I like to refer to writing as a craft to put it in the right context. In order to become a carpenter and create furniture, you would more than likely have to apprentice with somebody to learn the craft of it. You could go out to your garage and just try to learn by trial and error, but it would probably take you a long time to learn, and you would have a lot of bad furniture that you would have to destroy. Just like carpentry, writing is a craft. The problem with the craft of writing is that there aren’t a lot of accessible apprenticeships around. You can’t just say, “Hey, fellow author Dean Koontz, do you want to let me tag along for the next couple of books and learn from you?” Of course most of us receive some formal training in how to write at school, but that’s mostly literary criticism or analysis, not storytelling.
Unfortunately, most of us don’t have access to formal training in storytelling as a craft. There are some university programs like the one I’m in, and those can be a great option. The key there is to make sure that the person putting on the program needs to be a good storyteller or editor—that person has to have some quality understanding; you want to make sure your professor knows what he or she is talking about. If you’re serious about writing and there’s some good formal education available at a local university, that’s great. If not, then you’ve got to work through the local writers’ organizations and groups to find folks that know the craft. Everybody thinks they know about it, but really there is only a small percentage of writers that has formal training in how to craft a story.