How to be a good writer pt. 3

Improving Your Writing

Keep reading, reading, reading. As most professional writers will tell you, reading is one of the best ways of learning how other authors write and what styles they use. Whether it’s by consciously analysing the other writer’s work or merely by osmosis as you read, you’ll find that reading regularly will help you expand your vocabulary and understand more fully how books and written works are constructed. … you’ll find that reading regularly will help you expand your vocabulary…

Write every day.

Yes, every day. Being an active writer and writing every day is helpful in a number of ways. You become more fluid in your writing, finding that the words come more easily. Regular writing, particularly on a single subject will get you ‘into the groove’ and you’ll find that your output increases for each session as you pick up the task more quickly each time you go back to it.

Regular writing can also help you embed some time in your day for writing making it less of a chore and an inconvenience. Writing then becomes a regular part of your day. It’s what you do. 

Find a subject you care about

Inherent knowledge and enthusiasm for a subject will inevitably shine through in your writing. If you can find a subject that gets you excited or that you’re passionate about, writing about it will be so much more enjoyable and will usually result in better quality output. 

Try and avoid subjects that disinterest you or that you find boring. This disinterest will show through in your

writing. It’s not always easy to avoid subjects that you’re not familiar with or that bore you, so make sure you use a rigorous editing and revising regime to help you remain objective about your work in such cases.

Inherent knowledge and enthusiasm for a subject will inevitably shine through…

Never proofread work immediately after writing it.

One of the worst things a writer can do when drafting is to attempt to edit a piece of work immediately after writing it. If you try to read your own work immediately after writing it, it’s unlikely that you will be able to find all the errors and edit your text objectively. Your mind will still be telling you what you think you wrote and what you believe it to mean as you read. By leaving it for a while, preferably at least a few hours, and doing something else in the intervening period, your mind will ‘dump’ most of the detail, allowing you to see what you actually wrote more clearly.

Plan the structure of your work.

Take time to put some structure around whatever you’re trying to write. Some people can come up with beautifully crafted work without planning, but for the majority of writers, some form of planning and structure helps. For example, divide the piece you’re writing into sections and write one sentence on what each section is trying to say or describe. You can then address that particular element and have your

sentence there for reference to check whether you’re achieving the goal of the section. Once you’ve drafted all of your sections, you can edit them together to form a finished piece of work.