“When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing.”
—Enrique Jardiel Poncela
The Little Red Writing Workshop is a succinct tutorial focusing on the elements of good, clear writing: structure, style, readability, and grammar. These four simple, easy-to-learn principles can strengthen any writer’s skills regardless of his or her genre; they apply equally to everything from novel writing to creative nonfiction, from letters to the editor to job applications. Whether you are a writer by trade or a business professional looking to brush up on your written communication skills, The Little Red Writing Workshop is an effective and engaging way to work toward your goal of becoming a stronger writer.
This workshop will consist of five two-week sessions. Each session will include online lectures and associated textbook reading assignments, along with a writing assignment that will be submitted to the instructor for private review. Student work will also be posted for group review and feedback. Throughout the workshop you will be able to participate in asynchronous lecture discussion and encouraged to take advantage of ongoing informal discussions and posted self-directed writing exercises. (2.0 CEUs)
Workshop Outline
Session One: Giving Your Writing Structure
Introduction; defining structure; types of structures—inverted pyramid, categorical, evaluative, chronological, comparative, sequential, casual; choosing the appropriate structure for the writing task at hand; grammar tutorial.
Writing Assignment: Write a 500-word letter to the editor of your local newspaper. Present your opinion in a clear, persuasive manner. Pay special attention to your goals, your audience, and the structure of the piece.
Session Two: Going with the Flow
Defining flow and how it relates to structure; the importance of logical order and flow; proper use of transitions; grammar tutorial.
Writing Assignment: Write a 500-word article about how to do something about which you would consider yourself particularly knowledgeable. Use what we have learned about flow in this session to make your article smooth from start to finish. Make sure the reader can logically follow your instructions. Keep like topics together and use transitional phrases throughout.
Session Three: Developing Your Style
Defining style; understanding why style is important; using the “show, don’t tell” rule to develop your style; elements of style, including word choice and variation among your sentence lengths; grammar tutorial.
Writing Assignment: Take a short paragraph and rewrite it into a 500-word piece that shows your reader the same story in a style that is all your own. At each stage of the way, remember to be specific—use your creativity to invent anecdotes, examples, details, and other events that can show rather than tell this simple story, molding it into a unique, descriptive work.
Session Four: Refining Your Style
Five techniques that will help you further refine the style of your writing; grammar tutorial.
Writing Assignment: Using everything we’ve learned about style in the past two lessons, write a 500-word piece in the genre of your choosing. As you write, pay special attention to your flow, tone, sentence variation, word choice, and consistency in voice and tone.
Session Five: Revising for Readability
Why revising is important; the art of coming back to your work with a “fresh eye”; the secrets to good revisions; a checklist for doing an initial revision; a checklist for doing a copy edit; how to know when you’re done; grammar tutorial.
Writing Assignment: Think back to your reason for signing up for this class. Whatever your goal was, write a 500- to 750-word piece testing yourself on it now. After you finish writing, go back and revise the piece, asking yourself if you’ve accomplished your goal and if there’s anything you can do to improve that accomplishment even more. Then read it once more with a copy editor’s eye, looking for grammatical and punctuation errors.