“I don’t write well. I want to learn how to write. But I don’t know where to start.”
If this is your first thought, then you are already on the right track. Writing is a skill that takes time to develop and improve, but there are many ways.
1. Read more, write more
Let me give you a strange example of how and why this works.
My 13-year-old son is a gamer. I am not. When I sit down with him, try to spend quality father-son time on his turf, and play Call of Duty with him (I probably suck more at first-person shooters than anything else in the world), one thing amazes me the most: his speed of perception.
I could never dream of moving as fast and agile as he can make his little avatar jump, run, crouch and destroy the opposing team in the world's most popular shooter. Let alone shoot and kill as many enemies as he can. Not even close. Pun intended.
Why? It takes me a lot of time and energy just to get a feel for the game. What's going on; where am I, what are my bearings? Who's a teammate, who's an enemy? What's that extra information that's displayed on the screen; the text in the middle and at the bottom, a map at the top?
Do you want to know how this difference in perception speed in the game between my son and me arose?
Watching a lot, and I mean a lot, of YouTube gamers gaming online when I was younger. I never understood why he would want to spend so much time watching other people play games, like a lot of kids of his generation used to do.
Now I get it. Watching other (more advanced) gamers play video games is the same as you and I watching other writers write. In other words: it's the same as us reading.
Because he wanted to become a better player, he automatically trained his brain to perceive at lightning speed and know almost completely subconsciously what to do and how to react in certain situations in that environment.
When we want to improve our writing, reading is how we train our brain. Reading is how we teach our subconscious and our natural reflexes to automatically understand what works, what doesn't work; what the rules are and how the rules can be broken; what to do and what not to do. In our own environment: the blank page.
Read more, write more. And better.
2. Reduce the use of adverbs and adjectives (and words in general)
Writing is personal. And what constitutes quality writing has a lot to do with your goals: the degree to which you accomplish what you set out to accomplish with your writing is the degree to which your writing efforts were successful.
Read more about effective writing and setting strategic storytelling goals, here.
However, there are some tricks you can use to instantly improve your writing skills — not objectively, but subjectively for most people.
Here are three of them. This is all about helping your reader have a smoother, faster reading experience.
And more often than not, especially if you're writing for an cambodia business email list online audience, what they need is speed.
Use fewer adverbs.
“An adverb is a word that modifies (describes) a verb (sings loudly), an adjective (very loudly), another adverb (ends too quickly), or even a whole sentence (Luckily, I had brought an umbrella). Adverbs often end in -ly, but some (like quickly) look exactly like their adjectival counterparts.”
-Grammarly. Com.
Although adverbs clearly have a function, many beginning writers tend to use too many adverbs. To convey information at the highest speed, it can be helpful to edit your draft by filtering out the adverbs you don't need to get your point across.
Use fewer adjectives.
“Adjectives are words that describe the qualities or states of being of nouns: huge, dog-like, silly, yellow, funny, fast. They can also describe the quantity of nouns: many, few, million, eleven.”
-Grammarly. Com.
The same goes for adjectives. For many beginning writers, it somehow seems to sound or feel "nicer" to use more, not less. For most readers, it's exactly the opposite. Don't use more than absolutely necessary.
Use fewer words in general.
Some writers struggle to even get the first two sentences out. If this is you, a Marketing Copy Generator like StoryLab.ai is perfect for you.
Other writers are the complete opposite. Once they start, they write and pour more words onto the page and it seems like a never-ending story.
If this is the case for you, then you probably already know that you need to try to use fewer words to better serve your readers. Here's how to do it:
Decide your strategic narrative goals and stick to them
Decide on the main thought and main feeling you want to help convey. What do you want this story to help you and your readers accomplish? Decide on no more than three supporting thoughts for your main thoughts. Decide on a CTA (Call to Action).
That's it. Strategically outline your story .
Now, when you write, and especially when you edit your first draft: skip every paragraph, every sentence, and every word that doesn't directly add to those goals .
3. Write what you know
And finally, a piece of writing advice you hear over and over again. “Write what you know.” Sounds smart, doesn’t it? But what does it mean? And why is it so important?
'Write what you know' in my book, means three things:
Write from your own experience, because readers can tell the difference between what is unknown and whether you are truly knowledgeable and passionate about a topic. Example: me, writing about writing as a copywriter, author, and brand. Storytelling Coach with over 10 years of experience.
Write blog introductions , anecdotes, and examples from your own experience, because readers can feel your authenticity through the examples you provide. And the more authentic your examples are, the more likely you are to emotionally engage your reader with your story.
