Would you like to learn how to build your writing skills?
Do you ever wonder how some people come up with effortlessly written, accurate, and beautiful write-ups?
Writing is a skill a lot of persons can boast of.
Some do it as a way of relaxing, having fun, and for therapeutic reasons.
Some others use it to earn a living.
However, being good at it is what not so many can boast of.
Becoming a better writer is a task that requires one to be conscious of some specific things.
These things are things you may not really give much attention to, not because you don’t want to, but because you feel you don’t need to.
When you emphasize them, your writing skills naturally improve.
Whether you write for fun or you want to make a career out of writing, there are certain things you should do to build your writing skills.
Most of them require constant practice to perfect them.
Below is a guide to becoming a better writer.
How To Build Writing Skills; Ulitmate Guide to Excellent Writing
1. Knowing And Understanding Your Readers Helps To Boost Your Writing Skills
The first and foremost thing to put in mind is knowing and understanding who you are writing for.
Every work has a particular target audience.
As someone with the zeal to boost their writing skills, knowing your readers allows you to use the best choice of words that they relate with.
For instance, if your audience is children, you would know the right words to help them comprehend your work.
Similarly, understanding how children behave will not only help you to select the right choice of words.
It will also help you to write in a style that will aid their understanding of the work.
Likewise, it helps you come down to their level while writing.
Thereby fostering a better understanding of the work.
2. Have A Structure
Every type of writing requires a structure.
The essence of it is to make the write-up easy to understand.
The structure of the work breaks it down into headlines and subheadlines that would help the readers to understand the work.
Also, the structure helps to guide the writer as they write.
As a writer who wishes to develop their writing skills, the structure of work helps you figure out what to do at the different stages of your writing.
4. Understand Your Topic
To build your writing skills, you need to grasp the topic you want to write about.
Having a firm grasp means you can explain your topic to even a seven-year-old, and they’d understand you.
Having a proper understanding of your topic helps to direct you as you carry out your research.
Also, have a goal you want to accomplish through the write-up.
The goal is one of the things that will keep you on track while you write.
5. Make an outline
When texting randomly on social media, you may not need a guide to the text.
However, when writing a work you want another person to read and understand, you need a guide.
An outline is mostly in bullet point format that highlights step-by-step the activities you want to carry out in your writing.
It is a guide that keeps you on track as you write.
The essence of it is that it helps you overcome writer’s block because you know what you want to write about in a step-by-step order.
It also helps you in saving time while writing and allows for the easy flow of ideas.
6. To Build Your Writing Skill, have some frequently asked questions at the back of your mind
When writing, there is a need to put yourself in the position of your readers.
This will help you to come up with some frequently asked questions easily.
You can answer these questions in your write-up to better help your readers understand your write-up.
Also, to build your writing skills, you can create a different column where you can pick some of these questions and give them simplified answers.
This does not only improve your writing skills.
It also allows the reader who does not have time to go through the entire work to easily and quickly get hold of the information in your write-up.
It can even bait them into go into reading the entire work.
Also, while supplying the answers to the questions, do not go on with long and unnecessary stories.
Just give your readers the right amount of information they need to understand your write-up.
7. Write in a Conversational Style to Build Your Writing Skills
There are different styles/techniques of writing.
These styles of writing vary in terms of the writing they are used for.
However, there is a particular one that suits almost all types of writing; the conversational style.
It is a style of writing that uses mostly the second person pronoun, you/your.
This style of writing helps a reader to get into a one-on-one kind of feeling with the text.
Therefore, as a beginner who wishes to build their writing skills, using the conversational writing style is very important.
It helps the readers, but it also helps the writer come down to the same level with the readers.
It also makes the readers feel like they are having a one-on-one conversation with the writer.
Thereby helping them understand the write-up more.
Also, you can use contractions while writing in a conversational style.
They help your writing to sound less formal and less fluffy.
8. Get Rid Of Filler Words And Unnecessary Adverbs
While writing, some words may find their way into your work unconsciously.
These words are sometimes useless in the sentences where they are found.
Do away with them to build your writing skills because they make your work wordy and sometimes uneasy to understand.
Also, sometimes a lot of adverbs find their way into your work.
Most of them only pad-weak words, making them heavy.
For instance, “extremely funny” is too wordy.
It could be swapped for “hilarious.”
Thereby making your work concise and easy to understand.
9. Do Away With Unnecessary Grammatical Rules
As a content writer, copywriter, review writer, and writer of all kinds of writing that are not academic-related, forget what your grammar books say.
All you have to worry about is aligning your nouns to your verbs.
These grammatical rules tie down the flow of your writing and make the work sluggish.
In building your writing skills, you should be more interested in making sure you convey your message to your audience in the simplest way.
Also, avoid complex sentence patterns.
They prevent your works from flowing easily and make it difficult to understand.
10. Keep Your Sentences And Paragraphs Short
Always have it at the back of your mind that your readers are human.
Humans feel lazy, and they don’t need an excuse to do that.
Therefore, while building up your writing skills, avoid complex sentences and long paragraphs no matter how interesting your content is.
Not all your readers are avid readers or have the time to go through the entire article.
Some are there to scan through and pick out the necessary information.
With jam-packed paragraphs, your readers will consider the work bulky and feel lazy to read it.
For someone who runs a page that needs traffic, you may end up getting none.
To avoid that, write in short sentences and scanty paragraphs.
12. Reading Helps To Build Your Writing Skills
The fastest way to improve your knowledge of anything is by reading about it.
Therefore, to build your writing skill, you should set a reading goal that allows you to come in contact with different topics daily.
It must not be bulky or a classic, but it should be written in a clean and easy-to-understand manner.
You may not know it, but the effect of what you read begins to manifest when you pick up a pen to write.
You can also read about what you want to write about to make your writing easy and smooth.
13. Research
Whenever you want to begin writing, the easiest way to come up with ideas to write about is by researching your topic.
Research gives you the morale you need to kick off your writing.
While researching, there are different places to look for information about anything.
One such place is social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter).
They have a large collection of contents and data that can serve as information when writing.
Pinterest and Quora are other platforms to leverage.
Quora has a database of information on almost everything because it is a platform where people ask questions, and they are attended to.
Also, Google and other search engines are other powerhouses to leverage.
Similarly, you can visit ebooks, hard copies, magazines, and newspapers for information.
To build up your writing skills, you can access any of these platforms while researching any topic.
However, you don’t have to wait until you have something to write about to carry out research.
You can do so to learn something new, to keep yourself updated about the latest trends.
14. Keep Editing; It Builds Your Writing Skills
There is no perfect or poor write-up.
There is only poorly edited work or perfectly edited work.
To build your writing skills, you have to invest in yourself.
The best way to go about this is to invest money in writing tools to help you edit; that is another little price to pay.
However, there are things some editing writing tools can not do for you.
This is the point you need another human to go through work.
You can have a friend or an editor go through your work.
The plan is not to belittle your work but to help you check your workflow and correct simple grammar or spellings issues.
When your friend or editor notices some errors in your write-ups, make a note of them and make the necessary corrections.
It is a known fact no one would like to be told how to use words or how to write their own work.
However, your editor or friend happens to be part of the readers (first readers); if the work doesn’t flow well as they read it, do not assume that it would when other readers do so.
15. Get A Writing Partner
Like most skills, writing requires a partner.
This partner must not be outstandingly good.
All they need is to have an interest in writing and wish to develop more in that area.
Therefore, to boost your writing skills, you need a pen buddy.
A writing partner should not just love writing and have an interest in it; they should also be ready to take steps to achieve it.
Both of you can go through each other’s work and boost one another’s morale.
Going through one another’s work not only entails talking about how the work is; it entails giving corrections.
16. Writing Daily Boosts Your Writing Skills
Does that sound hectic?
It is a small price to pay for greatness.
One of the best ways to build your writing skills is by writing daily.
Choose any topic of your choice from the niche you feel comfortable with, write about it.
Make sure it is clear for anyone to understand by making sure you understand the topic.
You may choose your social media platform as a place to write on and share your thoughts.
Also, you can decide to write it down on a notepad.
You can update an article about anything you like to talk about daily.
This does not only help you in building your writing skills, but it also creates a writing portfolio for you.
17. Set A Writing Goal; It Helps in Building Your Writing Skills
The easiest way to develop your writing skills is by having a goal to meet daily, hence a writing goal.
A writing goal is a target you want to meet up with.
It is usually in a daily format with a word count attached to it.
Also, it can be a weekly or monthly target, whichever one you can handle.
The idea is to have something to spur you into action.
However, it is one thing to set a goal; it is also another thing to abide by.
The major thing that leads to people not meeting up their goals is a lack of discipline.
The lack of discipline comes majorly in one way; procrastination.
When you set a writing goal, make sure you meet up with it by all means.
The internal joy you will derive from seeing your work will spur you to do more.
18. Take Writing Classes
For every form of writing you want to go into, there have been persons who ventured into it and have become professionals in that field.
Thanks to the internet, we can learn many things about different things from any part of the world in the comfort of our bedroom.
Taking writing classes brings you face-to-face with persons with years of experience willing to share the knowledge.
Writing classes also provide you with assessments that may end up helping to form your portfolio.
Besides, you may meet a writing partner in writing classes who is willing to share goals and thoughts with you.
Moreover, different platforms deliver classes online.
Platforms like Coursera, Edx, Alison, LinkedIn Learning, Udemy, Hubspot, SkillShare, etc., have a wide range of writing courses with qualified hands willing to teach and mentor beginners.
19. Keep Practicing
Rome was not built in a day, do not expect your writing skills to move from level 1 to professional in a snap of fingers.
Practice makes perfection.
Research has it constant practice is the key to perfecting many skills, and writing skills are not exempted.
Investing a lot of time daily will strengthen your writing skills and help boost your knowledge of the topic you write about.
Conclusion on How to Build Writing Skills
Writing is a lot of fun when you know how to write.
One of the things to always have at the back of your mind is that no man is an island.
Therefore reaching out to persons who have been in the field before you can help you learn from their experience.
When these pieces of information come to you, use them well by putting them into practice.
Also, do not wait until you have a writing project to meet up with before researching different topics.
Furthermore, know that you owe it yourself to succeed.
Therefore when you set writing goals, endeavor to meet up with them.
If you cannot meet up with them at a particular time, do not hesitate to fix up another time and attend to them.
Being disciplined with your writing goals is a getaway to making a professional career in writing.
Finally, as you become good at what you do, you’ll begin to take more writing projects.
The workload might become too much for you alone to handle.
Do not try to do everything by yourself as this may lead to burnout.
Hence when this happens, do not hesitate to hire a writer to give you the extra help you need.
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