Write more clearly, excitingly and persuasively
This workshop is particularly useful if you’d like to: write clear, emotionally engaging, persuasive messages and documents; or refresh and fine tune your skills.
You’ll get most out of PowerWrite if you’re:
- a graduate trainee looking for an introduction to writing for business;
- someone who’s taking on a management or supervisory rôle for the first time;
- a starter or middle manager; or
- if you’ve solid management experience, but have English as an extra language.
PowerWrite in a nutshell
The workshop has three parts:
1. Tailor what you write to have the greatest impact on your readers;
2. Strip away bad habits and use clear English to make your writing easy to understand and more powerful;
3. Use a clear structure to persuade your readers step by step.
The workshop keeps theory to a minimum and uses exercises and games to keep you constantly intrigued and engaged. The high interactivity helps make sure that what you learn sticks.
How a typical workshop might look
| What happens in the workshop | Training Outcomes |
|---|---|
| Introduction - know your reader | Focus on what is most important for your audience. |
| a) Plan your document | Understand the need to be single-minded and how to choose the most important idea or argument |
| Understand and be able to use basic, logical argument model (Introduce - Develop - Conclude) | |
| Understand and be able to use the journalist (most important first) model (Inverted Pyramid) | |
| b) What is the point of an executive summary? | Understand an the purpose of an executive summary and able to write one compellingly |
| Using Word Outline view to create better ideas and stronger editing | |
| c) Paragraphs that write themselves | |
| d) Link your thoughts | Understand how to use the five different kinds of conjunctions and how to use them successfully to develop and control an argument |
| e) Helpful headings and subheadings | Understand how to use headings to: hook your audience, give them a sense of the whole story and draw them into the paragraphs |
| 2) Clarity: Clear English - your toolbox | Able to write, short, easy to read sentences |
| Understand why lists help ease of reading and able to know when to use them | |
| Aware of active/passive verb use: advantages of active verbs, but also when it is wise to use passive verbs | |
| Understand what nominalisation is and why avoiding it adds energy to writing | |
| Understand ease of reading and neurological reasons for using positive language | |
| Able to use the right words for the right readers | |
| Understand why first person pronouns help clear understanding | |
| Myths and legends of clear communication | |
| Practice clear English principles when searching for individual words | |
| 3) Persuasion: Make words work harder for you | Reinforce core idea of creating a compelling story by isolating the different steps to writing persuasively |
| 4) Next steps - doing it differently | Write clear, persuasive plan of what you will do differently as a result of the workshop |