Most beginner courses, like the ones I've peeked at, put a huge emphasis on structure. They'll drill into you the three-act story blueprint until you can sketch it in your sleep. But honestly, the real win for me was learning how to build a scene properly—something I'd never thought about. How do you get characters in and out of a room? What's the actual point of this conversation beyond moving the plot? That kind of nitty-gritty stuff.
They also push you hard on developing a daily writing habit, which is probably the most crucial skill of all. The assignments force you to produce pages, even bad ones, just to prove you can finish something. I still use the 15-minute sprint technique I picked up from a course whenever I'm stuck. It's less about inspiration and more about treating writing like a job you show up for.
Beyond that, a decent course will cover character voice and point-of-view basics. A lot of beginners, myself included, start with this omniscient, floating camera perspective that distances you from the story. Learning to anchor the narrative inside one character's head at a time was a game-changer for the immediacy of my prose.