What’s it like to learn with AWC?

A well-structured, well-considered and well-paced course.

The tutor is BRILLIANT. Her feedback is short, constructive, well-balanced and positive. I've been able to make significant, meaningful changes to my writing based on her feedback and it's delivered in such a way that I feel I can make the changes, that it's not a hopeless waste of time.

It has helped structure my writing time and pinpointed some of the key ingredients that I've not given enough attention to. I've been able to share some of my work and receive useful, constructive feedback and had a little motivation injection from this.

Accessible, affordable, high-quality courses. Thank you.

The tutor was great! Suzanne provides direct, helpful feedback. Things I did not see, faults I was not aware of, she was able to point out very politely.

It has provided me the confidence to continue to write. I have enrolled in Novel Writing Essentials.

If you want to write, and you have yet to perfect anything, you must take a course from AWC. You will thank yourself!

I liked the feedback via video. I enjoyed the audios and handouts. Also, communicating with the other students and reading their work. I liked Suzanne's friendly manner, and her honest and encouraging feedback which was specific to the assignment. I can never get enough feedback from someone who's qualified to give it!

I found it motivational. I always get the feeling that AWC courses, Zoom sessions etc, have a raw honesty about them.

Go for it! By doing a course, you can only grow as a writer.

I enrolled in Reinvent Yourself and thought if I'm going to be serious about writing I need to learn more skills. I had a draft from some years ago and I thought this course could really help me.

I found the feedback was given on an individual basis, not generalised which I found very helpful. The constructive criticism was encouraging and eye opening for me and has given me a lot to work with.

I enjoyed reading others' assignments and having a writing commitment each week. I've learnt a lot about what is required in many areas of writing.

I feel I can come back to my story with a fresh approach using the skills and information from this course. I also feel more connected with other writers and sources of information now.

Suzanne was so gentle and kind with her feedback, but you could also clearly see the constructive value of what she said. She was so specific, it was incredibly helpful. Oozing with knowledge. I have not had many opportunities for feedback with professionals before. Coming from a publisher/editor perspective, I found it extremely valuable. Thank you so much, Suzanne.

In the past, I have been nervous showing others my writing, but during this course, I've been giving it to friends and family each week for extra feedback. It seems to have broken through that barrier in seeking first readers.

I have written children's books but I wanted to develop a young adult voice for my next series. This course has really helped.

The tutor was great; lots of help. I liked listening to all the pointers.

It really helped me define my audience and writing style. I have developed two stories out of this course.

I have learnt so much and, due to this course, I have changed my way of writing. It has given me more understanding of how and why I write. Thank you so much Mr Stephen Hart for all your feedback.

I enjoyed the other stories by my fellow writers and the encouragement we gave each other, even if it were a simple like.

Thank you so much. I look forward to my next course I take up at AWC.

I really enjoy writing stories for children, and wanted to learn and improve my skills. My only hesitation was I am not very good with online things. I found the course easy to navigate which was great.

I enjoyed the assignments and receiving feedback. I found Stephen's feedback very helpful.

I enjoyed the course and found many parts extremely informative. It has given me more tools to work with.

I've been working on the same children's novel on and off for years and had become quite stalled in my progress. I've thought for a while that what I really needed was a mentor who knows how to write a novel, and I was very attracted to this course (once I found it!) as an entry point for getting more active professional guidance.

Stephen was most helpful with his comments and stimulated new ways of thinking about my characters, in particular. I thought he was very insightful, respectful and considerate in all his feedback to participants.

I really enjoyed the weekly practical exercises and the way they were mapped to the content. I've always thought writing exercises might detract from the actual business of writing, but I found that each of them really helped develop more of a 3-D approach to the characterisation, plot, etc, while sharpening up writing rigour. I'm a convert!

I haven't really done substantial work on this story since 2013, when it got put very much on the backburner. Doing this course really helped to reignite it for me--every day I went for a long walk and found myself coming up with lots of new ideas, stimulated by the course, which had not happened for a long, long time!

This course is a must for anyone embarking on writing for children or young adults for the first time. It really helps contextualise the current market for young readers, while laying the foundations for robust character and plot development, and stimulating new ways of thinking about your writing process. The opportunity to connect with a tutor and other writers is invaluable.

Thank you so much for a great program! I feel much more empowered to write my story.

Suzanne was great, providing very positive feedback in a way that was accessible yet thought-provoking. I have developed some greater confidence in sharing my work since receiving her feedback, so thank you Suzanne!

I enjoyed the assignments, particularly the "ordering food" assignment. I had never created a scene that wasn't written for the express purpose of furthering the story, however after completing the assignment, it surprised me to realise that the scene I wrote taught me so much about my character, her motivation and development. I am considering including it in my manuscript for that reason! Receiving feedback from my tutor and peers was also very illuminating and was another step in building confidence to share my work more readily.

Thank you to my peers and tutor for their support during this step in my writing journey!

Loved the inclusiveness, feedback on my writing and encouragement. It has given me confidence to continue writing, that my ideas are good and can make a difference.

Overall, I really liked it. It was really beneficial and helped me achieve my aim.

I was impressed by the structure of the course and the range of materials, authors referenced and links provided. Valerie Khoo's instructions were practical and realistic about the multimedia world children and YA are living in today. Hearing what publishers are looking for was invaluable.

I loved the Writing Picture Books course, and I wanted to learn more about writing for children and young adults to see where I fit and what ages I'd like to write for. This course was an excellent introduction to writing for these age groups.

Stephen has a quiet manner and definitely knows what he is talking about. Stephen's commentary on everyone's work was instructive and encouraging, and it made learning from mistakes a positive experience. Overall, I found Stephen to be an excellent tutor and I would definitely enrol in a course, knowing he was the tutor.

I enjoyed the challenge of writing scenarios for each assignment. I didn't have a draft manuscript or any ideas coming in, but I'm leaving with an idea for a YA novel that I'm currently working on.

If you love writing and are interested in learning your craft, I highly recommend the AWC. My writing is improving and I'm growing more confident as a writer.

I wished to challenge myself to do something new and I thought this course sounded interesting. Little did I realise how intricate writing for young adults is!

I had to make myself just enrol before I thought about it too much! I have a habit of leaving things for later and then thinking that it's not worth it. But with this course, I decided to do it, I enrolled and then I couldn't back out.

I must admit that I was a little taken aback when I first realised that submitting my weekly assignment was posting on a chat feed for all my classmates to read! That took a bit of courage. But once I found that confidence, it was lovely to read other people's work and get their feedback every week.

Suzanne was excellent. Her feedback was always insightful and greatly improved my writing.

I now understand how to plan a story. It's given me a structure to just start writing!

Thank you for this opportunity. Now to do something with it...

I wanted to know more about writing for children and young adults. All the other courses I have done through the AWC have been really helpful and great.

The course was invaluable. I liked everything about it and I enjoyed connecting with other writers. Suzanne was fantastic. Really knowledgeable and sweet.

I will have to rework my manuscript but it's doable and I have a bit more direction now.

I enjoyed finding the voice of a character and plotting in point form for the climax of a story. It gave me some new insights on how to proceed with other stories I have in mind.

Good feedback provided by Suzanne. She is always polite and respectful yet offers good insight and constructive advice. I learned more about my writing and how to improve it. I also learned from her discussion of my peers' posts.

I enjoyed Suzanne's feedback the most, along with my peers' comments. That feedback is crucial for developing as a writer. Having an established writer and tutor suggest improvements and point out strengths and what works is inspirational.

I enjoy the community aspect, which I can access whenever I have the time, day or night; right where I am, especially during this pandemic.

I had seen some reviews online by past students, and I was attracted by their experiences through this course, having then published a book afterwards, which would be an absolute dream for me.

I had hesitations about whether I would have enough time to do the assignments and also complete the lessons, but I found it really easy to listen to the audio lessons when it suited me, and I found the assignments pleasantly challenging. Stephen's feedback was excellent and he really understood very well what needed to be improved and gave great ideas about the direction of each story.

Thank you so much for this fantastic course. I am so glad I found you!

I am a new author and have been looking for a course to help me be a more confident author of children's books. Now I feel like I have some extra insight into what stories appeal to children, the voice and perspective to use, and extra insights into how a story structure works in general.

Stephen Hart was an excellent tutor, with thoughtful feedback and a great insight into what we needed to improve, but also encouraging in his direction of where the story needs to go next.

The most enjoyable part of the course was the assignments, because that's where I was most challenged and also got to do what I love which is creating stories. Getting feedback was also a great bonus.

I feel more confident as a writer, and will definitely consider studying further a course in writing picture books in the future.

I think it's a really important step in gaining confidence as a writer to be well informed about what children's and YA books need to include in terms of story structure and arc, as well as the voice and perspective it is written in. Also, to connect with other writers and get feedback on your writing.

Thanks again, I really enjoyed this course! I look forward to the Zoom meeting tonight regarding publishing, and hope to join the Facebook group as well.

I was interested in learning more about how to write for children, to learn more about how it is done, and to get feedback on some of my writing attempts. I was also keen to have a chance to flex my creative muscles again after letting them atrophy for many years while at home taking care of my young son.

It has been a long time since I have done any creative writing so I was worried that I might not be very good at it. And I was a little worried about submitting assignments each week when my skills might not be excellent. But since the course was online, that did make it a bit easier to submit writing without embarrassment.

The course was excellent and I learned a lot. It inspired me to start writing more regularly and to commit to carving out time to write.

The feedback Stephen gave me regarding my assignment on identifying the climax of my story was hugely helpful and gave me such a great insight into how to better structure this part of my story and other stories I might write. That was a real 'aha' moment for me.

I enjoyed it all. I loved learning about how to write for children, and I enjoyed sitting down to write the assignments and also getting feedback on how to improve my writing.

It has inspired me to sit down and actually write regularly, rather than just dreaming about maybe writing someday when I might eventually have the time and when I've come up with the perfect idea.

The course was fabulous. The content was great. It gave me lots of useful information about how to write for children, including structure and voice. And it was wonderful to be able to listen to the modules at any time that suited me, and to complete the small, manageable assignments in my own time. It was incredibly useful to get feedback on my writing. But for me, the best thing was, it forced me to actually sit down and start writing. For a long time, I've wanted to write but have been waiting to find the perfect idea, or have enough free time to do it. But life is so busy, there was never time. This course forced me to actually make time for writing and to just sit down and get started.

The tutor's comments on my assignments were spot on each time. He was diplomatic but direct.

I enjoyed reading other students' works and having a deadline to work to.

The course has given me insight into story structure and into the specific nuances of writing for children and YA.

The course content is relevant and to the point. Do it!

I wanted to get back into writing and I liked that it was online and at a reasonable price.

The tutor was excellent. Provided excellent, spot on feedback which really stretched my thinking and increased my knowledge. Thank you!

I enjoyed writing again! Reading others work also. It improved my confidence and taught me many things I didn't know.

It will give you amazing insight and knowledge about writing for children and young adults. Definitely recommend it!