THOU SHALT: TEN COMMANDMENTS OF GOOD WRITING

Thou Shalt:
Ten Commandments of Good Writing

By Charles Euchner
Creator
The Writing Code

Copyright © 2011. All Rights Reserved.

For reprint rights, contact
charlie@thewritingcodesystem.com.
Also visit www.thewritingcodesystem.com.

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The Writing Revolution

A daily New York Times contains more information than the average seventeenth-
century person would encounter in a lifetime. The average corporate professional sends
and receives more than 200 email messages a day. High school graduates in 2000 were
exposed to more information in a year than their grandparents encountered in their entire
lifetimes.
The implications of this explosion are threefold:
 Everyone: More people write and read more stuff than ever before. So now
everyone needs to learn at least the basics of writing.
 Everywhere: Information is essentially free and instant—therefore has no
special value.
 Impact: To matter, ideas have to stand out—in timing, interpretation, or
uniqueness.
So: Writing matters.
Too often, gems of insight get lost because of flat writing—and overly laborious
processes of writing and editing. To thrive in the Information Age, people in all fields
need to write sparkling prose. Otherwise, you get lost in the sea of data.
How to respond? Go back to the future—and forward again.

Return to the Past . . . and Back to the Future

To begin, we need to return to our roots as a species. We evolved as a storytelling
species; it’s how we make sense of the world. But modern writers spend less and less
time with stories and visuals—and more time on data and abstract ideas.
Storytelling isn’t so hard. Most people can learn a couple dozen basic skills in a day,
and then use them right away.
By learning storytelling, we easily master more abstract skills of writing. Storytelling,
in fact, has the same basic format as construction (building great sentences and
paragraphs, grammar and punctuation, style and editing) and analysis (asking powerful
questions, assessing variables, finding the right context).
So much of the answer, then, lies in the ancient arts of storytelling. But if we move
back to our primeval past to understand storytelling, we need to move “back to the
future” to understand what the latest research on neuroscience tells us about
communication and creativity.
Research on the brain shows how people create, share, and consume ideas. We can
use insights from this research to connect with manage our own writing process and
connect better with the reader.
Readers, overwhelmed by the information glut, need to get ideas in simple, digestible
formats. Brain research shows our conscious brains—what we use to perform tasks, all
day long—pales in its power next to the unconscious. In fact, the conscious brain cannot
handle more than two or three tasks at a time. So, no matter what you write, break it
down into simple pieces. Whether it’s analysis of stock offerings or a story of
redemption, readers need ideas in small packets, one after another. They need to see
connections between those ideas … to visualize and experience action … and to
experience even abstract ideas dramatically. That does not mean writers should pander to

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the lowest common denominator. It doesn’t mean we should be simplistic. It means,

rather, that we should follow the wisdom of Albert Einstein: “Make everything as simple
as possible, but not simpler.”
To connect with the reader, writers need to master ninety-six skills, each one simple
and intuitive. These skills enable writers to manage the ever-shifting demands of the craft
without getting overwhelmed—and with a clear sense of the audience and vehicles for
conveying ideas.

From Storytelling to Construction to Analysis

By embracing our innate powers as storytellers and using the insights of modern
science, anyone can learn to write well, write fast, right away.
Any organization can create a new culture of writing that transforms the way people
explore and explain ideas, from top to bottom.
The Writing Code operates on a three-part system. Part 1 is storytelling. Part 2 is
construction. Part 3 is analysis.
Storytelling: Stories offer the most concrete, physical, tangible, sensual aspect of
writing. Everyone loves stories. We love hearing and telling them. Stories give meaning
to life. They make everything else possible—memory and history, imagination and
creation, individual identity and group action.
But if storytelling is natural, it still requires teaching. The Writing
Code’s storytelling skills offer a template for other writing
challenges. Once you can build a good story, you can learn other
skills easily.
The Writing Code teaches you everything you need to know
about storytelling — how to develop powerful characters, show “the
world of the story,” develop conflict, show change over the
“narrative arc.” These skills, it turns out, are not just useful for professional writers.
Storytelling offers real value for business strategy, too. When you learn the skills of
narrative, you dramatically expand your capacity in all fields.
Construction: After mastering storytelling, we have a template for learning all
the technical skills of writing—building great sentences and paragraphs, using the right
words, giving your writing style, getting grammar right, and editing. The same tricks you
learn as a storyteller make it easy to master these techniques.
Consider one example: Start strong, finish strong. For every level of writing — the
sentence, paragraph, section or chapter, article or report or book —
make sure you start with something important and memorable.
Make sure, also, to close strongly, to leave a lasting impression with
the reader. And then pack all the less exciting stuff — attributions,
necessary but mundane details — in the middle.
You would be amazed how much this simple “trick of the trade”
improves your writing. But we have lots more to offer you. With
our story-based approach, we make it easy for you to master all the skills of writing.
Analysis: Finally, we move into the abstract world of analysis. As analysts—of
business, science, politics, sports, the arts, whatever—we tell stories about the qualities of
things. Analysis is really just a more abstract form of storytelling. Rather than describing
particular things, events, and outcomes, we describe how larger categories of things,

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events, and outcomes.

Rather than exploring Tom Brady’s powerful right arm, for example, we might talk
about the biomechanics of movement. Or we might explore whole
categories of quarterbacks or football players or athletes. Take another
example. Rather than exploring Jack Welch’s management of General
Electric, we talk about the characteristics of corporate leaders in times
of crisis . . . or even broader categories of leadership.
Under The Writing Code, you learn the many skills you need for
the three-step move from storytelling to technique to analysis. Because the Writing Code
begins by creating a strong foundation, it teaches faster—and more completely—than any
other writing system.

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The Ten Commandments of Writing

Here are just ten of the skills you can master—or remind yourself—to improve tyour
writing and editing right now.

1. Find the Story in Everything You Write.

Man is a storytelling creature. We evolved to tell stories.
From 30,000 to 100,000 years ago, out great ancestors began telling stories. It
happened around the time that the size of clans expanded and those clans began to
wander longer distances and then come home again.
Sitting by fires or in caves, by streams or in mountains, our ancestors told tales that
helped them understand the day-to-day perils and potential of life. They warned each
other of predators (“Bear in woods!”), discussed the weather (“So hot!”), angled for
advantage with potential mates (“Hubba, hubba”), and taught their young with stories
(“In my day ...”)
More than anything else, the power to tell, hear, and remember stories separates
humans from other species. Other species eat, find shelter, reproduce, and make things.
Some species—like apes, chimps, whales, and birds—use language. Others—including
chimps, birds, dolphins, and elephants—use tools. But as far as we know, only humans
tell stories.
Stories take us away from the here and now, move us emotionally and intellectually,
and help us understand and organize our lives. “We experience our lives in narrative
form,” the novelist Jonathan Franzen once remarked. “If you can’t order things in a
narrative fashion, your life is a chaotic bowl of mush.”
Start with characters. Nothing excites our brains more
than images of our own kind. We’re a narcissistic species, so
find or create characters with strong qualities. Make sure you
know the characters’ deepest desires. Present these characters
in all their complexity—avoid cardboard heroes and
villains—and show how they deal with conflict and adversity.
Put those characters on a journey. Put them into action.
Show how they interact with different people and situations.
Show them fretting and fighting, arguing and negotiating,
holding and helping, guessing and calculating, wondering and
deciding. Emphasize the word show.
Put these scenes in a setting that helps tell the story. To
really bring your story to life, find the details about your settings that help explain the
characters and action. How you depict places—homes, offices, schools, parks, cars,
camps, churches, prisons, streets, and parking lots—will set the parameters for your
characters and stories.

2. Give the Reader Action and Emotion.

We live in the Age of Science.
Science has made all kinds of wondrous things—cities and skyscrapers, cars and
rockets, machines from digital pens to and the energy to fuel them, medical miracles and

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yottabytes of data. Those advances come from a vast accumulation of data, equations,
rules and laws, and analyses. It’s all very abstract.
Which is great. But . . .
To really connect with readers—to get and keep their
attention, to explain complex ideas—you need to show action
and tap into emotions.
Animals—including the human animal—are programmed
to respond to movement, sounds, touches, smells, and changes
in the environment. Action arouses our attention. Your job as
a writer, quite simply, is to attract and keep people’s attention.
So show action.
What do I mean by action? It could be anything from a
wink or nod to a riot.
A scientist named Paul Eckman has developed a whole system to interpreting
people’s “microexpressions.” As the name suggests, microexpressions are small and
often last for just fractions of a second. A psychologist named John Gottman can assess
the likelihood of marital bliss in couples by watching their microexpressions for five
minutes.
So, you see, you don’t need a lot of explosions or chase scenes to show action.
So what makes someone’s wink or nod “action”? And does that mean everything that
moves, great and small, is action?
Action must matter. Somehow, to count as action, something has to change. Suppose
I sit in a crowded theater and nod when a speaker says something. If our story focuses on
the speaker, my nod doesn’t change anything. It’s not meaningful; it’s not, therefore,
action. But suppose the story focuses on me and my struggle to understand an idea. When
I hear the speaker’s words, I nod. That nod constitutes action if it changes my story.
What about emotion? Do stories really need emotion?
Absolutely. Emotions don’t just help people stay engaged. They also help people to
understand. In fact, brain researchers have found that rational thought is not possible
without emotion. The intellectual development of many autistics, to take one example,
gets stuck when they cannot develop or express feelings.
Emotion compresses ideas. If I feel emotional when I visit my old primary school, it’s
because that image distills all kinds of ideas—about my family, friends, childhood,
hopes, fears, successes, failures, losses, and more. When I need to understand something
about education, my emotions help me to organize my ideas.

3. Write Great Sentences, Always.

Someone once asked Ernest Hemingway what he does when he gets writer’s block.
His answer: I write one true sentence. However long it takes, Hemingway said, he
struggles to get just the right words to express a thought. He thinks about who or what
he’s writing about—the subject. He asks himself what they’re doing—the action. And he
considers who or what this action is acting upon—the object.
Here’s how Hemingway’s character explains the process in his A Moveable Feast:

I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, “Do not worry. You have
always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true
sentence. Write the truest sentence you know.” So finally I would write one true

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sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true
sentence that I knew or had seen or had heard someone say. If I started to write
elaborately, or like someone introduci ng or presenting something, I found that I could
cut the scrollwork or ornament out and throw it away and start with the first true simple
declarative sentence I had written.

Once you write “one true sentence,” it’s easier to write another
sentence . . . then another . . . then another. Before long, you’re
writing paragraphs, then pages. No more writer’s block.
So how do you write one true sentence? I just told you. Write a
subject . . . then a verb . . . then an object.
Nothing matters unless you write great sentences. If you can write
great sentences, over and over, you will become a good writer. If you
don’t, forget it.
Too many writing teachers fail to teach their students how to write
good sentences. They get so caught up with the five-paragraph
structure and “compare and contrast” and quotations that they don’t
explain how to build a great sentence.
So even professional writers write horrible, vague, meandering, inexact, and boring
sentences.
Focus on writing simple, sturdy sentences. You can write some elaborate sentences,
too. But first, write simple and “true” sentences. Then you can do anything as a writer.

4. Deliver Only One Idea Per Paragraph.

The great thing about writing is that it’s a creative process. You discover ideas as you
write. Sometimes you discover ideas that you didn’t even know you had. As you
consciously write about a topic, the subconscious feeds all kinds of surprising ideas.
That’s also the difficult thing about writing. Let me explain.
If the sentence is the most important unit of writing—and it is, as we see in
Commandment 3—then the paragraph is the second most important unit. And the
amazing creativity of writers can make for some awful paragraphs.
When you write, one idea sparks another . . . then another . . .
then another.
But if you express every idea, as they occur to you, you will
never develop the first idea—the one you intended to discuss in the
first place. So your paragraphs become collections of undeveloped
ideas.
I like to think of paragraphs as “idea buckets.” State and
develop one idea in every paragraph. Put one thing in every bucket.
Don’t ever develop more than one thought in a paragraph.
Every time you write, label every idea—in bold face type or
with marginal notes. Whenever you see two or more ideas in a paragraph, break up the
paragraph into as many pieces.
You’ll notice that you never developed the ideas you stated. So go back, develop
every idea—complete every paragraph. Then end the paragraph, and get to work on the
next idea of the next paragraph.
As it says on the shampoo bottle: Rinse, repeat.

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5. Use Simple Words.

In order to facilitate the cognitive process and to eradicate any potentiality of
miscommunication, it is imperative that each and every writer employ solely the most
efficacious and uncompounded locutions in each and every one of his or her
compositions.
Got it? No? Let’s try again.
Use simple words to prevent misunderstandings.
The mortal enemy of good writing is pretension. Teachers,
students, politicians, CEOs, op-ed writers all have egos. They want
to sound “smart.” So they use big words to convey the vastness of
their vocabularies.
But remember this: You should never write to show off your
vocabulary. You should write to convey ideas. Period.
Always look for the smallest, simplest word to convey ideas.
That doesn’t mean using a steady parade of monosyllabic words.
You need to find the word that bests expresses your ideas, whether
they’re short or long. So use a long word if it’s the best word. But always err on the side
of short words.

6. Break Down Complex Ideas.

Sometimes, you have no choice but to use complex words. The world, after all, is a
complex place. You want to be simple, not simplistic.
When you describe complex ideas—the M-C-M sequence in market exchange, the
controversies surrounding global warming, the sequence of actions to program software,
the lighting and shutter speed of a camera, the process of fission—break them down into
manageable chunks.
Every complex thing really consists of many simple things. Most readers, when
guided through a sequence of simple pieces, can understand those complex wholes.
John McPhee, perhaps the greatest nonfiction writer of our time, almost never uses a
word fancier than he needs. To create color and movement, he
uses ordinary words precisely. To explain a complex concept, he
also uses ordinary words. You can open any McPhee work and
pick a random paragraph to see just how well ordinary words
work. I did just that with The Curve of Binding Energy, his book
about the dangers of nuclear proliferation.

The material that destroyed Hiroshima was uranium-235. Some

sixty kilograms of it were in the bomb. The uranium was in metallic form. Sixty
kilograms, a hundred and thirty-two pounds, of uranium would be about the size of a
football, for the metal is compact—almost twice as dense as lead. As a cube, sixty
kilograms would be slightly less than six inches on a side. U-235 is radioactive, but not
intensely so. You could hold some in your lap for a month and not suffer any effects.
Like any heavy metal, it is poisonous if you eat enough of it. Its critical mass—the point
at which it will start a chain reaction until a great deal of energy has been released—
varies widely, depending on what surrounds it.

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On and on McPhee goes, describing the most complex topics with simple little words.
Occasionally he must introduce a technical idea-like U-235, or critical mass—but he
always gives us a simple explanation.
Patience allows McPhee to get small words to do big jobs. He understands that the
best way to explain something is not to pile on ideas like men in a rugby scrum, but to
spread them out like wedding guests in a receiving line. Simple words and sentences,
presented one at a time in the right sequence, make it possible to explain even the most
complex ideas.

7. Develop Style By Mastering the Basics.

Years ago took a couple of teenagers to a vintage baseball game. Vintage baseball
offers an antidote to the modern game. The game is slow and ordered by manners that
would please Amy Vanderbilt. But it’s also brisk. Players spend no time strutting or
preening. They come to play.
At that game, I met the man whose life has embraced both rebellion and nostalgia.
Jim Bouton rocked organized baseball in 1970 when he published Ball Four, an expose of
the outrageous and puerile exploits of big-leaguers. But
as he aged, Bouton embraced the game’s traditions. Over
his life, his style shifted from breaking the rules to
honoring the game.
I introduced Bouton to my charges and asked:
What’s the best way to develop the best pitching motion?
“Long tossing,” he said.
Long tossing is just what it sounds like—throwing
the baseball over long distances, as much as 200 or 250
feet. To throw long, you can’t worry about what you look like. You have to lean back and
then rock forward, slinging your arm forward like a slow-moving whip. Most people
long-toss the same way, with just small variations for their size and strength. But long
tossing offers nothing fancy.
After tossing from the longest distances, you move closer and closer to your partner.
When you get to the standard pitching distance—60 feet, six inches—you are piotching
with your natural style.
And so it goes with writing.
Style in writing comes only after the long tossing of building great sentences,
paragraphs, and longer passages. When you do all the little things right, your style slowly
emerges. You develop tendencies—toward shorter or longer sentences, greater or lesser
use of commas and semicolons, formal or vernacular speech, more or less use of
quotations and statistics and other forms of explaining.
As you master the basics, pay attention to the maneuvers of different stylists. When I
was first writing for publication—in a small weekly newspaper on Long Island—I
idolized Red Smith, a columnist for The New York Times. I also admired Hemingway and
Fitzgerald, read biographies, and pushed myself to understand some philosophy. I noted
the maneuvers of these writers and occasionally copied them. Which is fine.
Mostly, though, you will discover that your truest style comes from the voice you find
mastering the simple tricks and maneuvers of language.

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8. Edit Using the ‘Hide and Seek’ Method.

Your brain is the most powerful—and the laziest—part of your body. The
subconscious part of the brain holds a vast storehouse of ideas, feelings, impulses, and
automatic systems. The conscious part of the brain manages deliberate decisionmaking.
But the conscious can only handle one or two or, at most, only three things at a time.
Therefore, when you look for problems—in anything, not just drafts of writing—one
at a time. I call it “Hide and Seek.” You need to track down these errors, one by one,
rather than trying to catch them all at once.
Don’t try to fix everything, sentence by sentence. Your brain will crash and burn.
Instead, look for the common problems of writing, one by one.

1. Start strong: Start by checking if you start every sentence strongly, with a clear
statement of who does what.
2. Finish strong: Then see if you end every sentence with a bang—some kind of point,
question, or image that propels the reader to the next sentence.
3. One idea per paragraph: Then check your paragraphs. Make sure every
paragraph states and develops just one idea. Label the ideas as you go. If you have more
than one idea in a paragraph, take it out. Either delete it or
use it in another paragraph.
4. Action: Then make sure you use action verbs; avoid “to
be” and “to have.”
5. Words: Now look at your other words. Do you use
specific words, so the reader can see, hear, and feel
what’s happening? Do you limit your use of adjectives
and adverbs?
6. Modifiers: Look for sentences that seem to go on
forever. Here’s a trick for that: Look for prepositional
phrases, which modify nouns. I have seen sentences with
a dozen or more prepositional phrases. So what? Here’s what: Every modifier takes you a
step away from the action—and adds to the length of the sentence.
7. Punctuation: Finally, get all the punctuation right. Think of punctuation as a form of
traffic control. Stop with periods, pause with commas, look ahead with colons, merge
with semicolons, warn of uncertain conditions with question marks and exclamation
points.

Step by step, attack the problems in your piece. If you just focus on one issue at a time,
your brain will veer in on mistakes like a heat-seeking missile. And you won’t get pooped
before finishing the job.

9. Think of Analysis as a Form of Storytelling.

S.I. Hayakawa, a linguist who also served as a college president and a U.S. Senator,
used the image of a ladder to explain the range of ideas that people need to use. At the
low rungs, we see lots of detailed information-specific people, places, actions, and
results. At the higher rungs of the ladder, we see abstract ideas—concepts like war,
justice, fairness, and mind.

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He called the “the ladder of abstraction.” And he explained that good communication
requires climbing up and down the ladder, to talk at the appropriate level of specificity or
generality.
I like to thing of it this way. All writing is about storytelling. It’s just that some
stories are on the lower rungs of the ladder—and others are at the higher rungs of the
ladder.
Stories talk about particular people doing particular things in particular places at
particular times, with particular results. So: Dorothy pined for a place “over the
rainbow” after being shooed away by her aunt and uncle
and attacked by an angry woman named Miss Gulch.
Then a tornado came along and . . .
Analysis talks in categories, in generalities—at the
higher runs of the ladder. Rather than talking about
specifics, analysis gathers up whole batches of
information to talk about how things tend to happen. Now
think of Dorothy as just one of countless children.
So: Young people need to belong and feel special.
When adults ignore or scold them, they dream of going
someplace else. Not just Dorothy, but young people
everywhere and all times. Not just Auntie Em and Uncle
Henry and Miss Gulch, but all adults. Not just over the rainbow, but any kind of place far
from the pains of growing up.
Get it? When you tell a story, get particulory*; when you analyze, generalize.

10. Serve Your Audience.

I’ve saved the best for last.
Lots of writers write for themselves. They discuss issues, and arrange their words, for
their own amusement. That’s OK, I suppose. But . . .
To become a real writer, serve others. Your ideas and words matter
only if you connect with the audience. Don’t show off. Don’t get vague
or obscure. Don’t confuse matters. Don’t go on and on. Say something
worthwhile, in a way the reader will understand and appreciate.
So who is your audience? That depends, of course. But here’s how to
think about it.
Your reader is someone like you—intelligent, caring, alert, open to
ideas—but simply has not done the work needed to understand your
topic.
Speak plainly to your readers. They are busy and distracted. They need to know what
you have to tell them. But they will get frustrated and leave—or just miss your point—if
you don’t deliver your ideas clearly and simply.

*
I know, particulory isn’t even a word. But I thought it would make a good mnemonic
device.

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About The Writing Code

The Writing Code, developed by author Charles Euchner, offers seminars for
businesses, schools, and other organizations to transform writing.
Based on the latest research in learning, The Writing Code uses a three-step process –
storytelling, construction, and analysis—to teach all the skills needed to become a
proficient writer.
The Writing Code mixes public speaking, student participation, and video and other
images to “animate” and “choreograph” the process of writing.
In the summer of 2011, Euchner will offer weeklong camps for high school students
seeking to transform their writing with the playful process of The Writing Code.
To learn more, write to Euchner at charlie@thewritingcodesystem.com or call (203)
645-6112. Visit www.thewritingcodesystem.com.

Charles Euchner has a long career as a writer and teacher. A former

journalist—he started his career writing for Education Week—he later taught for the
University of Pennsylvania, St. Mary’s College of Maryland, the College of the Holy
Cross, Northeastern University, the State University of New
York at Purchase, and Yale University.
Euchner has years of experience in urban and regional policy
and planning. He was the founding executive director of the
Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston at Harvard University. He
also served as the coordinator of the City of Boston’s longterm
planning process. Euchner also coordinated a neighborhood
planning process in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
The author or editor of nine books, Euchner’s latest work is
Nobody Turn Me Around: A People’s History of the 1963 March
on Washington (Beacon Press, 2010).
He has also written books about baseball (The Last Nine Innings and Little League,
Big Dreams), urban policy (Urban Policy Reconsidered, with Steve McGovern), regional
issues (the Governing Greater Boston series), political and social movements
(Extraordinary Politics), the politics of sports and cities (Playing the Field), and
presidential elections (Selecting the President). He also ghosted Ambassador John
Gunther Dean’s memoir, Danger Zones.

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Praise for The Writing Code

People in all fields—business, education, journalism, and publishing—rave about the
power of The Writing Code to transform writing in as little as one day. One teacher
writes: “Thank you for spreading such clear and helpful insights “ Another writes: “I
liked how he showed how EASY all these skills are.” “Great job!” one seminar
participant said. “You’re an inspiration! I loved learning how to make connections to the
human experience.” Another seminar participant calls Euchner “the Aristotle of writing.”
Here is how published authors, editors, and educators day about The Writing Code
and Charles Euchner:

Charlie Euchner is the first person I turn to — not just because he’s so terrific at what he
does, but also because his enthusiasm and energy for the writing process are without peer.
—Wayne Coffey, Sports writer, The New York Daily News, author of
The Boys of Winter (New York Times bestseller)

Charles Euchner is the rare talent who can both write and teach. He has now codified his
wisdom in The Writing Code, with all the skills you need to become a strong writer. One
day in a classroom with Charlie Euchner will save you months of frustration and make
writing anything — books, articles, reports — much easier. Trust me, it works.
—Former Ambassador Nancy E. Soderberg, author of The
Superpower Myth
A great way to get everybody from students to practicing professionals excited about the
skills, knowledge, and work habits that go into the composition of clear, solid prose . . .
with just the right blend of rigor, encouragement, and fun.
—Alex Heard Editorial Director of Outside magazine and author
of The Eyes of Willie McGee
If you once loved writing, hearing Charlie will move you to once again reengage in that
art. If you write marketing material for your business, you will learn some great tips how
to draw readers in and leave them wanting more. Take advantage of the opportunity to
work with Charlie—it is a good investment of your time and money.
—Ann Marie Sidman, Vice President, Learning and Development,
Gen Re, a Berkshire Hathaway Company
Charlie is one of those unique individuals who understands how the world works and can
communicate it better than nearly anyone I know.
—Barry Bluestone, Dean, School of Public Policy & Urban
Affairs, Northeastern University

The genius of a Charlie Euchner presentation is in the simple eloquence with which he
delivers a bounty of usable information and advice. He connects with people using a
conversational style loaded with ideas borne from his years of application and research.
He is as accessible as an old friend. Listening to Charlie extemporaneously engage a
group is an exhibition of a brilliant and nimble mind at work.
—Chris Carroll, Director of Student Media, Vanderbilt University

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Charlie Euchner is as entertaining as he is informative, weaving together insightful

advice and compelling stories. At ease with his audience, he instills optimism in the
hearts of aspiring writers with simple and practical strategies.
—Gary Alan Jaeger, The Writing Studio, Vanderbilt University
Charlie's passion touches every listener and motivates individual transformation in an
instant. Speaking without notes, he connects with an audience in just a few moments. I
recommend Charlie as a workshop leader who makes a difference.
—Harris Stone, Chancellor, The Graduate Institute

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