Take Your Writing From Good to Great
Jennie Nash
Lessons
Class Introduction: Why Your Writing is Falling Flat
08:50 2Good Editing Takes Your Work from Good to Great
25:59 3Know Your Purpose, Own Your Power
09:20 4Take Off Your Writer’s Hat
13:41 5Get Into Your Reader’s Head
05:10 6Test the Logic of Your Argument
03:52 7Listen to Your Words
17:02Class Description
For most professionals, writing is a major part of their work. Every day they write emails, cover letters, presentations, proposals, speeches and memos—all of which are needed to accomplish a specific goal. But if the writing is flat, fuzzy and unfocused, chances are the piece won’t have the desired impact.
What makes writing truly effective? It’s not about the grammar, word choices or sentence structure. It’s about being able to step back from the work and think like an editor. In this class, book and writing coach Jennie Nash will teach you the five key self-editing skills you need to take any piece of writing from good to great.
In this class, you’ll learn how to:
- Figure out why your writing is falling flat.
- Build revision into your writing process.
- Take off your writer’s hat to assess the big picture.
- Get into your reader’s head.
- Test the logic of your argument.
- Consider issues of voice, pacing and authority.
- Listen to your words as if they were a song on the radio.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
Ratings and Reviews
Tomas Verver
Thanks Jennie for the great online course. It helped me improved my communcation and writing skills. It's helps make the proces of writing also more fun. I also read the books Made to Stick and some other referenced material. I agree we need to write from the perspective of the reader. I liked that your discussed different text purposes.
Sara
Great class! Jennie gave helpful, specific tips to elevate your writing. She showed several examples of weak writing and how to make them shine. I loved how she said, "Let yourself be a practicer." This idea that good writing takes tons of practice and we have to be okay throwing words out. I also loved the tips of getting into the reader's head as well as our character's head. We have to always be thinking and asking did we get our point onto the page? How can we make it clear to the reader.
Irina Aristarkhova
Jennie Nash is a great speaker, and I really liked the Q&A part of this class. I wish even more time could be left for questions, because the audience members seemed as a very advanced group of writers and their questions were helping to clarify the lessons. This class would be very helpful to those who have arguments and points to make and not just write for the sake of writing (for themselves and their narrow community of writer-friends). There was also a moment when Nash mentioned her dislike of "writing groups." I would love to hear more about that. I wish this training would be given to students of writing BEFORE they are asked to write anything as these are "higher order" type of lessons that the professional writing community often shuns to raise because they are actually very hard to address.