Advanced writing skills

Course summary

Although some authors are naturally gifted, even the most talented work hard to improve their performance and constantly strive to maintain it at the highest level. This course, which takes place at the Centre's Central London training suite, deals primarily with writing in the workplace, but the principles it outlines are applicable to all forms of prose.

Course outline

A day trip through the jungle of English prose style that shows some of its great beauties and helps delegates to reproduce them in their own work. The itinerary also points out some of the most dangerous areas and maps safe detours.

Advanced writing skills involves numerous exercises and allows time for detailed consideration of delegates' previously submitted work. Among the topics covered are:

• good and bad writing: differences and some amazing similarities
• planning and structure
• identifying and achieving the desired outcome
• methods of persuasion
• ambiguity: mistake or deliberate strategy?
• tone neutral: its desirability, even in polemics, and how to achieve it
• from first draft to final submission: the editing process
• house style
• indexing
• referencing

"The Course was very well structured and flowed well. The trainer was approachable and easy to interact with." SH HCR Group

"It was great that we were able to submit a piece of work in advance." NL WaterAid

Who is this course for?

Almost everyone writes – for business, for pleasure and commonly for both. This course is for all who wish to improve their prose style. The Centre works with people from all sectors including the public sector, voluntary sector, corporate sector and private sector.

What will this course help me do: learning outcomes?

Advanced writing skills will help regular writers to get to the final version – the draft with which they and their readers are fully satisfied – more quickly and smoothly than ever before.

Robert Louis Stevenson said that he didn’t enjoy writing but he enjoyed having written; this course aims to take you beyond the author of Treasure Island and get fun out of the process.

Other courses to consider

The Centre offers a number of writing courses. Writing skills: the basics - one day course and Writing effective English: essential tools and techniques (two days) both offer training in writing skills at a less advanced level. Other of our writing courses are on more specialised subjects, such as Writing for the web, Report writing skills, Writing publications, Social media and online communications or Speed reading. You may also be interested in trying two of our most popular writing courses, our Proofreading course and our Minute taking course.

Course dates

This course is run on request. This means that we will keep your details on file and once we have at least three people interested in the course we will contact you to let you know and to schedule a date. Please contact us to log your interest in this course.

Alternatively we can also run this as an in-company course. Find out more about in-company training.