
Improve Your Career In Writing - study this advance Freelance Writing course by distance learning.
This course has recently been revised and is now available online! Expand your knowledge of freelance writing and sharpen your writing and inject commercial appeal... in the comfort of your own home!
- Gain independence as a freelance writer
- Write feature articles
- Get more confidence in your writing
- Get freelance jobs
This is a course for people who already have skills in freelance writing, who have perhaps had some minor work published, but need to improve their overall technique and develop a more "commercial" approach to their work. If you already have skills in freelance writing and have perhaps had some minor work published, this course will help you take your writing to the next level. Improve your overall technique and develop a more "efficient" approach to your work.
This course is suitable for anyone who wants to improve their writing skills, both professionally or for their own interest. For example -
- Bloggers
- Writers
- Content Editors
- Copywriters
- Web development writers
- Marketing writers
- Article writers
- Teachers
Learn about the key elements of different genres of writing, this course covers the main different areas of freelance writing.
Lesson Structure
There are 7 lessons in this course:
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Introduction
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Writing Themes.
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Sentence Structure.
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Summary Skills.
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Theme Development (e.g. Deductive, Inductive, Classic, Chronological, Descriptive, Analogy, Cause & Effect, Classification, Definition Analysis, Comparison & Contrast, Flashback etc.).
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Writing a Regular Column.
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Newsletters.
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News Columns.
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Criticism Journalism (e.g. Theatre Critics, Book Reviews, Film Reviews, etc.).
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Educational Writing
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Interviewing Skills.
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Illustrating an article.
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Putting it all together.
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Scientific Writing
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Technical Writing.
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Statistics.
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Writing a Biographical Story
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Developing a draft plan.
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Research.
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Writing the final manuscript.
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Writing a News Article
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Analysing a news article.
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Writing and illustrating a sporting event.
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Fiction Writing
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Category Writing.
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Mainstream Writing.
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Characteristics of good fiction (i.e. A strong plot;. A hero or heroine; Obvious motivation; Plenty of action; A colourful background).
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Forming and developing an idea.
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Other Writing
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TV & Radio Scripts.
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Science Fiction.
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Conducting a Survey.
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Developing a Story.
Each lesson culminates in an assignment which is submitted to the school, marked by the school's tutors and returned to you with any relevant suggestions, comments, and if necessary, extra reading.
Aims
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Review basic writing skills and discuss theme development.
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Develop skills in writing a regular magazine or newspaper column.
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Describe the key elements of educational writing.
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Describe the key elements of technical writing.
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Develop skills in interviewing and preparing a biographical story.
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Develop skills in writing news articles.
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Develop skills in writing fiction.
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Describe other writing styles including script writing.
Student Testimonial
"This
Freelance Writing course has been one of my most favourite due to the
ease and flexibility of correspondence. I have found the staff always
helpful and friendly. I appreciated that there were no deadlines and I
could complete the work involved when I had time."
Janine, Freelance Writing
Writing Columns
- Your writing must be succinct. Space is limited, and production costs are generally expensive so don’t waste valuable column space on wordy and irrelevant writing.
- Your column must be informative. Keep to the main points and make sure your writing is free of ambiguity. Check the facts are correct – this is especially important in ‘What’s on’ columns (always check addresses, dates, names etc. are correct).
- Your writing should be in a style appropriate for the publication. A chatty and entertaining column will be appropriate in some cases, but not others.
- Always write to the highest standard possible, no matter who the target readers are. Sloppy spelling and poor grammar are always unacceptable.
Writing Critical Reviews
Newspapers and magazines employ journalists to write critical reviews of all sorts of things, from artistic subjects (e.g. reviewing film, theatre or exhibitions) to reviewing products or events.
Reviews can be approached in two different ways:
a) Looking outwards – telling readers what they might expect.
b) Looking inwards – judging the subject against the critic's own standards of excellence.
If the aim is to tell the readers what to expect, the journalist must have a very good understanding of who the readers are. It becomes important to study readership demographics and to be sympathetic towards comments from readers, i.e. in letters or reader surveys, and towards those who deal with readers more closely, i.e. talk with newsagents who sell the publications.
If the aim is to produce a critical review, it is important that the standards which will be judged against are based on very sound reasoning. Failure to do this will leave the critic exposed to being criticised themselves.
- Consider whether the criticism is subjective or objective.
- Consider whether the criticism is based upon set guidelines or not.
It can be valuable to adopt a standard formula which can be applied when making a critical judgement. Perhaps you might break the judgement down into a series of characteristics, assigning different numbers of points for each characteristic: this is only one way of making the judgement (perhaps) fairer.
Would you like to work as a freelance writer? Or improve your existing journalism skills? This is the course for you!
Any questions? Our writing tutors are more than happy to help and advise you - use our FREE COURSE COUNSELLING SERVICE.