Precise Writing with Impact

Your writing will have impact if it offers your reader value. Writing that’s clear and well organised will have no impact if the reader can see no value in it. Too often, we write in order to work out what we think; but the writing patterns that emerge are usually of no use to the reader. We need to reorganise our writing to fit our reader’s needs. Writing with Impact will show you how to do that.

Key Training Features

Who Can Attend?

Learning Outcomes

Key Training Features

• Appreciate the importance of reader-centred writing.
• Understand what specific readers need.
• Learn how to give your writing reader-centred value.
• Recognise the structural qualities that give your writing value.
• Collate a toolbox of effective writing structures.

Who Can Attend?

This workshop will help anyone who writes at work. You’ll learn how to analyse your reader’s needs – from members of the public, through technical experts to ministerial staff. You’ll explore and exercise writing structures that will create value for your reader – whoever they are. You’ll also be able to apply those structural tools to others’ writing and help them write with greater impact.

Pre- Requisites:

Prior to the workshop, you’ll be asked to submit to the trainer between one and three samples of your writing for review, analysis, development and feedback. Each sample should be between 300 and 1000 words long, and ideally a complete document or section of a document. You can submit material of any kind, but it should be typical of the writing you do at work.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the course, you will know how to:

• evaluate the value to the reader of a piece of writing
• give your writing a clearer purpose
• analyse your reader’s needs and priorities
• create writing structures to support clear messages
• explain, persuade and narrate more clearly
• manage detailed information to create greater value for your reader
• use a toolkit of structural techniques in your current role

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  Who will run the course?

Alan Barker is an associate of the Civil Service College. He is a preferred supplier of training and coaching at the Greater London Authority. For over 25 years, Alan has worked as a training consultant and coach, specializing in creativity and communication skills.  He is also a published author of over 25 books. He works regularly with the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW), the British Science Association, the European Stability Mechanism (in Luxembourg) and, in the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency.  He has produced Storytelling for Scientists, a webinar and ebook sponsored by 3M.

Alan is also Affiliate Professional of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and a member of the European Speechwriter Network. His book, Improve Your Communication Skills, is published by Kogan Page, who will also be publishing his new book, The Complete Copywriter, in 2025.