This article is for all the writers who want to improve their writing skills. It will provide tips and tricks on how to write better, faster, and smarter.
Some of the tips and trade secrets that will be discussed in this article are:
- How to write more efficiently.
- How to use your time wisely.
- How to use your writing skills more effectively.
- Some hacks that will help you create more engaging content.
Setting The Stage:
There are many tips and tricks that we can use to help us become better writers. These include reading, writing, and taking care of our mental health.
It is important to read to improve your writing skills and to be aware of what other writers are doing in the industry. Reading will help you understand different styles of writing and how they work. It will also make you more knowledgeable about a topic if you read books on it or articles on the subject.
Reading is not the only way to improve your writing skills though; it’s just as important to write. Writing allows us to practice our skills, build our confidence, and get feedback from others. The more we write, the better we’ll get at expressing ourselves through words. All the craft books in the world will not teach you how to write a novel, or a screenplay, or a short story, or a brilliant Twitter thread.
The 10/1 Rule:
It’s often been said that it takes writing ten novels, or ten screenplays, to learn how to write one really good one. We’ll call that the 10/1 Rule
Another way for improving your writing is by taking care of your health – this includes eating well, exercising, getting enough sleep, etc., all of which can have a positive impact on your mood and productivity levels.
12 Hacks:
1. Know your audience.
2. Use strong verbs.
3. Keep it short and simple.
4. Be consistent in tone and voice.
5. Keep a journal and write every day, even if it’s just for five minutes.
6. Read as much as you can in your area of expertise.
7. Learn the basics of SEO and keyword research so that you can optimize your content for search engines.
8. Use a variety of sentence structures to keep readers engaged with your content, not just the same old structure repeatedly (ex: “I think” vs “In my opinion”).
9. Always be open to feedback from readers, editors, and mentors to get better at what you do best: writing.
10. Read out loud. This will help you catch mistakes in sentence structure and word choice.
11. Read what you have written to someone else. This will help you find typos and grammar errors that you might not have noticed on your own.
12. Invest in a good dictionary and the AP Stylebook. Use a thesaurus sparingly.
Conclusion:
Most of the tips tricks, hacks, and fixes above may be familiar. That’s because they are time-tested and they work.
Here’s a few bonus tips that have worked for me:
- For fiction writers: Write your scenes first in dialogue. You can write the exposition later.
- Write long Exposition passages in bullet-points.
- When drafting, type your longer pieces like novels in the Comic Sans font. Then covert it to a reasonable font like Courier, Times New Roman, or Garamond later. Writers who try the Comic Sans trick swear that the fun of writing in such a silly font makes them write faster. Plus, writing should be fun, right?
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