Good writing skills aren’t acquired overnight. Like any other talent, it comes with practice and persistence. Fortunately, there is no magic recipe to follow because writing often and gaining experience will help your talent improve and grow. Then, upon comparing your recent efforts with an earlier one, you will probably be surprised by your achievements and improvements. As you work through this process, try the following tips below.
1. Read and write often.
Every talent needs time to develop. If you are serious about writing, read and write often. As this is the only way to improve your writing skills. Read a wide range of authors and genres. Most especially, read often the kinds of a genre that you want to write.
2. Write passionately and with emotion.
Write because you want it, you love it or you like the topic. Demonstrating an interest in your writing will encourage reader as well as. Even if you aren’t writing about the most exciting subject, you can still make it interesting by imparting your own appreciation for the subject.
3. Write with a purpose.
Keep in mind what things you want to accomplish as you write, and work toward that end. It’s okay if you are unsure of the first process but always have some guiding principle.
4. Jot down your ideas in a paper.
When you have a specific topic that you may think interesting, begin to jot down your ideas. You can use the general outlining method, thought mapping or your own method preference. The important thing is to get your ideas down on a paper. Then begin your first draft.
5. Write to your audience.
Always keep in mind your audience, and write for them. For instance, think about gender, age, occupation, ethnicity, background and so forth of your target audience. What do they want to read about? What are they interested in? What is important to them?
As you write, make it simple and be leery of using highly technical terms or other specific or extravagant word in your writing, it is wise to avoid jargon in most case, as it may distance less knowledgeable readers.
6. Write with style.
The writing style has a great impact on your audience. Successful writers have been known for their style of writing. Let your personality stand out in your writing and make your own style. Don’t worry about messing up; take criticism and keep working to become better.
7. Write concisely.
Writing short and simple can save your time but it also makes your writing neat. Examine your document and strive to reduce sentences to phrases and phrases to words. Replace long words with a short one that will work just as well as the long one.
Heed this advice from William Strunk Jr., “A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.”
8. Revise.
Most good writers spend more time in rewriting and revising than they do writing the original draft. The advantage of writing is that you can change what you have written until you have it just the way you want it. Give yourself enough time to adequately revise your work.
9. Read your writing out loud.
As part of revising your work, you may consider reading your writing out loud. Though it might sound silly, it has a great benefit to your work. The idea is to catch an awkward sound or something that is unnecessary on a particular line.
10. Read your final work carefully.
After editing and revising your work, read it for the final. Check for the spellings, grammars, punctuation marks and other mistakes. Don’t totally rely on an automatic spell checker tools or engine in your word editing program. It can not guaranty a 100 percent right word for your sentence. In my experience I misspelled the word “public” into “pubic”, imagine how embarrassing it could be. Although automatic spell checking tool is very useful and effective in spelling, it still has flaws. Always remember that it won’t give you the right word for your sentence.