Want to write like an
award-winning author?

Learn how to create powerful, lyrical sentences like a world-class writer.

Join the Prize-Winning Prose course

For years I dreamed of becoming a writer, but struggled

I had always admired writing that seemed to sing off the page, where the flow of a sentence was just as important as the plot or the characters of the story.

But everything I wrote sounded flat, repetitive, and stale, always paling in comparison to the rich, evocative language used by my favourite authors.

It wasn't until I studied these works closely, learning about all the levels of language – from sound and rhythm through to sentence structure and paragraph cohesion – that my prose started to sing. Since then I have become a published author with a Master's degree in Creative Writing, and my writing has never sounded better.

I want to help you to improve your prose the way that I did, but without having to spend years of your life and enormous sums of money on university courses to get there.

That's why I've developed the Prize-Winning Prose course. The course combines my writing experience, Masters-level study, and research in Literary Stylistics to show you what goes into the most powerful literary writing, and to help you apply this to your own work.

Whether you are writing fiction or creative non-fiction such as memoir, this course will help you develop a striking and unique voice to make readers and literary agents sit up and listen. 

Where writing tuition fails literary authors

Language is our tool, the means through which you as a writer will be able to create powerful art.

But where most writing courses – and instructional videos on YouTube – will focus on aspects of literature like plot and character, they usually avoid talking about how to write great prose itself. The language is missing.

In Prize-Winning Prose, I have developed a multi-level system for refining your sentences.

👉 A great writer needs to consider the sound of each word they choose and how that echoes through a passage.
👉 Next they need sentence structures that reflect the thoughts and movements of the characters.
👉 And they also need to weave those sentences together in paragraphs and beyond, so the reader is taken on a compelling journey.

In Prize-Winning Prose you will learn how critically and commercially successful literary writers use these different layers of language to highly artistic ends, including Booker Prize winners Kazuo Ishiguro and Margaret Atwood, Nobel Prize winners Jon Fosse and Annie Ernaux, Pulitzer Prize winners Toni Morrison and Cormac McCarthy, and many more. 

Then through targeted writing tasks you too will learn how to take a reader beyond the everyday and into rich imaginative realms from riveting action to philosophical contemplation.

Course structure 


Module 1 — What to Look For

We begin by introducing how great writers elevate their language to a literary level. We look at:

  • Using deviation from norms to bring language to the foreground

  • How patterning linguistic elements forms the architecture of powerful prose

  • With tasks that get you started in imitating and reshaping literary examples 


Module 2 — Sound Patterns

Here we explore the creation of patterns through the arrangement of sounds and syllables, looking in particular at:

  • Bold sounds for painting violence and colour

  • Subtle sounds for sculpting elegance and guiding attention

  • Simple rhythms for creating clarity and starkness

  • Complex rhythms for depicting the twists and turns of mind and memory

  • With tasks to get you deconstructing these sound patterns and that guide you in imitating them


Module 3 — Sentence Structure

Next we build up sentence structure from the simple to the complex, looking at:

  • Growing outwards from a simple seed sentence

  • Stringing and nesting clauses together

  • The balance of simplicity and complexity 

  • Using elaborate branches to create dizzyingly complex sentences

  • With tasks that get you examining and reproducing long and intricate sentences 


Module 4 — Paragraphs and Beyond

In the final module we look at how paragraphs hold together and flow one into the next. We examine:

  • Creating smooth movement from sentence to sentence

  • Elaborating on a theme across a paragraph

  • Using topic sentences to introduce a shift in perspective

  • Manipulating time and space across the paragraph break

  • Representing character and theme through paragraph cohesion

 

Learn from contemporary authors

You will learn from artful literature written over the 21st and late 20th centuries, with examples taken from winners of awards like the Nobel, Pulitzer, and Booker Prizes.

Focus on style

Where other courses emphasise plot, character, and scene, here we dig deep into the quality of the sentence itself

At your own pace

I teach you through video lessons that you can take at your own pace, with writing tasks to put the principles into practice (and you can get feedback from me)

BONUS OFFER

For a limited time get a FREE style-focused line edit on up to 5000 words of your writing, along with an optional call to discuss my feedback, normally worth $250.

Transform Your Writing

Join the course today and level up your literary style — with a 30-day money back guarantee

Join the Prize-Winning Prose course