How do I improve my writing skill? And how do I improve it easily and quickly? If these are the sort of questions flowing through your mind then be assured of getting answered here. The 21 easy ways on how to improve your writing skills, cover each and every angle of how writing skills can be improved.
By undertaking small changes to make a huge difference is what lies at that heart of this post.
1. Practice
This is a sure shot and a widely proven way to drastically improve writing skills – Practice. Writing on a regular basis can hugely improve your writing skills as you develop more knowledge, more speed, and overall more efficient.
Once you get over your first blank page, you will be having fun, expressing your heart out, and in effect boosting your writing skills.
2. Basics
Grammar, spellings, and sentence formation are some basics you should start mastering right now. The basic principles of writing should be thorough to get near-perfect writing ability.
Books, courses, videos, teachers, etc., are the variety of sources from where you can learn and master this.
3. Reading
‘Be more of a reader than a writer’ is an adage you should fully live by if you truly wish to become a quality writer.
By reading more and more stuff, not only will you develop writing skills but also gain information about the flair and outline that best writers follow.
Pay thorough attention to the writing method, sentence structure even how punctuation is used to get valuable insights. Reading more is directly linked to writing better.
4. Imitate Writers
With a vast number of books and blogs around, there are many people pursuing writing nowadays. You may have half a dozen writers you like and getting a few pointers from their work can help.
Not to be confused with plagiarism, this is more like imitating what you like the best in other writers. This might sound counter-intuitive but mixing with others’ work can aid you to develop your own style.
5. Follow an Outline
An outline clears up more than 50% of writing hassles you may face. It helps plan how you are going to write, what you are going to write, and how you want it to be.
An outline will clear the maze for you to start the actual writing without facing a mental block. A simple Intro, Body, and Outro template works flawlessly for many and you can certainly tweak your own. Just make sure it is easy to follow and in order.
6. Editing
Let’s suppose you are writing regularly every day and improving your skills with every practice. Learning to edit your work, find mistakes, and fix them is a major part of editing that is very tough to learn but really essential.
While an experienced or professional editor can brush up your work and fix mistakes, you can also learn to edit effectively over time.
The next tip explains how you can find a ‘good’ editor for your work.
7. Good Editor
A good and proficient editor not only finds the mistakes in your work but also empowers you with more knowledge. More knowledge about how you write, what mistakes you make, and how you can improve.
While hiring an editor may be an easy tip, you need to have a strong resolve to force criticism from him/her. A good editor will give you a word by word opinion on how your writing feels while reading and the grammar errors it contains.
8. Research
If you like to start out on any specific topic, you need to research extensively on it.
Collecting various forms of information about the topic can help you write in a complete and comprehensive manner. It helps you form an effective opinion on the topic you write.
Writing extensively and effectively is possible only after doing thorough research.
9. Constantly Watch Your Previous Work
Seeing your previous or the work when you started writing to improve skills can help realize the improvement.
It is a good analysis of the ground you have covered and the rest that is left. The amount of improvement that you would have made will increase your self-confidence.
Hindsight will help you see what changes worked for you and what has not till now.
10. Express Yourself
Writing is not supposed to be read by robots and certainly not written for them. Your write-ups should express yourself, your thoughts, views, etc., to make writing an engaging experience.
As you express yourself more, you develop your writing style and improve your writing skills much better.
11. Use Simple Words
‘The writing for robots’ analogy or trying to sound knowledgeable is best not done by using complex words.
If you want others to read and understand what you write then an easy language with reader-friendly tone can mesmerize them.
Nobody likes to read words they have no idea about. You write in a way like you would be talking to them.
12. Use Short Sentences and Paragraphs
To make it easy for your reader to read your content, write in short sentences and paragraphs.
13. A Writing Partner
Having a person who shares his work, reads yours, and provides an opinion on your work can improve even the just starting-out writers. Co-workers, friends, and family are where you should look for a partner.
It helps keep you accountable as well as beat procrastination and meet your writing goals.
14. Rework Your First Drafts
No matter what purpose the writing is for; be it for a college speech, conference speech or otherwise, the first draft is always trash.
You should get your ideas and major points listed in the first draft and then you should rework on it until it becomes satisfactory.
The process after writing your first draft will be easy as you can edit, replace some words to get the desired meaning.
15. Dissect Writing
Dissect writing is not like the frog dissection in a biology class but is about breaking yours or others writing into types. Dissecting into types such as the passive voice used, adverbs, sentences can help you improve your writing skills.
This is in order as you will learn how to mix sentences more clearly as well as get their solo plus contextual meanings and know what connectors to use effectively.
Writing class or course is a horrific idea to many. While learning to write the DIY way is not impossible, enrolling in a class or a course can go a long way in seriously developing better writing skills.
With the advancements in the online world, there are a lot of free classes or courses on YouTube that help with pointers on how to write better.
16. Search for New Sentences
New sentences or phrases that you think are great must be searched for on a daily basis. As you keep accumulating more of these, you will start learning and using them in your writing.
This will give your vocabulary and quality an upgrade. You will have an expanded database that will help you to keep most of your lines unique.
17. Use Apps
Apps are a fun and proven way to improve not just writing skills but also an enhanced vocabulary. While apps like Grammarly help you to improve and know about your grammatical errors.
There are other apps that help discover new words. Some others provide you with alternatives to any word or phrase, so you can blend into your writing perfectly.
18. Read it Aloud
This is certainly the best method you can use to check how your writing flows. If you feel a bit of disturbance or a pause while reading, you ought to rewrite those sentences to get them together.
Reading it out loud every time will help you stay away from the monotonous beat until you learn why and how your writing should sound.
19. Use Contractions
Contractions like I’m, We’re, They’re, etc are not only convenient but also help for simplicity of the sentence. This tip may not be used for formal writing but is very effective in turning a piece of work that others can read easily.
20. Don’t Chase Perfection
Perfection in writing can only be a silly desire that it is not even possible or existence. Everyone has a different opinion on a same set of writing skills.
Start writing and eventually complete it, will be surely better than chasing for perfection.
21. Just Write
To improve your writing, what you need to do is just write and keep on writing without editing. You will do your editing when you finished writing. This will help your creative ideas flowing.
Conclusion
The easiest and all the necessary tips for improving your writing skills quickly have been explained in detail. Action is the last thing that separates you from realizing your ambitions and drastically improving your writing skills.
Having good writing skills, you can be a freelance writer and earn extra income. You can work online from home.
If you love writing, you can turn your passion into a successful online business.
I hope you find the above information helpful. If you have any questions or comments, please do not hesitate to leave them below.