In the age of the Internet, everyone writes. If a couple of centuries ago only a few possessed writing skills, now the vast majority of people have them at a more or less decent level. Writing skills in our time should be the property of everyone, not just those who want to create their own stories and books. Therefore, the tips presented in the article help both.
First of all, remember: the most important thing in any written message is simplicity. It doesn’t matter how smart you are intellectually, the only important thing is that people understand you. True mastery is possessing extensive knowledge and expressing this knowledge through simple and understandable words and expressions.
With tips, you can enrich your skills both when communicating digitally and when writing articles, reviews, and books.
use strong words
Good writing is imbued with unpredictability and the unexpected. The most powerful part of speech is the verb. Thanks to a strong word, a simple sentence acquires a very strong emotional charge and affects the person who reads it.
However, a strong word does not always mean flowery or complex. Write “uses” instead of “exploits” if you feel that the first word expresses your idea more clearly and understandably.
Analyze literary texts. If you see words or phrases that leave a strong aftertaste, write them down and use them whenever possible. There is nothing wrong in it. Also, look up your phrases: take a dictionary, find a noun, then replace it with any adjective and try to understand if it has meaning and emotional charge.
Reading a lot
The movie flows by itself, whether you are aware of what is happening on the screen or not. A book, on the other hand, requires the brain to be active from beginning to end. When you make a conscious effort on your reading comprehension, you can reflect, which is a great way to practice your writing skills.
This may sound obvious to some, but it bears repeating: You can’t learn to express yourself well on paper without reading hundreds of books. Read a variety of books. Of course, you can’t read every book, but try not to limit yourself to fiction; there are many wonderful nonfiction, scientific, and philosophical books.
Your cognitive and writing skills automatically increase when you read a lot of books.
rewrite books
It’s hard to explain scientifically, but when you manually rewrite a book by your favorite writer, you’re more in tune with the text and its style. You don’t have to copy a book completely, but the very feeling of being led by your hand is very unusual. Also, rewriting helps you pay attention to little things that weren’t noticed in plain reading. You start to think about each sentence, feeling the meaning and subtext of each word, which is important because you can improve your writing skills by understanding which word is most appropriate in a given case.
If you really want to improve your writing skills, handwriting your favorite books will help you with that. Since these books have hooked you, it means that something inside resonates with the beat, they have a certain truth and sincerity that you need to develop.
start a journal
A journal is not only a great tool for introspection, but it can also be a scratch pad to hone your writing skills. If you want to write a book, but are afraid to start, start with a journal, practice there.
You can not only write in a diary, but also make sketches, draw visual diagrams, create tables. You can write in it about why you are afraid to start creating a novel, make a list of all your fears about it. Once you get all the fears out, they are no longer so deep and invisible.
Before going to bed, you can describe in a journal all the things that happened to you during the day. As you do so, pay attention to each sentence and try to figure out which word and phrase fit the best. An excellent exercise will also be to think in metaphors: a metaphor of your day, event, occasion.
start a blog
It’s the same as a journal, but in this case you learn to edit yourself and be more critical of what you write. A blog is very useful for understanding what people care about. They can only comment on one sentence in an entire post, and you will learn to understand how to direct the reader’s attention.
Finally you will realize that what you write is about you, but it is about others. It doesn’t matter what you put into your words, what matters is how people perceive it. Nobody cares about your idea, no matter how brilliant it was if few people understood it. And it doesn’t matter if it’s a complete work or a single line. You will learn to perceive your finished work (an article, a story, a post) as a whole, you will understand where to direct the reader’s emotions and what feelings to provoke.
You can experiment. For example, write a post that evokes the reaction you anticipate and see if it does. It is a very fascinating and educational exercise.
Pick a topic
Of course, in the case of the diary, it can be just automatic writing, but if you don’t want to turn your whole life into a structure, you need boundaries.
When you choose a topic, you direct your attention to a topic and try to find a lot of interesting things about it. It’s like creativity: looking at an apple and describing it in 50 pages. Such a creative task is not for everyone, but that is what you should strive for.
Parameters are beautiful in any type of creativity. Then, after choosing a topic, you can set yourself another challenge: that no word in your story have more than ten letters. This simple way will make you treat what you write more consciously.
automatic writing
To improve writing skills, you need to write a lot. And preferably by hand. Automatic writing is analogous to brainstorming.
Give yourself the task of sitting at your desk and writing about anything for an hour. You can jump from one topic to another, changing your typing style and speed. Just don’t stop for a minute, write for an hour. Not only do you get rid of the fear of writing this way, but you also learn to find topics in seconds. After a week of such practice, you will find that even aimless writing helps you improve your skills and makes you pay attention to the words you write.