Writing is not a mysterious art, but a craft that can be learned. The best way to learn anything is by doing it. We learn how to ride by writing. novels are written in prose, but what is prose? prose can be defined as ordinary written or spoken language, without regular structure, the structure that you normally find in poetry or verse. It sounds natural to the ear, and it's the medium the authors use to tell their stories.

Prose consists of words, sentences, paragraphs and chapters when considering works of fiction, and there are certain rules that help to improve readability, which help to move the story forward. In this course, you will learn how to identify a problem areas in your writing, and how to apply simple guidelines to improve your skills. other courses will deal with structure, such as the plot, characters, narration, description, point of view, and dialogue. But here in this course, we will deal with the mechanics of writing the right words, and the right way to maximize the meaning to tell our story. This will result in an enjoyable experience for your readers and make them want to turn the page I've identified these common problem areas for new writers and present simple procedures for correcting and improving your prose. In lecture two, we take a look at adverbs and adjectives.

You will learn what they are, how to use them, and when not to use them at all used too often are in the wrong place, and your writing will be too ornate or flowery. This is called purple prose, and it's the hallmark of a beginner. active and passive writing is a subject of lecture three. Now, this particular subject is the cause of confusion with many writers, both new and seasoned authors. Both active and passive writing can be used, and it depends on the meaning that you want to convey in the particular situation. In lecture four, we take a look at special punctuation.

For the purposes of this course, I'll assume that students have a firm understanding How to use a comma and a full stop, or a period as the American say, but the correct use of some commonly misused punctuation marks often ignored. You will learn how to use the N dash, M dash, colon, semi colon, ellipses and the hyphen in the correct way. In lecture five, we learn how to use numbers and to write them in the correct way in prose. Inevitably, numbers do appear in our pros. And in this lecture, you will learn how to write small, large and fractional numbers properly, as well as dates. I've titled lecture six words, words words.

The subject is how to avoid unnecessary words. And also how to choose the simple word over the complex or the fancy. absolutes or over generalizations are a common feature for new writers. And in lecture seven, we look at how we can remove these or change them. Authors tend to make sweeping statements that they hold to be true, but in fact, often they are not. Over usage shakes the readers faith in your writing, if it happens too often.

In this lecture, we learn how to search and destroy. In lecture eight, we look at cliches and overused words. We hear and repeat them every single day, which is the first good reason why the reader doesn't want to find them in your novel In lecture nine, we explore how to use interjections. These are words that are not strictly a part of the sentence structure. The sentence still means the same if they are removed. The overuse of interjections can erode its flow and readability.

Do we really need them or not? That is the question. In lecture 10 we have two subjects. Vague writing, and initial coordinating conjunctions. are right writing needs to be decisive, not tentative or vague. We shouldn't leave the reader trying to guess what's happening or what our meaning is.

An initial coordinating conjunction is when a sentence is started with a bullet or an end or a similar conjunction. That is no used to join two parts of the longer sentence, we look at the best way to handle their use. In lecture 11, we look at the importance of variety and our pros. You will learn how sentence chapter and paragraph length affects pros. The correct mix of action, description and dialogue is an important element of all fiction. And in the final lecture, lecture 12, I give some tips on editing and applying the rules learned in this course.

The treatment of the subjects in this course is not exhaustive, but intended to give the new writers specific tools that can be used immediately to dramatically improve your prose. You can jump to any lecture you like, but I encourage you to watch each one in turn Some subjects may appear to be minor, and yet it's the combination of all the rules that bring the best results. My tip is to apply the rules after each writing session in the form of a mini edit. You should see the difference very quickly. It is the small differences that separate the amateur from the professional writer.