Introduction to Creative Writing – Online
Complete at your own pace! You are guided through the modules of the course by your own personal, one-on-one tutor, an internationally published author.
The course is intended to introduce you to the skills and techniques that make story-telling so enjoyable. You might already keep a journal, or have written some poetry or short stories, but would like to discover the tools professional writers use to make their work publishable.
These modules show you how to mine your own life and imagination for compelling stories; how to understand a powerful story-telling template called the Hero’s Journey that stretches back thousands of years; how to create powerful scenes, with a beginning, middle and end; how to knit these scenes together into a riveting story; how to show rather than tell; how to write sizzling dialogue and how to write with an ear for the musical and rhythmic qualities of language.
You will learn the five common traps that beginner writers fall into. At the end of the course you will have a finely crafted story of your own choosing.
As you complete each module, you will receive personal feedback on your work and will begin to discover your own authentic voice.
Thirty Creative Hub graduates have published novels or been successful in national writing awards in the last three years. See our Reviews and Successes page. Some of our graduates are now publishing in New York and London.
Graduates of the Introductory course receive a 10% discount on our 30 Week Fiction / Memoir Course, taught by some of NZ’s leading authors. This longer course can be done either in the classroom, or also online.
Your personal tutor: David Howard is an internationally published author who has received many awards, and held writer residencies in a variety of countries.
ONLINE course: $496 incl GST
VENUE: Online
Enrol here …
Choose Your Course
Introduction to Creative Writing Auckland
6 week course
One session per week. $497 incl GST
Thurs, 24th April, 6-8.30pm, 2025 at 27 Princes St, central Auckland.
Introduction to Creative Writing - Online
Start any time. $496 incl GST
Set of modules with your own one-on-one tutor, an internationally published author.
Learn from anywhere in the country.
Our Tutors
These are Some of Our Student Successes...
Eileen Merriman
By 2025, our Thirty Week Fiction Course graduate Eileen had published thirteen novels with Penguin Random House. Eileen’s novel ‘Pieces of You’ was published in 2017. This is the compelling story of a young woman who is uprooted from her home city and whose life begins to disintegrate. ‘Catch Me When You Fall’, was published in 2018, and tells the story of a girl who has leukemia, and her relationship with a boy suffering bi-polar disorder. Her next novel ‘Invisibly Breathing’ was published in 2019, and since then she has published ten more. Eileen works as a doctor. She has won prizes in UK and NZ short story awards, including the national Sunday Star-Times Award four years in a row.
Ann Glamuzina
Ann’s elegiac novel ‘Rich Man Road’ reached No 1 on the Booksellers NZ fiction sales list. The novel is published by Eunoia Books, a publishing house made up of former students of Hub Director John Cranna. Ann says of her novel: ‘My extended family lives in Croatia and I have grown up with the rich stories and legends of the Dalmatian coast. During WWII, my relatives escaped the German occupation, spending time as refugees in the British run camps in El Shatt, Egypt.’ The novel follows the journey of one of these relatives who migrated to New Zealand. Ann’s novel received a glowing review from Rae McGregor on National Radio, which helped catapult it to No 1 position.
Gina Cole
Graduate Gina’s first collection of short stories, ‘Black Ice Matter’ was published by Huia Books and won the Hubert Church Prize for Best First Book of Fiction. Her novel ‘Na Viro’, a science fiction / fantasy work, was published in 2022. Gina is a graduate of our 30 Week Fiction Course and is a family lawyer of Fijian and British ancestry. In ‘Black Ice Matter’, a woman is caught between traditional Fijian ways and the brutality of the military dictatorship; a glaciology researcher falls into a crevasse and confronts the unexpected; two women lose children in freak shooting accidents. Gina has won several national writing awards and has been published in Pasifika and other literary journals. She is an Honorary Writing Fellow at the University of Iowa.
Greg Hall
Greg Hall’s novel ‘Good Sons’ was profiled on Radio NZ and Television New Zealand to coincide with Anzac Day. It is a harrowing but uplifting story of three young men whose lives are overtaken by the First World War. It culminates at the battle of Passchendaele in which more than 800 young New Zealanders lost their lives. Greg is a Director of the Passchendaele Society, and a former senior banking executive.
Heidi North-Bailey
Graduate Heidi’s book of poetry ‘Possibility of Flight’ has been described as ‘a thoughtful and intimate collection that ends unexpectedly with fireworks’. She was short-listed for the 2023 $10,000 Gifkins Award for her latest novel. She won the Shanghai Writers Scholarship to write in China. She was also awarded the Hachette / NZ Society of Authors Trans-Tasman mentorship, to work with a senior editor at Hachette Australia on the manuscript of her latest book. Her work has appeared in New Zealand and international journals. Heidi lives in Auckland, and when not being kept busy with her six-year-old, squirrels away time to write.
Fiona Sussman
Fiona’s latest novel, ‘The Doctor’s Wife’, was published internationally in 2023 and was the most borrowed book from Auckland Public Libraries in that year. She won the Dame Ngaio Marsh award for the best crime novel of 2017, and the Sunday Star Times short story award in 2018, when John Cranna’s graduates took 1st, 2nd and 3rd prizes in NZ’s best-known short story award. Her first novel ‘Shifting Colours’ based on her experience of apartheid in South Africa, is published by Penguin in New York, and Alison and Busby in London. Her second novel, ‘The Last Time We Spoke’ plumbs the dark reaches of urban NZ. Fiona has worked as a general practitioner and graduated from the fore-runner to our Thirty Week Fiction course, taught by Hub director John Cranna. www.fionasussman.co.nz
Rosetta Allan
“Rosetta Allan’s debut novel ‘Purgatory’ (Penguin) is one of those books that draws you into its exquisitely crafted, atmospheric and entirely believable world within the first couple of pages. The time is 1865, the place is Otahuhu, New Zealand – back then just a small outpost designed to create a boundary between the slowly expanding settler’s Auckland, and the edge of the Waikato, still protected by King Country Maori.” NZ Booklovers. Rosetta’s second novel, ‘Unreliable People’ was published in 2019 and her third novel ‘Crazy Love’ in 2021, both by Penguin Random House. Rosetta is a graduate of our Thirty Week Fiction Course and a Hub tutor.
