Get Started Today:
Best Creative Writing Online Courses
Beginners to Advanced
Take the first class free now and discover basics not taught in MFA programs or most classes: Concept, theme, plot, character development, structure, antagonistic forces, and setting. In each class, you’ll learn, and apply, each to your idea or current project and leave knowing where you are going. This class will change your writing life forever.
Bones Class Now Open for Registration:
October 21 – December 16, 2026
Wednesday’s
5:00 – 7:00 p.m. PST
Live on Zoom. Beginners to advanced. All welcome.
1. Bones of Storytelling
Virtual
Ten video lectures w/handouts, a reading list, and suggested assignments. Learn essential tools on plot, structure, antagonistic forces, & more. Take solo, with a mentor or join the live debrief series.
Sample free class HERE.
2. Scene, Exp+Prog
Virtual
Six video lectures on crafting compelling scenes, skillfully incorporating exposition, and progressing action. Easy to follow handouts, reading list, and suggested assignments.
Take on your own, or with Studio mentor support.
3.
Development Program
Some manuscripts are ready to meet the world. Is yours?
The Developmental Editing Program is Blackbird’s highest tier — close, collaborative, professional work with a single destination: agent-readiness.
Jennifer is here to consult:
Full Manuscript Read
Offered seasonally. Limited availability.
Enrolled students only.
Before a writer can know where their manuscript needs to go, someone who understands story at the deepest level must read the whole of it with developmental eyes tracking structure, arc, character, thematic coherence, narrative momentum, and the singular logic of this particular book.
That is what the Full Manuscript Read provides you get a written assessment covering:
- The manuscript’s strengths: What is already working and must be protected
- Structural and narrative weaknesses: Where the work is losing the reader or losing itself
- Plot, character, and structural recommendations: Specific, actionable, grounded in craft
- A plan for the work ahead.
This written assessment is followed by a 90-minute debrief conversation. The writer leaves with the map and the compass. Learn more. Click here.
One-on-One Consults
This is the engine of the Developmental Editing Program. Working session by session, at a word count that matches the writer’s pace and project, Jennifer reads, marks, and thinks with each writer about their pages — and then meets with them to work through what has been found.
Each session includes Jennifer’s full developmental reading of the submitted pages, written line and craft notes, and a 60–90 minute conversation. Nothing is generic. Every session is specific to this writer, this manuscript, this moment in the work.
Session Word Counts
Writers choose the word count tier that fits their pace and the nature of their current revision stage. Higher word counts move the manuscript forward faster; smaller word counts allow for deeper work on complex or early-draft material. Writers may adjust their tier between sessions.
Learn more. Click here.
I love your teaching style. You’re so passionate and real about the art form. You remind us to sit in the mystery of the unknown. You show us what it takes to go the distance. I love the behind-the-scenes of your own writing and publishing process.