Will membership to Jerry Jenkins’ Writers Guild actually improve your writing craft?
If you’re new to the writing world, there are several big names to know, and Jerry Jenkins is one of them, as he’s been writing for over 40 years and has had a ton of success with his writing craft.
With millions of books sold and over 200 novels written, Jerry has worked on everything from comic strips to autobiographies to full-length fiction novels that stand as New York Times bestsellers.
He’s definitely accomplished a lot in his career, but are his writing courses and membership programs valuable for aspiring authors?
Read this full Jerry Jenkins Writer’s Guild Review to learn more.
Related: How to Become an Author
On our journey to provide industry education and create thorough review guides on the best (and worst) self-publishing companies, we’re always staying up-to-date with the top experts in the industry for authors.
As a result of our research, we are doing a full review of Jerry Jenkins, his platform, courses, and career as an author and educator in the field of book publishing.
Here’s what we’ll cover in this Jerry B. Jenkins review:
- Who is Jerry B. Jenkins?
- Jerry Jenkins Publications & Awards
- Jerry Jenkins Writing Courses
- Your Novel Blueprint Review
- Jerry Jenkins Writer’s Guild Review
- Jerry Jenkins: Free Resource
- Final Review
Who is Jerry B. Jenkins?
Jerry Jenkins is a New York Times bestselling author with many writings appearing in magazines like TIME, Reader’s Digest, and Parade, including dozens of other smaller publications.
Jerry B. Jenkins has had a long career as an author, spanning back nearly four decades. To this day he has published 190+ books, with sales in excess of 71 million copies sold. Jerry is best known for his long-standing bestselling series Left Behind.
Jerry wrote that 16-title series for Dr. Tim LaHaye, and several books from the series hit the New York Times bestseller list, selling over 62 million copies.
He’s written in multiple genres including romance novels, mysteries, and children’s adventures, as well as non-fiction, including biographies and marriage & family titles. His fiction usually features evangelical Christians as protagonists.
What Does Jerry Jenkins Do?
Writing is only a part of what he does. Jerry Jenkins is a mentor and educator to aspiring writers around the world.
And with his well-established writing courses, blog articles and free resources, he instructs beginning writers on the craft of writing well.
Jerry has had great success in both fiction novels and nonfiction books. His unrelentless pursuit of great stories has led him to achievement as a biographer to icons such as Hank Aaron, Orel Hershiser, Walter Payton, Nolan Ryan, Mike Singletary, and B.J. Thomas, just to name a few. The Hershiser and Ryan books reached the New York Times bestseller list, as did The Matheny Manifesto, with baseball’s most successful junior manager Mike Matheny.
Related: How to Become an Author
Jerry also assisted Dr. Billy Graham with his memoirs, Just As I Am (also a New York Times bestseller), which Jerry considers the privilege of a lifetime.
As for mentoring young authors, Jerry recently launched the Jerry Jenkins Writers Guild (review further down) to coach aspiring writers in both fiction and nonfiction. This is the platform where he helps writers sharpen their writing skills and make an impact with their stories.
Jerry soon plans to launch online writing courses for beginning, intermediate, and advanced fiction and nonfiction writers.
Jerry Jenkins Publications & Awards
Jerry Jenkins has published over 200 novels, and his most widely successful series is Left Behind, which has sold over 70 million copies to date. With 21 New York Times bestsellers (seven debuting at #1), and over 70 million copies sold, he has become one of the most commercially successful writers of our time.
Jerry also owns Jenkins Entertainment, a filmmaking company, which produced Hometown Legend (named one of the Top 10 family films of 2002); Midnight Clear (named Best First Feature at the 2007 Cinequest Film Festival), and What If… (nominated for Best Family Picture of 2010).
Jerry served as Editor of Moody Magazine and then became Vice President for Publishing for the Moody Institute of Chicago. He has served on the Board of Trustees at Moody since 2000.
Jerry has been awarded honorary doctorates from Bethel College (Indiana), Trinity International University (Illinois), Colorado Christian University, Huntington University (Indiana), and Tennessee Temple University.
Now, let’s take a closer look at the courses Jerry has created to help writers become better authors.
Jerry B. Jenkins Writing Courses
Jerry Jenkins has two primary writing courses that teaches aspiring authors to build their own platforms through writing. The courses are:
- Your Novel Blueprint
- The Jerry Jenkins Writers Guild
Let’s take an inside look at what Your Novel Blueprint has to offer aspiring writers.
#1 – Your Novel Blueprint Review
Your Novel Blueprint is a no-holds-barred real fiction writing course Jerry created for mainstream and commercial fiction.
As Jerry has always said how hard writing is, this course proves it by providing the very best in writing skill education. Authors have the opportunity to work through the course at their own pace and write the novel that has been burning inside for years.
Related: How to Write A Book
Your Novel Blueprint is a proven, A-to-Z system for planning, writing, and finishing your novel — whether you’re starting from scratch or have tried and failed before. The course reveals Jerry’s repeatable novel-writing process in its entirety.
Genres
Your Novel Blueprint works for novels from Crime/Detective to Fantasy to Historical, Horror, Humor, Inspirational, Mystery, Science Fiction, Thriller, Western, or whatever other genre you’re writing in. You’re following Jerry’s advice for writing and the process, but for your own novel.
Related: How to Write a Novel
Course Content
Your Novel Blueprint is made up of four sections comprised of 58 modules in total.
Each module contains high-quality videos, with Jerry Jenkins discussing the targeted topic. This material includes highlights of each video posted on each module page, along with worksheets referred to in the video for easy access.
In this course, Jerry Jenkins teaches everything he knows about writing a novel, right down to the finer details of character enhancement and plot twists that make or break a novel.
Here’s what’s included in the Your Novel Blueprint course:
Part 1: Laying the Foundation
This section helps you avoid the problems typical of first time novelists and keeps you confident and motivated by laying the proper groundwork for your story. You’ll learn about writing schedules and how to make time for writing, how to find your unique voice, story structure, point of view, and more on hashing out your story idea.
Related: Writing Prompts To Start Your Story
Part 2: Beginning the Writing
In this section you spend a few sessions on your first page alone — where many novelists get stuck. You’ll learn how to get your book’s front matter complete, first page techniques, self-editing rules, story hooks, and more.
Part 3: Establishing a Writing Routine
In part 3, Jerry walks you through your first 100 pages of the book — and teaches you the best secrets to help you create the writing goals and habits that will carry you through the full novel-writing process. You’ll learn how to craft high-energy scenes, create inciting incidents, villain traits, powerful cliffhangers, and more.
Part 4: Finishing Well
In the final part of the course, Jerry provides writers with all the essential tools needed to carry the story home. The support and teaching technique is set up to get you to the end of your novel, the toughest part of the whole process. You’ll learn outline best practices, powerful plot twists, tips and inspiration, and final revision guidance.
Jerry Jenkins Writing Course Cost
The overall cost is $1,997.00 for the Your Novel Blueprint course. The course promises to have your novel publisher-ready so you can ship to an agent or one of the big 5 publishers. The course really does cover everything in a comprehensive A to Z style that is easy to follow and gets results.
In addition to the 30-day money back guarantee, Jerry has bonuses that come with the course.
#2 – Jerry Jenkins Writers Guild Review
The Writers Guild is an online platform that can be accessed by members 24/7.
In this course members receive a ton of value. In addition, there is instant access to video training on an unlimited amount of writing topics.
Several times each month Jerry Jenkins himself answers the author’s questions live, hosts new writing workshops, interviews experts in the business, and a whole lot more for less than $400.00 a year.
The Jerry Jenkins Writers Guild has helped thousands of authors successfully write and publish their novels.
What is the Jerry Jenkins Writers Guild?
This is a course that offers access 24/7 to a whole bunch of resources Jerry has created for writers. The Guild is $45 a month or $1 for the first 2 weeks to test it out.
The Guild is an exclusive online writing community where Jerry presents multiple training sessions each month (including LIVE workshops) to help you master the craft—including personally answering your questions.
The Writers Guild includes:
- Live Online Workshops on advanced writing techniques (and gain instant, 24/7 access to the recordings of over 20 workshops he’s recorded since January 2016)
- Ask Jerry unlimited writing questions in the Guild Forum—and get prompt, actionable answers.
- Fiction Jumpstart and Nonfiction Jumpstart courses for free (normally $149 each)
- Join Jerry in LIVE monthly Q&A calls, where he personally guarantees an answer to your every question.
- Access Master Class interviews with the writing industry’s most trusted experts—and discover their secrets to writing, editing, and pitching your work to publishers.
The Writer’s Guild Cost – Is It Worth It?
The Writer’s Guild costs $49 a month for the membership and includes quite a bit of free content and access to valuable resources to make it worthy.
There are over 2,000 members that have enrolled and still stand as one of the most solid groups available for receiving hands on expert advice (without the automation).
Free Writing Resources
I’ll admit: I like free stuff! When it comes to free downloads, Jerry Jenkins has no shortage of these.
In fact, on Jerry’s site he offers three very informative free gifts for writers. These are:
#1 – How to Maximize Your Writing Time
In this comprehensive guide, Jerry offers 5 tips for boosting your writing productivity. This includes suggestions and strategies on overcoming writer’s block, fear, and imposter syndrome that leads into procrastination for writers. By turning procrastination into productivity, you are able to write faster, longer and improve on the quality of your writing. A great free resource!
#2 – The Ultimate Self-Editing Checklist
We all know that self editing isn’t fun, but when it comes to turning out a solid piece of quality work, your rewrite is everything. In this brief free resource, Jerry shares a checklist of suggestions for cleaning up redundancy and making a choppy manuscript into a readable piece of work. In deleting all of the unnecessary, you are left with the remaining quality writing.
#3 – Online Resources Every Serious Writer Needs
Finally, Jerry shares his short list of 5 best resources for writers. To find out what they are, you’ll have to download the freebie!
#4 – Jerry Jenkins Blog
Yes, the final piece to Jerry’s platform is the blog. He put out blog posts weekly and these are filled with high-value, strategic techniques for crafting the perfect story, characters, plot, and navigating the techniques of the writing process.
You can find blog post topics on just about any theme related to writing—specifically fiction—guaranteed to fill in the gaps as you write your next bestseller.
Final Review
Jerry is a gifted pro when it comes to expressing his writing technique through his own works, as well as the courses and training offered to aspiring authors that have worked with him.
If you’re an aspiring author looking for specific resources and content to improve your writing craft and storytelling skills,
If you’re more interested in learning how to write and self-publish your novel or nonfiction book to bestseller status, look into specific self-publishing courses or author education programs like ours.
Related: How to Publish A Book
Jerry has been a multiple New York Times Bestselling author and his works featured around the world. He has spoken at hundreds of events, workshops and seminars, and is regarded as an authority in the fiction genre where he writes.
The most impressive is Jerry Jenkins’ commitment to the writing community and the amount of value he has always given to help aspiring writers hone the craft of storytelling. Jerry achieves this through his courses, live webinars and workshops that take place once or twice a year.
With a platform that has been active for over forty years, Jerry Jenkins continues to be a pillar of the writing community.