Five writing classes to help you get yourself on next year’s ‘Best of’ lists

Another year is rapidly coming to an end, and as you look back on it, you ask yourself what you’ve done with the time. The answer if we’re all being honest with ourselves is pretty much nothing, as only so many of us have written rapturously reviewed screenplays, best-selling novels or memoirs or are seeing their output put on must read or best of lists for the year’s top reporting. How to fix that (and yes, it’s something that has to be fixed)?

You could start by taking one of these five writing classes through CourseHorse that will get you situated in the world of TV and movie writing, break your writer’s block, help you pitch your great non-fiction book or make America’s next great children’s book. And while we want you to become wildly successful, we’re also helping you because if you book a CourseHorse class through Brokelyn, it helps us get paid a little. And then we can keep helping you. It’s a great system, really.

Ever look at the list of Best Screenplay winners on Wikipedia and think about how you’d like your name on there someday, and not just when you drunkenly sneak it in before the page mods notice? The Gotham Writers’ Workshops is here for you with a better way on to the list: learning how to write a screenplay at one of their screenwriting intensives. For $150, you’ll spend the day learning everything that goes into a great script, so that you don’t slave away on one for years without realizing you missed a fundamental building block of storytelling.

On the other hand, you might be more of a TV person. TV is the new silver screen, we hear. In that case, take Gotham’s TV writing intensive, also $150, so that you can learn how to pack all the story you can into just 45 minutes or an hour of screen time, while also saving some surprises for the next episode.

Got writer’s block? Man, that shit is the worst. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all way to get around it, but a writing class can help you by just forcing you to put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard keys. So if you’re suffering with an idea you can’t quite get across on the page, try this $80 Jump Start Your Writing class from Brooklyn Brainery. Beyond doing exercises that force you to write, your instructor will also share advice from famous successful writers on how they’ve beaten writer’s block and gone on to be millionaires. So you should be able to do that too, basically.

You have in your possession the next best-selling non-fiction book, all typed up and edited and ready to be unleashed on an unsuspecting public that will have their socks blown clear off by your prose and your facts. The only problem is, you can’t seem to convince an agent of this. Well in that case, a Non-Fiction Book Proposal Workshop at Q.E.D. is right up your alley. You can learn how to write the perfect 20-50 page book pitch and everything that goes into it for just $30. You’ll also learn that apparently the pitch comes before the book, which proves that we are not always the people to be looked to for every piece of career advice.

We get it, not everyone has been naturally gifted with the ability to rhyme like Dr. Seuss. Some of us are just lucky, some of us might want to do it but need a little help getting there. The 92nd Street Y will do that with their $145 Write and Rhyme Like Dr. Seuss class, where you’ll learn the basics of meter, rhythm and scansion. By the time you’re done with this class, you’ll be ready to write America’s next great children’s book! Maybe one about an alligator named Noam Chompsky who lives in the East River?

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