Writing Beautiful Non-Fiction

Course Catalog Description

Course designed for students of journalism and other non-fiction genre writing disciplines desiring to elevate their writing beyond fact-filled presentation to structurally designed and beautifully written prose. The course will delve deeply into non-fiction writing of renown, practice techniques turning verified facts into a strong narrative, and culminate in a writing assignment which students will want to keep in their portfolio.

Course Overview

Works of fiction get all the glory for beautiful writing, and rightfully so; their authors make beautiful writing a point of pride. Too many non-fiction books, articles, essays, papers, blogs, & co. miss the opportunity to provide the reader with a satisfying read as the means to convey information. No more. Take a stand by taking this class.

Course Learning Outcomes

This course has three main outcomes: 1) deeply explore the selected non-fiction writing of several genre to learn how to reverse engineer good writing; 2) students select one additional writing of their choice to reverse engineer and present the results to the class; 3) students write a paper to suit their needs based on the learned patterns, templates, rhetorical devices, word choice, syntax, & co.

    • Identify rhetorical devices in writing

    • Identify lexical choices in writing

    • Practice coordinate and suspensive sentences

    • Create writing template collection