Foundation Courses and Special Workshops

Core Courses

Recommended for all students, these essential courses provide the foundation for any writing path. Taught by professional writers and published authors, these intense classes will heighten your skills regardless of your chosen genre. Not all courses are offered each session. 

Creative Writing Foundation
The prerequisite, offered EVERY session! Explore your inner poet, screenwriter, travel author and short story writer in this course that teaches the basics of the craft.

Introduction to Proofreading
No matter what you've written, this class will help you make it better! Learn how to recognize and fix your errors in language, syntax, punctuation and grammar. No prerequisites.

Improve Your Grammar! (Winter session class, only)
Focusing on the careful review of English grammar so necessary to personal, professional, and creative writing, this course emphasizes contemporary usage, sentence structure and punctuation. No prerequisites. "Improve Your Grammar!" isn't required, but it is highly recommended.

No Prerequisites

Heighten your writing time with a variety of workshops emphasizing different genres and aspects of the craft, taught by guest authors and staff.
 
Ignite Your Creativity
Through the Artist's Way, explore a more creative lifestyle, learn a variety of highly effective skills designed to ignite passion and capture new ideas. Learn to release the inner artist, dare to leap and then, explore your inspirations and the self-respect that naturally comes from this catharsis! Recommended for all writers, regardless of genre No prerequisites.

Storytelling for the Stage
In a few short classes, learn how to take your own true story and turn it into a story worth listening to -- on stage! Nicole Stewart, actress and creator of Oral Fixation (an obsession with true life tales) is teaching this exclusive class which results in a performance! Be one of the bold who has the guts to tell the truth!

The Hero's Journey -- an historical perspective
Movies and books today have the same themes and concerns as books and stories a hundred years ago, as tales from a thousand years ago. What are the threads woven through them all? Join author and TWP Program Director J. Suzanne Frank as she unfolds history from a storyteller's point of view. You'll learn what The Avengers have in common with The Epic of Gilgamesh and how psychology and Charles Dickens work in sync. No writing.