Absolute Beginner Creative Writing Course

In this five session course, we will explore various areas of creative writing and help you establish a solid foundation in your writing practice. We will work on finding your own individual path and goals for your writing. This prompts we use in this class will be suitable for fiction, nonfiction, or poetry.

This is a beginner-friendly course, designed to help novice writers (or people who have never written but always wanted to) get words on the page and develop skills to sustain their own writing practice.

We will spend our time doing writing exercises, and I will give you exercises and tips to take home to build a writing practice. There will be the opportunity to share your writing but it is not obligatory.​​

This will be a friendly, fun, and open space to get words on the page, build confidence in your writing, develop your own writing practice, and build a writing community with the other participants in the workshop.

The five sessions:

Saturday 13th September 2- 4 pm

Establishing a writing practice. Using sensory details and significant and meaningful details. Giving feedback to other writers.

Session 1: In our first session, we’ll explore how to establish a consistent writing routine and overcome common obstacles such as perfectionism, procrastination, and self-doubt. Through guided exercises, we’ll focus on making our writing more vivid and engaging. We’ll also introduce the principles of writing workshop etiquette, including how to give and receive constructive, supportive feedback.

Saturday 27th September 2 - 4 pm

Session 2: Finding Your Voice & Gathering Material

Building on the foundation of Session 1, this session focuses on discovering and developing your unique voice as a writer. Through a series of exploratory exercises, we’ll reflect on the kinds of stories, themes, and styles that resonate most deeply with us. We'll also begin gathering material—memories, observations, and lists—that can serve as inspiration for future writing. The goal is to help each writer gain clarity about the creative directions they are most excited to pursue.

Saturday October 11th 2- 4 pm

Session 3: Building Blocks (beginnings and endings, settings, time, character)

In this session, we’ll explore some of the fundamental elements of creative writing, including character, setting, and structure. Through writing exercises, we’ll experiment with creating vivid characters and immersive worlds. We’ll also discuss the art of crafting strong beginnings and satisfying endings, drawing inspiration from a selection of published examples.

Saturday 25th October 2- 4 pm

Session 4: Exploring Genre & Deepening Our Work

In this session, we’ll explore the major genres of creative writing—poetry, fiction, and nonfiction—and consider where our own work fits in. Through writing prompts, we’ll experiment across forms to discover new directions or reaffirm our current paths. We’ll also spend time expanding on pieces we’ve already begun, deepening our engagement with works-in-progress.

Saturday 8th November 2 - 4 pm

Session 5: Expanding, Finishing, and Shaping Your Work

In this session, we’ll focus on expanding short snippets into fuller drafts and shaping works-in-progress into more complete pieces. We’ll discuss strategies for finishing writing projects, explore revision techniques, and consider what it means to bring a piece to completion. We’ll also talk about potential next steps for your work, including submission opportunities and setting personal goals for your writing beyond the course.

Attendance policy: If you have to miss a session, I will give you all the material you missed, but not a refund for that session.

Refund policy for the whole course as follows:

Please get in touch as soon as possible if you need a refund.

If you cancel more than 7 days before the course begins: full refund

If you cancel less than 7 days before the course begins: 50% refund

If you cancel after the course has begun: no refund (but you will receive all the materials from the course)

About your facilitator:

Raquel Vogl is an American writer, musician, and teacher. She has taught English and writing for years in a variety of settings, such as the City University of New York and the Queens Library. Raquel loves helping people find their creative voice and facilitating their expression and writing.

She has had work published in Storgy, The Sheffield Review, and the Donna Collective among other places. In her musical life, she has released multiple records and toured the United States, and she continues to investigate the writing spectrum from song to the written word with her band Persona, recently releasing a record on the label Sonido Polifonico.

Accessibility: The Writers Workshop’s space in Orchard Square, Sheffield, has no step-free access. If you have been excluded from this event due to inaccessibility, please let us know. We are committed to finding fully accessible premises and, in the meantime, making as many of our events available online as possible.

The Writers Workshop is a nonprofit social enterprise. We are on a mission to enable everyone to experience the joy and power of creative writing, both at our venue in Sheffield and online. Members of the Writers Workshop get a considerable discount on all our events. For more information, visit www.thewritersworkshop.com.

Some feedback from some of Raquel's recent workshops:

A great supportive class. I wrote far more than I expected, and am surprisingly much happier with my efforts than I expected to!

I finally defeated my inner critic and came to a Beginner’s Writing Workshop. Turns out I can write! And so could everyone else with us.

I loved the session, an amazing outlet for someone that enjoys writing as a hobby. Lovely company with kind people to bounce ideas off. Raquel brought really fun exercises to keep the hand moving!

I loved this workshop! Brilliant. The prompts gave me so much space to be imaginative. I can definitely use these prompts to write short stories and I’m feeling very motivated.

How did we do so much in two hours!? Raquel really made is immediately comfortable, and had some brilliant prompts to get writing. Her passion was very inspirational. How fulfilling!