LinkedIn Learning: Writing with Impact

1h56m * Beginner * Course

I selected this course with my Manifesto in mind, my intention is to create a concise but impactful manifesto as I would like it to be memorable. Discourses target building writing skills that leverage your grammar and sentence structure to write with maximum impact as well as creative a tone.

"Write short write clear and write right"

A discourse opens by asking you to consider a piece of writing that stayed with you and identify why. I really struggled with this task. Words have never come easily to me and I've always had a problem with processing and understanding what I'm reading, especially large bodies of writing. I think this is why I'm drawn to colourful and playful writing like Dr Seuss Tim Burton and short poems. The rhythm and rhyming made them easy to remember allowing the words to play over in my mind silently understand what's going on.

How this course helped my blog writing:

1. Layout of your writing can make it easier or harder for your readers to follow one way of making it easier. It's like keeping your writing in thin columns of roughly 8 words per line.

2. Headlines can assist by guiding the reader through you're writing

3. And breaking up a large paragraph into individual smaller paragraphs will help the reader process what they're reading.

Tom Geller went on to cover techniques in engaging your reader with rhythm through assonance, repetition and rhyming words. I thoroughly enjoyed this aspect of the course and am excited to put what I've learnt into practice through my own writing of my Manifesto. Prior to this course I had been placing a lot of pressure on myself at the idea of writing a Manifesto, as I'm uncomfortable with writing large bodies of text however this week's lecture and this course have made me feel a lot more comfortable about writing my manifesto in a style that suits me.