An Elemental Approach to Mastery
The Elements of Writing, developed by Charlie Euchner, offers a unique system for mastering writing in all fields. Based on the latest research on learning and the brain, The Elements of Writing takes the tedium out of writing by tapping into your passions and interests.
The Elements offers a complete library of books; seminars and webinars for businesses, schools, and other organizations; coaching and consulting for organizations and individual writers; and a forthcoming online program.
What makes The Elements of Writing unique? Why does it work for writers in all fields?
The Elements of Writing taps into the innate power of the brain, people’s love of storytelling, and students’ existing stock of knowledge and experience. It offers practical techniques to improve your writing instantly.
Why Does It Work?
You probably will never meet anyone who does not love hearing and telling great stories. That’s why we begin our process by mastering a number of powerful storytelling techniques.
Anyone can learn how to tell great stories. In fact, most of us already have most of the tools. We spend our whole lives telling stories. But The Elements of Writing shows you the skills you don’t have—and how to “connect the dots” of all your skills. Here’s the really good news: Once you master storytelling, learning all the other skills of writing comes easily. Why? Because storytelling offers a template—a deep structure—for all the challenges of writing.
The challenges of writing that exasperate most people—constructing good sentences and paragraphs, editing messy drafts, developing a strong analytic framework, deploying evidence, and more—now come much more easily.
Mastering simple, intuitive skills
All too often, writing programs overwhelm learners with rules and abstract reasoning. Rather than demonstrating simple ideas, these programs teach a disconnected batch of techniques that seem random and even pointless.
At The Elements of Writing, we understand that every skill needs to be simple and intuitive. If the learner doesn’t immediately grasp the logic of the skill, she or he is not likely to learn it and apply it. We have scoured a vast literature on the brain, learning, and communications. We have also “reverse-engineered” hundreds of pieces of writing—from old classics to contemporary works—to identify the specific strategies that writers use.
The result? An inventory of 89 simple, intuitive “elements” of writing. Anyone can learn these skills in a matter of minutes. Anyone can apply these skills right away. And anyone can understand why the skill makes sense.
Practical applications
Learning occurs when you use knowledge. You can’t learn to swim by reading a book about swimming. You can’t learn to play the violin by watching a video. You can’t learn to perform surgery by passing a test. You learn by doing.
That’s why The Elements of Writing offers a dozen practical exercises for applying all the skills of writing—right away. The moment you walk away from an Elements of Writing seminar, you can apply your new skills to projects you are already working on. Even if you only write emails, you can apply The Elements of Writing instantly. We also offer practical tricks to check on your progress … right away.
These tricks are simple and even fun. They don’t overload your brain, as do many learning systems. Because we understand both the brain’s powers and limits, we have been able to devise strategies to “keep it simple” and “keep it real.”
Deliberate practice
Have you heard of “deliberate practice”? How about “myelenation”?
As Dan Coyle writes in The Talent Code, people master skills by focusing intently on the thoughts and actions they need to perform skills well. With deliberate practice, people can literally rewire the brain to perform actions automatically.
When you focus on a particular action, you strengthen the electrical signals that send messages in the brain. A fatty substance called myelin coats the neural pathways, the way rubber coats electrical wires. By repeating correct actions, over and over, the brain’s messages transmit faster and more accurately. It becomes automatic.
At The Elements of Writing, we show you how to master writing by breaking the process into pieces that you can burn into your brain.
All too often, writers attempt to do dozens of things at a time. That’s only natural. After all, the process of writing brings together countless ideas using a number of skills and conventions. The problem is that writers lose focus and burn out. They wander away from their subject or make technical mistakes.
Immersion so you connect the dots right away
Quick question: How would you rather watch a movie—by looking at the frames, one by one, or by seeing them all come together, 24 frames per second?
Of course, you want to the frames come fast enough to make sense of the action. The same logic works with The Elements of Writing’s immersion strategy. All too often educational programs break apart all the skills you need to achieve mastery. The repertoire gets so fragmented, you have a hard time understanding how to “connect the dots.”
The Elements of Writing is different. We know that you come into the seminar with a bunch of powerful skills. We help to add to your repertoire and how to combine these skills.
By the end of the program, you not only master a complete repertoire but also how to orchestrate them.