A Writing Coach Who Adjusts to Your Needs
Take a short journey with me and we’ll unlock the academic writer in you.
Learn to Write and Earn a Certificate of Completion
Complete either the Essentials Course or Full Course and earn a CERTIFICATE of COMPLETION from The Science Survival Academy™
Choose From Among 3 Paths to Better Academic Writing
Writing Evaluation
This standalone service delivers in-depth, personalized feedback on your writing, identifying both your strengths and areas for development. It's ideal for writers who want targeted insight into their current habits and a roadmap for improvement.
Essentials Course
Challenge unhelpful myths, adopt productive mindsets, and internalize the basic principles of scholarly writing, flow, and structure. With just 25 hours of total commitment across five weeks, this package is for writers who want fast, focused growth.
Full Course
Move beyond fundamentals to explore structure, argumentation, and narrative at a higher level. Learn to improve individual manuscripts and build a sustainable, strategic writing practice that aligns with your long-term scholarly goals.
Module 1: Writing Evaluation
The Writing Evaluation represents a rigorous diagnostic of your academic writing. You'll receive a detailed assessment that identifies your stylistic strengths, recurring patterns, and areas that need refinement. The evaluation focuses on clarity, structure, tone, and scholarly voice, helping you understand how readers and gatekeepers perceive your writing. Whether you're preparing a manuscript or seeking to grow as a writer, this evaluation offers a clear, actionable roadmap for improvement.
Module 2: Myths and Mindsets
This module helps you unlearn common myths that hold academic writers back—like the need for inspiration before writing or the belief that reading makes you a better writer. You'll replace these limiting ideas with empowering mindsets grounded in research and practice. By reframing your approach to writing, you'll build confidence, resilience, and momentum. Such a shift is foundational for sustainable writing habits and long-term success in academic publishing.
Module 3: Pillars of Scholarly Writing
Drawing from core principles of academic writing, you’ll learn what makes scholarly writing clear, coherent, and credible. You’ll explore sentence structure and paragraphing that creates a voice, tone, and exposition that is highly sought after in academic writing. We’ll break down common scholarly expectations so you can write with greater purpose and precision. Whether you’re new to academic writing or ready to sharpen your skills, this module ensures you’re grounded in the essentials that matter most.
Module 4: Metadiscourse
Metadiscourse makes writing feel fluid, intentional, and reader-friendly. You’ll learn to guide readers using transitions, signposts, hedges, and commentary, without fatiguing them or leaving them scratching their heads. You’ll discover how subtle language choices shape tone, clarity, and perceived professionalism. By mastering metadiscourse, you'll create writing that feels seamless and persuasive, helping readers stay oriented, engaged, and confident in your scholarly voice.
Module 5: Basic Storytelling
This module combines the foundational elements of scholarly writing and elevates them through the power of narrative. You’ll learn how to shape your ideas into a coherent, compelling story that reflects your voice and purpose. By organizing your writing around clear through-lines and logical progression, you’ll create manuscripts that are not only well-structured, but engaging. This is where your academic style begins to take form—intentional, readable, and distinctly your own.
Module 6: Visualizing Writing
Great writers don’t just write—they see their ideas before putting them into words. In this module, you’ll learn timeless techniques for visualizing your writing before and during the drafting of a manuscript. Using spatial organization, conceptual mapping, and vivid mental modeling, you’ll learn to convey complex arguments and improve coherence. These practices, drawn from centuries of rhetorical tradition, will help you write with greater intention, structure, and impact, captivating readers from the very first sentence.
Module 7: Written Logic
Effective academic writing requires clear, logical structures. In this module, you’ll learn how to build arguments using time-tested principles of reasoning. You'll explore how to sequence claims, support them with evidence, and anticipate counterpoints, while maintaining coherence and focus. Whether you're writing theoretical papers or empirical studies, this module helps you craft arguments that are not only sound, but persuasive, making your writing more compelling to academic readers.
Module 8: Constructing Arguments
This module shows you how to transform ideas into persuasive scholarly arguments. Building on logical principles, you'll learn how to frame research questions, develop claims, and support them with well-structured reasoning and evidence. You'll also learn to anticipate objections and clarify your contribution within ongoing academic debates. By the end, you’ll be able to craft arguments that are not only logically sound, but rhetorically effective—aligned with the expectations of peer-reviewed publications.
Module 9: Advanced Storytelling
In the Advanced Storytelling module, you’ll learn how to craft compelling scholarly narratives that keep readers engaged from start to finish. Drawing on techniques used by master storytellers, you’ll explore pacing, tension, rhythm, and narrative arcs—applied to academic contexts. You'll practice transforming data and arguments into stories that inform and resonate. The result is writing that not only communicates clearly, but leaves a lasting impression on your audience.
Module 10: Framing Manuscripts
This module teaches you how to frame writing strategically, not just for individual manuscripts, but for larger scholarly contributions. You’ll learn to position journal articles, book chapters, and even full-length books within broader research programs and disciplinary conversations. Whether you're contributing to an edited volume or planning a multi-paper study, this module helps you clarify purpose, audience, and impact—ensuring your work is cohesive, compelling, and aligned with your long-term scholarly vision.
Message from John Garger
If you’ve made it this far, you’re already serious about growing as an academic writer. I’d be honored to support that journey. You don’t have to navigate the challenges of academic writing alone—there’s a path forward, and it gets easier with guidance, clarity, and a bit of momentum.