Shape up your sentences!
Master the art of meticulous wordcraft in this 6-week online course for academic, professional, and creative writers who want to write more clearly, confidently, concisely, and correctly. Join international writing expert Helen Sword and fellow writers from around the world to discover the delights of gracious grammar, slinky syntax, punctilious punctuation, and the neuropsychology of style. Sign up for Helen’s free newsletter to hear about future Writing Catalyst Series courses as they become available.
Next Wordcraft Catalyst: Mar 29 - May 8, 2025
We’d love to see you there!
Hurry! The Wordcraft Catalyst is starting soon.
What is the Wordcraft Catalyst?
Across six weeks of writing workshops, experiments, and prompts, Helen will introduce you to key features of precise, nuanced prose — vivid verbs, concrete nouns, punchy prepositions, edgy ad-words, clutter-free phrases, and shapely syntax — and work with you to transform your writing from soggy to solid, from flabby to fit, from cloudy to clear!
Weeks 1-6: Weekly Workshops
Every Saturday morning from April 6 - May 11, you’ll receive an email with a link to the Wordcraft Catalyst theme and materials for the upcoming week. We recommend that you budget at least one hour per week (or more if you wish!) to complete your tasks for each module.
Week 1: Vivify your verbs
Week 2: Zap your zombies
Week 3: Pep up your preps
Week 3: Address your ad-dictions
Week 5: Clear out your clutterbugs
Week 6: Sharpen your syntax
On Wednesday mornings, you’ll receive an email prompting you to reflect on the week's activities and recalibrate your goals for the weeks ahead.
Every week: Join Helen and other writers from around the globe for Live Writing Studio sessions themed to coordinate with each module. Check our guest calendar to see the timing of these twice-weekly sessions displayed in your own time zone.
Meet your facilitator
Greetings! I’m Helen Sword — a scholar, poet, teacher, and the author of four research-based books on writing and writers, including Stylish Academic Writing (Harvard 2012) and The Writer’s Diet (Chicago 2016).
I’ve spent the past two decades helping academic and professional writers shape up their sentences and find joy and satisfaction in wordcraft — and I’d love to help you, too!
This course will empower you to build a craft-focused writing practice grounded in pleasure rather than pain, in joy rather than self-judgment, based on research-informed principles that really work. Let’s get started!
The Wordcraft Catalyst curriculum
1. Vivify your verbs
Warm up your writing muscles with this module on static statives, pesky passives, and vivid, vivacious active verbs.
2. Zap your zombies
Rescue your writing from the zombie noun apocalypse by transforming lumbering academic abstractions into people, places, and things.
3. Pep up your preps
Add directional energy with punchy prepositional phrases that take you reader somewhere new rather than tying them up in knots.
4. Address your ad-dictions
Temper the temptations of over-egged adjectives and egregious adverbs — but embrace the pleasures of writing Eeyorishly from time to time.
5. Clear out your clutterbugs
Spring-clean your sentences by sweeping away space-clogging, zombie-adjacent clutterbugs such as it, this, that, and there.
6. Sharpen your syntax
Fine-tune your prose style by attending to the nuances of grammar, punctuation, syntax, and the neuropsychology of sentence structure.
Why you’ll love this course
Is the Wordcraft Catalyst right for me?
Do your sentences sag? Could your paragraphs use a pick-me-up? The Wordcraft Catalyst offers a short, sharp introduction to great writing that will energize your prose and boost your verbal fitness. You’ll learn how to take apart your sentences and put them back together again so that they’re clearer, sharper, and more engaging than before. You’ll be part of an international community of writers exploring evidence-based strategies that will help you:
write with precision
At last, you’ll truly understand — and know how to explain to others — how sentences work, why some words and phrases sound more engaging than others, and what simple interventions will make the biggest difference to your writing.
write with panache
No more serpentine sentences and formulaic phrasings! You’ll be able send your words out into the world with confidence, knowing that your readers will respond with delight to your clear, concise, beautifully crafted prose.
write with pleasure
Here’s a secret no one teaches you in graduate school: productivity and pleasure walk hand in hand. Set yourself up for scholarly success by shifting your perspective on writing from a painful chore to a pleasurable challenge.
Frequently Asked Questions
Don't see your question answered here? Contact us for more information.
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The Wordcraft Catalyst has been designed primarily with academic and professional writers in mind: for example students, faculty, research fellows, lawyers, business writers, and government employees — in other words, anyone whose livelihood includes writing about complex topics while adhering to disciplinary or professional conventions. However, the course materials can be adapted to suit any kind of writing. All writers are welcome!
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We recommend that you set aside 1-2 hours per week for the online workshops, experiments, and activities in Weeks 1-6, plus 2 hours per week for the optional Live Writing Studio. Ambitious writers may choose to spend more. Needless to say, the more time you put into the course, the more you will get out of it!
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Helen will facilitate weekly group discussions as part of her Live Writing Studio, with two sessions available each week. Please check the Catalyst Calendar and choose the sessions that best fit your time zone and location.
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We’d love to see you at the live sessions, but they’re entirely optional. If you can’t make it, you’ll still have access to all the resources you’ll need to benefit from the course.
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WriteSPACE members get a 10% enrollment discount, and WS Studio members and Catalyst alumni save 20%. To qualify for the discount, please note that you must commit to maintaining your paid membership throughout the duration of the Catalyst course.
Residents of New Zealand and Australia can enquire about discounted pricing via our Enabling Better Writers Australasia program, where the fee may be charged in the local currency: AUD or NZD+GST. Please contact us to enquire.
A limited number of scholarships are available (conditions apply). If you would like to be considered for a scholarship, please contact us. Please note that most of our scholarships go to members of our WriteSPACE community who have already demonstrated a clear dedication to improving their writing but are unable to access institutional funding for this course.
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Helen will facilitate weekly group discussions as part of her Live Writing Studio, and she will monitor the Comments portal throughout the course and provide global feedback to all participants each week. For a more personalized coaching experience, we recommend that you consider enrolling in the Stylish Writing Intensive or one of Helen’s in-person writing retreats.
Craft your words!
Next Wordcraft Catalyst: Mar 29 - May 8, 2025
We’d love to see you there!
Hurry! The Wordcraft Catalyst starts Saturday.
Save 10% off the regular price! Join our WriteSPACE global writing community as a monthly or annual member, then return to this page to complete your enrollment using the discount code that you’ll find in your membership Lounge.
Better yet! Join the WS Studio and save 20% off all Writing Catalyst courses.
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Price is in US dollars, payable by credit card. Contact us if you would prefer to be invoiced.
See also Terms & Conditions.
Image credit: Paper collage by Helen Sword