MIT offer you free lecture notes, videos, their suggested reading lists and more, helping you to become a writer, without you ever having to attend a class or pay any fees.

There is no registration required. Their description of their "Introduction to Fiction" course says:

This course investigates the uses and boundaries of fiction in a range of novels and narrative styles--traditional and innovative, western and nonwestern--and raises questions about the pleasures and meanings of verbal texts in different cultures, times, and forms. Toward the end of the term, we will be particularly concerned with the relationship between art and war in a diverse selection of works.

Free Essay-Writing Courses From MIT

MIT also offer free essay-writing courses that will help students improve their essay-writing skills. This is ideal if you're an adult learner who plans to return to education in the near future, or if you've just started a University course and are feeling a bit out of your depth. Their easy style will quickly get you up and running. What I like about this course is the ability to see the work of past students, in a showcase of good examples. I like to know where the bar is before I try to leap it!

MIT describe the course as:

This course is a workshop for students with some experience in writing essays, nonfiction prose. Our focus will be negotiating and representing identities grounded in gender, race, class, nationality, sexuality, and other categories of identity, either our own or others', in prose that is expository, exploratory, investigative, persuasive, lyrical, or incantatory. We will read nonfiction prose works by a wide array of writers who have used language to negotiate and represent aspects of identity and the ways the different determinants of identity intersect, compete, and cooperate.

Research Writing in a Persuasive Mode

This is one of many free writing courses online offered by Utah State University. English 2010 is designed to help you become adept at the process of writing and its purpose is to help you implement critical reading and thinking skills - as well as strategies necessary to the practice of persuasive research writing.

In short, this course will teach you how to argue effectively on paper. You will develop an awareness of your reading audience by writing multiple drafts, and learn to include well-documented, credible research sources.

Technology for Professional Writers

Technology has moved fast. Gone are the days when a writer needed a pencil and pad of paper, or maybe a trusty manual typewriter. If you've been writing for some time, you might now be starting to feel that technology's left you behind - and you're unsure where to go to update your skills in a way that's specifically relevant to writers.

This free online course from Utah State University might be just the writing course you're after as it's targetted at existing writers. They describe this writing course as:

You may already be an accomplished writer, but lack necessary technical skills to obtain the most fulfilling and best paid position in the writers' market. You may find that your degree in philosophy, history, or creative writing is not enough in today's technologically advanced job market. This course is designed to give the accomplished writer the technological skills needed in the writing industry.

This course's aim is simply to help you get the best paid jobs in the writing markets - and the best part is there are no pre-requisites to take this free writing course.

ALISON.COM is a fairly new entrant to the free writing courses list. Their course "English Writing Skills" contrasts a number of different styles of writing, including:

• Comedy
• Descriptive
• Spy
• Thriller
• Instructional text
• Opinion pieces
• Poetry

...and more. It also covers punctuation.

The course provides you with enough guidelines to express yourself in a variety of writing styles and is recommended for anyone wanting to improve their writing or English students who wish to enhance their essay-writing abilities.

Free Courses May Help You "Catch Up"

As you can see, these are quality, high level courses. And they're all free courses that you can do online, in your own time, at your own pace - for zero cost.

Whatever your reason for wanting to learn to improve your writing—for pleasure, for study, for income. And you deserve the best quality writing courses, even if you aren't paying for them!

A lot of people have missed out on a formal education and are now feeling "left behind" by others who had better, or more, opportunities. Well, now it's "catch up time"; you can take any, or all, of these free writing courses online and really enjoy the experience of learning to write better, to write better plays, to write better letters, to write better web content ... how you use your new-found writing skills is up to you!

But do something today - that's the real key. Don't delay any longer, you're here because you want to find out about writing courses online, so take it to the next level today and fulfil that dream you have inside you.