It has been a personal agenda, to improve my writing skills since the last year. I’ve always been on the lookout for interesting courseware, books, and reads that would help me improve my writing skills. Naturally so, I was glad to come across an excellent free online course, and ebook that’s helped my writing so much, with the help of so little.
While randomly looking up courses on Udemy (Yea, I keep an eye out for interesting courses on Udemy), I stumbled across Shani Raja’s - Free Secret Sauce of Great Writing course. The course is small; you hardly need about an hour to finish it. It comes bundled up with great advice, and a free ebook. It has some great content, based on the advice given within this course. The course is free, easy to follow, and the advice given is straight simple; simple in both, the videos, and the ebook.
Free Writing Course: Secret Sauce of Great Writing
I would definitely recommend this course to anyone who loves writing, in any form, on any medium.
How To Superpower Your Writing
Here’s the gist of what the course covers, and advices:
- The key to great writing is simplicity, clarity, and elegance.
- Don’t use jargon, or complex words.
- Use familiar, everyday words.
- Remove words that are unnecessary.
- While expressing simple ideas, don’t complicate them.
- Use as few words as possible, to express your ideas.
- Make your sentences simpler, with each iteration.
- Think consciously, and deeply about the words that you use.
- Don’t fail to express your ideas in a crisp, and precise manner. Remove ambiguities.
- Craft sentences, and paragraphs that are easy to read, and understand.
- Shorten sentences, as much as possible. But make sure that they make sense to the reader.
- Address the subjects, and objects clearly, as much as possible.
- Punctuation. Punctuation, and Punctuation.
- Especially, pay attention to your usage of commas (something that troubles me still).
- Blocks of ideas, placed in a logical sequence that create flow, and rhythm, is what elegant writing is all about.
- Your sentences, paragraphs, and ideas should flow smoothly, form one to the the next.
- Use sentences, and paragraphs to link your thoughts.
- Balance short, and long sentences, to create a rhythm of sorts.
- Keep your writing economical.
- Simplicity, clarity, and elegance are just the basic fundamental building blocks of great writing.
- Slick writing in the age of “SMS English” is rare, and just sell.
- Mindful writing will make your writs sharp, and clear.
- Learn to edit; do not be lazy.
I Want To Check Out Secret Sauce of Great Writing
The Hemingway App
Sometime ago, I found the Hemingway App. It’s a brilliant app that helps you accomplish some of the points mentioned above. It makes editing the tough parts (you’ve to correct your grammar yourself though) a breeze. In fact, more often than not, most lengthier posts on this blog tend to get edited on Hemingway. I would highly recommend it.
Awesome Sauce: Hemingway Writing App
