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.
Next Wordcraft Catalyst: Mar - Apr, 2027
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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 for the six weeks of the course, you’ll receive an email with a link to the Wordcraft Catalyst module 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 4: 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 experiments.
Live sessions: Gather with writers from around the globe for Writing Masterclasses and Writing Clinics - live sessions based around the Wordcraft Catalyst themes. Check our guest calendar for the dates and times of these sessions.
Meet your facilitator
Greetings! I’m Helen Sword — a scholar, poet, teacher, and the author of six 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 additional time if you plan to attend the Live sessions. Needless to say, the more time you put into the course, the more you will get out of it!
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Check our Calendar to find the dates and times of Helen’s Writing Masterclasses and Writing Clinics based around the Wordcraft Catalyst themes. Catalyst participants are also invited to join our monthly Community Writing sessions.
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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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Once you’ve enrolled in the Wordcraft Catalyst, you’ll have lifetime access to the course materials, so you can catch up on any of the modules you’ve missed.
Former participants are warmly invited to re-do the live course each year. Many of our alumni return year after year!
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WriteSPACE members get a 10% enrollment discount, and WS Studio members and Catalyst alumni save 20%. To qualify for the WriteSPACE discount, please note that you must commit to maintaining your paid membership throughout the duration of the Catalyst course.
A limited number of scholarships are available (conditions apply). Most of our scholarships go to members of our WriteSPACE community who have demonstrated a clear dedication to improving their writing but are unable to access institutional funding for this course.
Residents of New Zealand and Australia may apply for discounted pricing via our Enabling Better Writers Australasia program, whereby the fee is charged in the local currency: AUD or NZD+GST.
If you would like to be considered for a scholarship or regional discount, please contact us.
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Helen will facilitate group discussions as part of the Live Writing Studio, and she will monitor the Comments portal throughout the course. 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.
Shape up your sentences!
Next Wordcraft Catalyst: Mar - Apr, 2027
We’d love to see you there!
Please see our Terms & Conditions here.
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Image credit: Paper collage by Helen Sword