Leigh teaches classes and workshops online and in person, independently and through the world-renowned Gotham Writers Workshop.
Romance Writing (on-line)
Gotham classes include Romance Writing 1 (for beginning romance writers) and Romance Writing 2 (for advanced romance writers). Each class is a ten-week session, limited to 16 students and offered to participants around the world, on-line with 24-hour access. Each student receives feedback from the instructor and from other students, offering a broad reader reaction to the individual’s work.
Many of Leigh’s students have gone on to publish multiple books with established commercial publishers such as Harlequin, Montlake Romance, Kensington, Sourcebooks, Belle Books and many others.
Classes are offered about four times a year.
Specialty Workshops (on-line)
Leigh’s independent workshops include specialty subjects such as plotting, creating gender-believable characters, handling transitions and backstory, and Start Writing Romance, originally offered through Barnes & Noble University.
These on-line workshops are independent study, self-paced, available on the writer’s own schedule.
Note: Leigh’s specialty workshops are moving to a new site, and new topics are being added. If you would like to be notified when they’re available, please use the contact me form or sign up for the Leigh Michaels newsletter.
Workshops and Seminars (on-line and in person)
Small-group programs ideal for writers’ groups are available. Topics include:
New Beginnings — All the advertising and promotion we do is aimed at getting the reader to the first page of your book — the reader’s window into your story. But if that first page doesn’t grab the reader’s attention, she’ll move on. (No pressure, right?) This workshop will help you make your opening pages stronger by looking at why the reader’s window to the story is different from the writer’s.
Characters Who Keep Secrets — When a point-of-view character doesn’t Tell All, the result is often a reader who feels teased and left out. What are the rules when your POV character simply must not share everything she’s thinking and feeling?
Writing Between the Sexes — Much as we’d like to deny it, men and women act and react differently, and writers often struggle with making their opposite-sex characters believable. This workshop will help you recognize and identify common differences in the way people talk, think, and act — and use those differences to create convincing, non-stereotypical characters who are true to themselves — even when they’re very different from the author.
Need a special workshop? Please use the contact me form.