The Becoming a Better Writer Workshop: Using the Five Senses to Improve Descriptive Writing

My latest Skillshare course The Becoming a Better Writer Workshop: Using the Five Senses to Improve Descriptive Writing is intended to help aspiring writers wake up what is sometimes called the writer’s instinct. When we start considering the world around us as writers, we start to study it and investigate it. We transform our daily routines into adventures for the five senses.

In this course, we will also practice a writing mantra: “show, don’t tell.” We will write our short projects with the reader’s best interests in mind. We want the reader to experience our writing through colorful images, gorgeous scenes, and vivid descriptions.

As you might imagine, this workshop is project-driven. It features six creative writing projects. You may post any of the six projects -- or all of the projects to our Project Gallery complete the course.

The video lessons are intentionally short. I do less talking, so that you can do more writing. There will be times in each video when I will ask you to press the pause button and pick up a pen or pencil or open a word processor and write. Please consider sharing your writing in our Project Gallery.

In the spirit of a traditional writing workshop, this new course will thrive on project submissions and peer feedback. I hope you will consider posting a project or two to our gallery to allow your fellow students to see your great descriptive writing.

In the course videos, I ask you to submit a well-developed paragraph or a short poem for each project. Please know that you are welcome to post longer projects if you feel inspired. Please see some of the submissions we have received so far. They are outstanding!

You may be visiting this course description after taking my first Skillshare course, Writing Without Fear: Using Life Writing to Free the Writer Within You, which is experiencing great success. If you are coming to this course from Writing Without Fear, I hope the writing techniques I shared in that class prove valuable in this workshop.

Why not enroll today? We will have some fun!

• Introduction
• Our Projects
• The Sense of Sight: A Haunted House
• The Sense of Touch: A Stroll along the Ocean
• The Sense of Smell: Lavender Lilacs
• The Sense of Taste: Five Basic Tastes
• The Sense of Hearing: The Sounds of a Scene
• A Multisensory Activity: Starlight Mints & Powerful Adjectives
• Course Conclusion