Teaching & coaching · Less obvious
Workshops and masterclasses
A day, a room, a tightly designed session, and an invoice that does not wait for a royalty period.
Unlike a term of teaching, a workshop is a product: a Saturday on structure, a weekend on comedy, a masterclass on submitting to agents. You can run it for a festival, a library, a corporate away-day, or your own list. The preparation is real. So is the day-rate, which is why so many writers with one good workshop keep running it until the slides are muscle memory.
- Typical pay
- A few hundred pounds for a half day; a thousand and up for a well-sold day you run yourself. Private masterclasses for a small group can exceed that.
- Ceiling
- Solid ceiling
- Speed
- First money in weeks
- Effort
- A real extra job
- Needs
- No book required
How it works
- 01
You design a session with timed exercises, not a lecture with a Q&A bolted on.
- 02
A host provides the room and the audience, or you recruit via your list and rent the room.
- 03
You deliver, you send a follow-up PDF because you are a professional, and you invoice.
How to start
- 01
Pick the one thing you can teach better than a YouTube video. Teach that.
- 02
Run it once cheaply or for a friendly host. Then price it as work.
- 03
A one-page outline and two testimonials will book the third workshop.
Watch out
- 01
Giving everyone a full manuscript critique in a three-hour workshop is how you go home unpaid in spirit.
- 02
Cancellation policies exist because life exists. Write one.
- 03
Do not workshop your unpublished novel under the guise of teaching. They can tell.
A good workshop is a short book, performed. I would rather write the book, but I will not pretend the workshop is lesser work. It is the craft, live, with nowhere to hide a slack paragraph.