The Paideia School in Atlanta, Georgia, runs an innovative program to help their middle school students become better writers, with an added bonus: it also helps them become better people. How? By focusing their writing on personal essays. One of the teachers who helps shape this course is Andrea Sarvady, a talented educator with a unique background -- she's also an accomplished author and trained therapist. We spoke to Andrea about the program:  Continue reading...

I recently spent an entire Saturday listening to a bunch of 16-year-olds argue with each other. And then I graded their efforts to help determine a winner. Sounds odd, I know. But that's the world of competitive debating. And what works for these high schoolers on the podium, can work for your writing, too.

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Drama, comedy or something in between? If you want to get your act(s) together, check out these books on playwriting:

I Ain't Sorry for Nothin' I Done: August Wilson's Process of Playwriting by Joan Herrington

Playwriting: From Formula to Form by William M. Downs

Naked Playwriting: The Art, The Craft, And The Life Laid Bare by William Missouri Downs and Robin U. Russin

The Elements of Playwriting by Louis E. Catron

Playwriting In Process: Thinking and Working Theatrically by Michael Wright

Playwriting: The Structure of Action, Revised and Expanded Edition by Sam Smiley and Norman Bert

When you write full time, it's very easy to fall into bad habits without realizing it's happening. Like the clutter in your house, which eventually becomes "invisible," you don't see the mistakes and glitches in your own copy.

So how do you improve your writing? Here are my five proven methods -- all of which I use regularly.

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Building Rapport is a blog that advocates plain language and clear writing -- and offers concrete advice on how to get there. It recently featured an entry called, simply, "Simplify," where it lists a half-dozen or so ways to get to the heart of whatever matter you're writing about. Read the post here.

There's a great post on Creating Passionate Users about user delight and the guy from the train phenomenon. My old French teacher, who was also a poet, used to come out with things like: "and now Matthew will give us his translation of this paragraph with acrobats and high kicking." I don't know where he got it from but the fireworks of his everyday speech in the classroom are still with me 20 years later. Anyhow, here are my top tips for writers to create the same kind of surprise and delight:

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