Since some of the previous links have been for those relatively far along in their writing, this one's for beginners. FutureLearn has a free online course, Start Writing Fiction, starting on 9th January.

I mentioned the other day that I'd been looking at online writing courses. Here are the ones I've found that are free. It's not an endorsement as I haven't actually taken any of them, I just thought other people might be interested.

Coursera is a site I particularly like, because it has a wide range of free university-provided courses. At the moment it's offering courses on Writing for Young Readers: Opening the Treasure Chest, and Sharpened Visions: A Poetry Workshop. Both are self-paced so you can take them how- and whenever you like, which in the case of the children's writing course is probably for the best since the hours of study are estimated at 8-15 a week. I've signed up for Sharpened Visions and hope to make time for it around other courses that aren't self-paced.

There are also a number of literature courses covering different genres. I took the historical fiction module last year and really enjoyed it, and I'm considering Spacebooks: An Introduction to Extraterrestrial Literature, which is one of two speculative fiction courses alongside Fantasy and Science Fiction: The Human Mind, Our Modern World. There are modules on comics and graphic novels, American Poetry, lots really. It's well worth taking a look if you fancy studying something.

Future Learn has free courses run by British universities, and has lots of starter courses for various modes of writing, including Start Writing Fiction, screenwriting, and songwriting. None of them are self-paced, but from looking at a course I signed up to but never started it appears the course content is available after it's run as long as you don't unenroll. I'm not signed up for any of the writing courses here, but I am for the one on Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales which starts in three weeks.

EdX is another site, which has about seven or so courses on the history of the book which I'm trying to ignore as I don't have time to take them all on! There are a number of "book club" courses as well, which take in individual texts like The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Frankenstein. There are a lot of poetry study courses, which seem to all be American poetry. The only free writing course (the novel writing courses are paid) is The Art of Poetry, which I'm also signed up for as it seems to be self-paced. It looks like most of the free courses here become "archived" but still do-able once they've run.

These are just the ones I'm aware of on sites I check regularly. Feel free to mention any others in the comments.