Los Angeles is a great place for writers to hone their craft and find a community of support. The Los Angeles Writers Group (LAWG) was founded in 2003 by Nicole Criona and Sanora Bartels with the express goal of providing writers with a community of support and feedback throughout their creative writing journey. LAWG offers several writing workshops, as well as private and group training for more intensive and personalized training. The LAWG team offers in-person and online workshops to help their writers learn and grow, regardless of location or time restrictions.
One of the most popular workshops is First-Drive Incubator 2.0, led by Nicole Criona. With over 15 years of experience helping writers in novels, screenplays, short stories, poetry, essays and memoirs, Nicole is a veteran of the publishing industry. This course includes 2 hours a month of private training, two monthly online meetings on the second and fourth Tuesday of each month, a 10% discount on private training and a 20% discount on other workshops, retreats and online writing challenges. They are currently offering Short Story 1, a short story writing workshop taught by Abigail Ulman. Abigail is the author of “Hot Little Hands” and recently won the Wallace Stegner Fellowship for Fiction at Stanford University.
In this class, she hopes to help you with the essentials of fiction writing, such as productive sketching, plot mapping, character development, plot change, and pointing out errors that are very common among inexperienced writers. Jonathan Blum is the author of “The Last Word” and “The Usual Uncertainties”. After graduating from UCLA and the Iowa Writers Workshop, Jonathan moved to Los Angeles and now offers a variety of writing classes. It currently offers a six-week fiction writing workshop with a limited class of 10 students. In this course, she helps her students create short story workshops and excerpts from novels of up to 20 pages to help with structure, characterization and language. The Second City is an organization founded in 1959 by Bernie Sahlins, Howard Alk and Paul Sills with the goal of making a big impact on the entertainment industry.
Among other things, Second City offers writing workshops at its Hollywood headquarters, such as its intensive satirical writing workshop and its individual exhibition workshop, currently led by Anne Marie Scheffler. The Los Angeles Writers Lab was founded by Alan Watt, author of “The Novel of 90 Days” and “The Screenplay of 90 Days”. Alan founded LA Writer's Lab in 2002 to provide a place for writers to better develop their art and their ability to tell a story. Alan himself has worked as a screenwriter and director of the award-winning film Interior Night, so he can definitely teach aspiring writers a thing or two about how to apply their skills to their unique stories. Corey Mandell is an award-winning playwright who has written for many major studios including Disney, Paramount Pictures, Universal Pictures, Warner Brothers and Fox 2000 Pictures. He has also been featured at conferences such as The San Diego Conference in San Diego, The Aspen Institute, the Aspen Summers Words Writers Conference and the Eugene International Film Festival where he received a Lifetime Achievement Award. Corey currently offers a professional screenwriting and television writing workshop for writers living in Los Angeles.
With several locations in Los Angeles, Writing Pad offers a variety of different classes for different types of writers. Widely regarded as one of the best writing programs Los Angeles has to offer, UCLA Extension offers classes on the basics of writing, fiction (for beginning, intermediate, and advanced writers), creative nonfiction (for beginning, intermediate, and advanced writers), writing for young readers, poetry, and editing and publishing courses. Writing Pad was founded by writers Marilyn Friedman and Jeff Bernstein with the hope of helping writers get the most out of their writing experience. Ken is also a popular and successful speaker having taught and lectured extensively at places such as UCLA, USC Loyola Marymount University in both New Orleans and Los Angeles; The Santa Barbara Writers Conference; The Santa Fe Writers Conference; The Novelists Inc.; Writing Workshops Los Angeles (WWLA); The University of California Los Angeles Extension; The Sherwood Oaks Experiment College; The Maui Writers Conference; The University of Oklahoma; And many more. Writing Workshops Los Angeles (WWLA) is undoubtedly a leading authority when it comes to helping writers broaden their horizons and hone their creative writing skills. WWLA offers several workshops throughout the year that focus on different aspects of creative writing such as fiction writing workshops, poetry workshops; screenwriting workshops; playwriting workshops; nonfiction workshops; memoir workshops; novel writing workshops; children's book writing workshops; young adult fiction workshops; scriptwriting workshops; short story workshops; And much more. The University of California Los Angeles Extension offers a fantastic writing program for those determined to hone their skills and prepare for a long and successful career in industry.
UCLA Extension provides courses on topics such as creative nonfiction; fiction; screenwriting; playwriting; poetry; children's literature; young adult literature; And much more.
