What’s it like to learn with AWC?

I had a couple of children's stories which I had submitted to publishers but never received responses. I saw this AWC course advertised, and it sounded practical.

I feel that I have a greater awareness of direct language, economising with words, punctuation, showing rather than telling and revealing feelings. Cathie looked closely at my work and provided useful feedback.

This is a practical course which offers useful writing tips for children's picture books.

Louisa was encouraging at all times but with constructive feedback. Everything she passed on to me/us helped me to improve each week.

I really liked creating the characters and describing a setting.

I feel ready to write more and maybe enrol in another course down the track.

I enjoyed this 5-week course and learned so much. It was relaxed and I didn't feel any pressure to succeed, just enjoyed letting my mind create.

I've heard good things about this course online from graduates and felt that it was a general good overview to writing, seeing that I was a bit confused as to which styles of books I wanted to write (middle grade, YA etc). I love that there was feedback provided to the exercises which attracted me also.

Louisa was fantastic! She has great insight into writing and provided very good constructive feedback to my writing. She was honest, straight to the point and gave us emotional support through her responses when we as a collective would ask how do we keep pushing through with writing when we have self-doubt etc.

I feel strong and confident in my writing and have used the knowledge from the course to start writing a few drafts already.

Thank you Louisa for having faith in me and my writing! I feel confident in my abilities and thank you for accepting my quirky and silly style of writing!

The tutor was very knowledgeable. Great and specific feedback that was helpful and with examples to show me how to go about making the changes also.

I enjoyed receiving the feedback from Cathie. I felt the written support material was comprehensive and helpful also.

I think I have the skills now to adapt my writing for children's books and I definitely have the knowledge to take my writing further if I wish.

The course is worth it for the money and what you get out of it. You will gain knowledge from it you can't get anywhere else.

Bringing characters to life through the senses is a technique I'm currently developing through my short stories. Having completed several AWC short courses I was confident that I'd glean a wealth of new knowledge from this seminar, and I did!

Pamela clearly explored more than just the 5 senses. It was quite an epiphany! I was also fascinated to learn about aphantasia and how to work with it (I suspect I have it and didn't realise).

The body is central to the narrative, and the reader must be engaged through the character's emotional and sensory experiences of settings and situations.

All AWC courses are 'user friendly', regardless of your level of experience or skill. They are practical and easily applicable to a variety of writing genres.

I enjoyed Pamela's obvious experience and wisdom, her engagement - passion for the topic and ability to think on her feet. She's very well prepared and clearly enjoys what she is doing... it's always inspiring.

This presenter is pure gold, in terms of both substance and manner ;)

Pamela offered a huge amount of interesting information and presented it in a warm, easy-to-understand way with plenty of examples. The handouts were very informative.

I will endeavour to significantly increase sensory material in my writing and I can see that it will add considerable depth to my work. It also helped me to better understand how good writers create distinctive, well-drawn characters and scenes.

The AWC is the go-to place in Australia for high-quality writing courses covering a wide range of topics, formats and pricing.

User friendly and informative with good examples. It is easy to refer to when required.

The Australian Writers' Centre offers functional and easy to follow courses that would suit anyone wanting to learn or improve on their writing skills. The staff are easily contactable and friendly.

I enjoyed understanding more about structures, particularly over a multi-book story arc. The worksheets will come in very handy too!

AWC courses are packed full of information that can be digested in nice, bite sized chunks.

I've always wanted to write for children but felt I needed to gain a better understanding of how writing for this age group differed from writing for adults. Your course curriculum appeared to address all my questions.

As a full-time student, I hesitated over the cost but after completing the first module I realised it was money well spent. Carla was a fantastic facilitator.

The Writing Children's Novels course exceeded my expectations. Each module was carefully thought out and helped us develop our characters and build our story world. The audio lectures were informative and easy to understand. Their short duration meant I could listen to them in between other commitments.

Carla was amazing! She answered all our questions, provided additional writing tips and gave us thoughtful constructive criticism. She was also approachable and had a lovely gentle manner.

I really enjoyed this course - Carla was fantastic and the audio lessons were a great idea. I would highly recommend the AWC courses to other writers.

Cathie was fantastic. She patiently guided me through the steps to achieve my goal of writing a middle grade novel series. Her knowledge is exceptional and when I applied her feedback and suggested writing techniques, my writing improved dramatically.

I ended up writing two middle grade manuscripts each with a word count of roughly 22,000 words.

I enjoyed the workshopping with fellow writers enrolled in the course. I loved the sense of community this course provided and the support was amazing.

My confidence and knowledge have improved greatly from undertaking this course. It is the best investment I've made in myself. The courses are so much fun and I feel more confident in my ability as a writer.

I am interested in changing my career to being a writer and, being new to this, I thought to start with Freelance Writing.

I liked the ability to do each module at my own pace and having some written material as well as audio. Having the assignment each week was a great motivator for me. Alex was very helpful and always prompt with her feedback on the assignments. I liked listening to her audio assessments of each person's writing. It was a really useful way to learn.

I learnt a lot of things about not just feature writing but writing in general. Especially the use of transitions.

If you're interested in learning to become a freelance writer, then the Australian Writers' Centre is definitely the way to go. The course is well-structured and packed full of useful tips and information on every aspect of freelance writing. It is presented in an easy-to-follow format on a week by week basis. And we learnt things such as analysing a publication to structure your story accordingly, and how to pitch a story idea to an editor and send an invoice for your completed work. I thoroughly recommend this course to get your freelance writing career started.

Thank you to everyone at AWC. Especially Valerie and Alex for their time and effort in making the course easy to follow, low stress and so very instructive.

Feedback was the most important part for me, as the whole imposter syndrome is rife for me as a fiction writer. I think I might be on the right path now, and the lessons brought structure to my fumbling.

I enjoyed the assignments and they made you think a lot about the different styles, sense etc. L. A. Larkin was awesome as well. Not only was she supportive and complimentary, which was nice, but she also explained well what might be improved in a piece to make it better. I loved this positive reinforcement.

I am now writing every day.

Brilliant tutelage and, more than anything, direct feedback from real authors helps give you both inspiration and drive to make your own work better.

Amazing short course! I learnt a lot in a short time and I'm motivated to take my new knowledge and put it into action.

I love the videos! I find it very hard reading a lot of information and often will get bored. However with the videos, it kept me interested and felt like I cruised through the course.

I feel like my content will be better structured and will have more purpose.

Easy, practical tips to follow. Perfect for web design novices like myself who are only now looking to start an author website.

I learnt so much in the Writing Picture Books course that I wanted to really improve my understanding and skills. Having done that course, I realised I knew very little about the process and guidelines. I wanted to know what else I didn't know by delving deeper through the Masterclass.

The courses are so well structured and are obviously created by those with experience. Sometimes when you're in it, you might think 'why are we doing this now?' But then at the end it all makes sense and ties together perfectly and you realise 'oh, that's why we did it in that order.'

I see becoming a published author as more of a possibility rather than a pipe dream.

The content was really enjoyable. It was short and sharp, and I learnt a lot from it. I really liked the templates and the explanations that accompanied it. I definitely learnt tips and tricks to make my writing better and take it to the next level. I always followed the who what where when why approach, so this was a nice addition to that.

It's given me the tools to elevate my writing to that next level and the formulas to write a good headline... something I always struggle with!

The templates are game changers!

I enrolled in your course Laugh Out Loud as I wanted to lighten my stories and put humour into serious situations. As we all know, laughter is the best medicine. I have written a few stories for young readers which address indigenous and political based outcomes and believed that some light hearted humour could be the key to taking my story to another level.

This course exceeded my expectations and I enjoyed it immensely.

I found Tim Harris's ability to teach this course is spot on, as it suits the course's outcomes. Tim presents as if in a classroom environment and his books portray that environment. So the course actually allowed me to knock down a few walls of my own seriousness and offered me an option to rise above and address my long-lost sense of humour.

The course brought back memories of my own student days. I could only have wished that I had a teacher such as Tim, to teach us, as I'm sure that my own education would have been a lot more successful.

Bernadette presented the subject matter clearly in a relatable way, and provided great feedback.

I enjoyed the creative aspect of developing my own ideas while having a clearly defined copywriting framework.

It's a great way to improve your writing skills in areas you might not have previously considered. It's non-threatening and a pressure-free way to learn.

After taking a travel writing course with the Australian Writers' Centre, I took up the mentoring opportunity with the Freelance Writing Masterclass Program for over a year.

While I was confident of my writing abilities, I found writing pitches to publications really difficult. Being able to send draft pitches for review in the one-on-one pitch sessions was extremely useful. They were key in honing my skills and (finally) getting me to think from an editor's perspective and deliver the elements they're looking for.

Valerie has the ability to really cut through to identify a problem with a pitch and provides very specific suggestions for how to rectify and improve a pitch. I still find it the most difficult part of travel writing, but my skills really improved during this period.

Valerie is forthright in her feedback but considered and accurate and ultimately very helpful. She's in your corner and wants you to succeed. There are also other opportunities to ask questions, glean titbits of useful information and be involved in a community of supportive writers and there is a wealth of information in the library of resources. While I ummed and ahhed about enrolling in the program at the beginning, I'm really pleased I did.