Writer's Diet Clinic
During the first week of May, I invited writers to join me for two free online Writer’s Diet Clinics, in which we discussed how to cook up delicious, nourishing prose for your readers to savor!
If you missed this event, you can register below for the free 25-minute Writer’s Diet Tutorial video, recorded during the live clinic on May 8. In the tutorial, you will learn about the online Writer’s Diet Test and my premium Writer’s Diet PLUS tool for WriteSPACE members.
Here’s WriteSPACE Event Manager Amy Lewis’ personal account of the live event:
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In the first hour of each session, Helen guided participants through a brief Writer’s Diet tutorial to introduce her free online Writer's Diet diagnostic tool and its younger, more sophisticated sibling, the Writer’s Diet app for MS Word. (Some seasoned WD users could opt to spend that time doing a 25-minute pomodoro instead). In the second hour, Helen ran a live writing clinic to help the writers make sense of their Writer’s Diet test results.
The Writer’s Diet is an excellent diagnostic tool; I use it regularly for my own writing. You can paste in a text sample of anywhere from 100 to 1000 words to get a diagnosis, which is split into different categories. If you get a diagnosis of ‘Heart Attack’ or similar, the results will light up with rainbow colours, indicating you have many editing options available. In the case of this tool, the more colour you see, the more your verbal arteries are being clogged (metaphorically speaking, of course).
I love that you can filter by specific categories with the test. You click on each box, and it will give you the diagnosis just for that category. Helen offered some golden advice for this test: Take it with a little pinch of salt. Remember that it’s an algorithm, and you are the style expert of your own work. It’s easy to assume that you must eliminate all of those coloured problem words—which would be difficult and unnecessary. You don’t have to remove them all, but it does teach you about your default word selection. I tend to towards ‘misty’ with be-words, something that I always check for! Using a lot of be-words can mean too many passive verb constructions. So when I revise, I remove ‘is’ and introduce active and robust verbs to drive my writing forward.
If you have yet to take the test, I hope you’ll enjoy exploring its many insights. And don’t forget to watch Helen’s tutorial via the green link above. A big thanks to Helen for hosting these two wonderful sessions. I look forward to seeing you all at the next WriteSPACE special event!
WriteSPACE and WS Studio members can find the recording of the Writer’s Diet Tutorial in their Video library.
Not a member? Register to receive an email with a link to the video of the first hour.
Better yet, join the WriteSPACE with a free 30 day trial, and access our full Library of videos and other writing resources as part of your membership plan.