How to Write Better

Notepad.link offers advanced note taking functions and powerful control that make it easy to use and produce professional results. Save your content and create a password to further protect it. These capabilities and functionalities are crucial to saving and protecting your newest bright idea for a novel, short story or poem. However, the content that it protects is worth improving. So how does one write better? Here are a few tips.

Regard your Text as Prose

Before you hit the Send button, make sure to review your text for spelling and punctuation. Ask yourself this question: What communication am I trying to convey ? What am I trying to communicate? You’ll be more deliberate when you write casually, and that will translate into more deliberate writing in other mediums. What is prose?

Your words are your Tools

To make your writing more precise, expand your vocabulary. You don’t have to use a ten dollar word when a ten cent word will do. However, having more tools will help you choose the right tool for the job. Sometimes you’ll need an ax and sometimes a scalpel. Each day, pick one word to learn and use at least 21 times during your daily conversations. Your vocabulary will grow over time and stick with the most useful words.

Be Consistent

Write every day if you want to improve the quality of your writing. Writing is like a muscle. If you don’t exercise it, it will become weaker. To me, the best way of ensuring consistent writing was to create a note or blog.

Pepper with Punctuation

You can add variety, speed, and cadence in your writing by playing with different punctuation such as periods, commas or em dashes. Short, succinct sentences communicate tension. On the other hand, longer, more elaborate sentences communicate tension. They create a fast, hurried rhythm, which gives the reader the feeling that the words are falling onto the page at a faster pace. Punctuation is pace.

Get off the Soapbox

Blogs, books, social media posts, and other content are cluttered with unneeded intros, solipsistic digressions and unnecessary drivel. Get rid of the nonsense and focus on your points. If in doubt, remove the first two paragraphs. Then see if your writing improves.

The Reader’s Time is Precious

Our attention and time are our most valuable resources. It is selfish to force a reader to spend fifteen minutes reading something you could’ve–and should’ve–communicated in 90 seconds. Don’t waste your readers’ time if you want them to trust you.

30% Composition, 70% Editing

Spend three hours editing for every hour that you spend writing or note taking. This will help to make your work more concise, powerful, and more beautiful. Rewriting is the essence of writing.

Narrate Urgency

Each sentence must have a purpose. The first sentence must convince the reader that they want to read the second. The second sentence should propel the reader to the next. Continue this process until the end. It must be cut if a sentence does not move the narrative forward, if it doesn’t make the writing more urgent, regardless of how precious or clever it may seem.

Avoid overusing Adverbs

A sure sign of amateur writing is the overuse of adverbs, especially -ly adverbs. A woman in a story isn’t incredibly pretty–she’s beautiful; the sky isn’t very blue–it’s azure. Find the perfect words to avoid using adverbs as crutches.

Know the Rules, so you can Break the Rules

You can learn the rules to break them. To help my students understand the rules of good writing, I recommend Grammatically Correct as well as Garner’s Modern English Usage.

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There’s always room to improve, no matter what your level of competence.