10 Small Changes that Improve Your Writing
Writing for passion? Or perhaps for a blog, website, or sales letter? Whichever the case, your writing needs to be compelling enough to grab the reader’s attention while conveying the message in clear terms. This said the following is an overview of 10 small changes that improve your writing
Read more
Reading more is considered as a basic essential when it comes to improving your writing skills. Reading more not only broadens your imagination and stimulate your creativity but also improves your vocabulary and use of proper grammar and syntax
Write daily
The secret to becoming a good writer is practicing. Writing daily helps you to practice the craft while at the same time, broadening your imagination
Write in good plain English
The best writers are those who write in good plain English. As such, your work should not be full of extraneous ideas, pretentious jargon and bloated words that might end up insulting the intelligence of a reader and worst of all, patience
Keep the writing and editing separate
Separating the writing and editing tasks helps you produce better quality work. Editing while writing not only interrupts the flow of ideas but also takes up plenty of time
Start with the main idea
As a rule, you should start off with the main idea so as to give readers a strong hint of what you are saying before following up with an explanation
Vary your sentence structure, length, and type
Varying sentence length, structure, and even type help you to achieve two important things in writing. For starters, it enables you to emphasize a point while at the same time prevents monotony
Concrete words
The use of concrete words is considered as a mark f quality when it comes to writing. Unlike abstract words, concrete words have a particular meaning and as such, are not considered as being vague. Concrete words can be described as words that can be felt, smelt, heard, or even seen and include words such as dancing, hot, and bed. Abstract words, on the other hand, are vague with a good example being – one of the best, excellent and wonderful
Avoid being too verbose, trim everything down
Avoid being wordy or too verbose in your writing. To achieve this, you have to go through your writing eliminating any unnecessary words
Factor in the reader’s agenda
Who is the target audience? What does a reader expect? By answering these questions, you will be able to factor in a reader’s agenda as part of your work
Make it easy on the eyes
Most readers are intimidated by a massive chunk of text staring right back at them. As such, ensure you incorporate paragraphs of varying length to make your text more appealing
By considering the above mentioned ten small changes to improve your writing, you are assured of significantly improving your writing skills