Become an exceptional writer

Ex-Wall Street Journal editor Shani Raja teaches you how to write with the style and flair of top journalists.

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Secret Sauce of Great Writing

 

PREVIEW COURSE

Does any of this sound familiar?

My writing is longwinded.
My writing is unclear.
My writing doesn’t flow well.
My writing is boring.

Then your poor writing could be holding you back

Why do some people race up the career ladder and punch through glass ceilings while others languish near the bottom? Why do some bloggers attract thousands of followers while others go largely unnoticed? Often it’s because they are better writers, which gives them a huge competitive advantage in the job market, in business and online.

Now, imagine you could write exceptionally well

What if you could write with the style and flair of journalists at The Economist, The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal? These elite professionals don’t just craft crisp, clear sentences—they dazzle. What’s more, their exquisite writing skills help them to convey authority, credibility, intelligence, sophistication and creativity.

The rewards of being an exceptional writer

Propel your career

Sell more effectively

Work in PR or marketing

Start your own blog

Publish a book

Write for a living

Meet Shani Raja

Shani Raja has written for The Economist, reported for Bloomberg News and edited for The Wall Street Journalwhere he also trained dozens of reporters and editors. Today, Shani teaches more than a million people how the best writers in journalism do their magic. 

Improve Your Writing With Shani’s 9-Step Editing Guide (PDF).

More than 1 million students, tens of thousands of 5-star reviews

The most complete writing course I have taken. I’m really blowing away the competition at work.

EDE OMOKHUDUSTUDENT

Even my degree did not teach me to write at these levels.

YAP WAN XIANGSTUDENT

Cuts through everything to the heart of excellent writing.

MICHELLE BULLASSTUDENT

Takes a genius to make the complex and difficult look exceedingly easy.

GLORIA LINDA ABELLSTUDENT

Exactly what I needed to clear up all confusions I had about punctuation.

NIKKI BRUSOESTUDENT

These courses will teach you to write like top journalists

Secret Sauce of Great Writing

How to Make Your Writing Sparkle

(FREE)

Discover the four basic ingredients of good writing.

Find out more

Writing

With Flair

How to Become an Exceptional Writer

$129 $49

Learn how top journalists make their writing simple, clear, elegant and evocative.

Find out more

Ninja

Writing

The Four Levels of Writing Mastery

$129 $49

Refine your writing further with these little-known ninja tactics.

Find out more

Editing

Mastery

How to Edit Writing to Perfection

$129 $49

Edit your own and others’ writing to perfection.

Find out more

Punctuation

Mastery

How to Use Punctuation Like a Pro

$129 $49

Use commas, dashes and semicolons with exquisite style.

Find out more

A Crash Course

in Writing Well

Write With More Style, Flair and Impact

$129 $49

Discover the shortcut to writing with more style, flair and impact.

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The Elite Writer's Deluxe Package

All 6 courses for $199

Unlock 20+ hours of high-quality training protected by a 30-day money-back guarantee. This premium collection of Shani Raja’s online courses gives you all the tools you need to become an elite writer. Find out more

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Wall Street Journal writers on Shani's classes:

You were by far the toughest editor I've ever had in my 20 years of working as a journalist, to the point that I sometimes felt like throwing all my writing against the wall. It's been a great learning experience watching you sift through the words and uncover the hidden rifts in a narrative, shatter a structure, and scramble it back together in a more logical fashion. Thank you for sharpening my eye and for helping me become a better journalist.

Vera SprothenWSJ reporter

What more can I say about your wonderful lessons and tips? Simply awesome and awakening really. I was desperately looking for some guidance and thank God you came to my rescue. Sure I need more practice but, at least I know how to shape and structure market stories in meaningful/clear ways now.

PVAsia reporter

It was great working with you over the last couple of weeks. This is the first time an editor has taken time to carefully dissect our writing and talk constructively about remodelling dry wire-style coverage into better stories for the Journal. What really helped was understanding the need for clarity, simplicity and storytelling, the importance of identifying “quirky” aspects of our beats, and making a strong pitch for a story. Looking forward to working on more stories with you.

EYAsia reporter

As a newcomer to the Journal, I’ve spent the first few months figuring out what does and doesn’t work as a WSJ story. I was probably about 80% of the way there, but the training has helped me, more or less, to complete that process. Specifically, the value was in having the essence of what turns a decent story into a great story properly spelled out. Things like having well-crafted ledes that marry news and perspective; where possible using human characters to narrate the story; dramatising seemingly dry material; zooming in and out between granular news detail and wider context. These techniques maybe weren’t new to me, but I feel I’ve got a much firmer grasp of them now that they’ve been properly articulated. I think I can bring more refinement and flair to my stories having done the training.

TMAsia reporter

It was really the most useful of all the training I’ve received at this company! While the group session was helpful to understand the ideas, it’s most useful to actually work together in crafting a lede. It was a great learning experience when you went through my story and told me where my lede was weak and which paragraphs I could leave out. Your advice on how to give interviews to make the interviewee speak in plain language and beyond the jargon was also very good. Overall, your lessons were a really good exercise to reflect on my writing habits. To be honest, I’d never felt so embarrassed reading my own writing!

KIAsia reporter

The training has helped me to focus better on getting the lead paragraph right by asking myself questions like, "what are the facts," and "who does it affect," "what’s the context," and "why should it concern the potential reader." I applied it to this article I wrote last week, and I’m pleased it was published with fewer major edits than my previous work.

ECAsia reporter

I found your input quite interesting and helpful, especially our discussion about the importance of having an overarching narrative to shape stories, drive questions and push the file forward. I had never really thought about it quite in those terms. I was also encouraged to hear that as an organisation we are aspiring to a much higher, more consistent standard of writing and editing than has been the case in the past.

PBAsia editor

I really appreciated your feedback on my Aheds. The most important part of it was having someone really push me to think through exactly what the argument I was trying to make in my story is. It's hard work, and takes a lot of brain power. But I'm glad we did it, because it will make my stories a lot better.

JCAsia reporter

I found editing stories with you very helpful. It was a great introduction to some new editing tools and made it easier to understand a lot of the principles you were talking about.

ASAsia editor