Writing is a strange art. There are certainly essential rules to follow and grammatical structures that work best. There are also stylistic rules that remain generally worthwhile to follow – if you can get a message across in fewer words, then doing so is optimal. Moreover, while having a large vocabulary is a good thing, it’s better to be understood than to try and impress alone.
But even those rules we laid out can be twisted and changed. For example, the iconic writer Cormac McCarthy often chose to completely evade punctuation in his books, and for the most part it worked, even with dialogue.
Moreover, even the hard and fast rules of writing are starting to change. Think of how AI text generation has developed leaps and bounds over the last year – now even professional copywriters are trying to sound more human, whereas once they thought of how social media bots would rank their content as a priority.
In other words, improving your capabilities as a writer can seem daunting, because where do you begin? We believe you’ll find some insight in the following tips:
- Read As Much As You Can
If you hope to write well, you have to read. That’s true of almost anything – if you hope to cook well, eating different cuisine and keeping your mind open can only help you and develop your palate.
Reading widely can actually open neural pathways in your brain you didn’t know existed too, which is proven by science. On a more personal level, every author you encounter becomes an unconscious influence on you, even if it’s what not to do, showing you new ways to structure sentences and build narratives too. You may love the way a certain author builds a story, or you may adore how a certain individual has phrased a memoir.
We’d recommend that you read outside your comfort zone – poetry helps you understand rhythm for instance, while academic papers teach precision in thought and language, and fiction shows you how to paint with words.
Don’t dismiss anyone – read works from countries and people you have nothing in common with. Don’t think the classical canon is “outdated” as some might argue. Also if you don’t like a certain writing style, ask why. Even reading what you consider ‘bad’ writing teaches valuable lessons about what not to do. You could probably learn good and bad lessons from this article itself. It’s all worthwhile.
- Practice With A Variety Of Formats
There are as many ways to write as words to write with, or so it seems. Poetry can come in almost any form after all. However, trying different writing categories can help you flex your skills and get used to new forms..
That’s because each writing format develops different muscles in your creative mind. Let’s look at each possibility in turn:
Blog posts teach you to hook readers quickly or to indulgently delve into a single topic, as we’re doing here. Technical writing forces clarity, especially instruction. Poetry challenges you to compress meaning into minimal words and to give several different interpretations for one approach.
Journalism trains you to organize information hierarchically while still weaving a narrative well. Novel writing builds your stamina and character development skills, as well as your plot points. Essays teach logical flow and justification for points you make. Writing in quality books as booklets, perhaps to promote an event you’re running, can help you put together an itinerary and show off information in various short pages to inform an audience.
All of this can help you become more well-rounded, but each skill can also inform the others. Technical writing, for instance, is good for the fact-based approach to journalism but isn’t all that journalism requires.
- Listen To The Practices Of Succesful Writers
Successful writers often share insights into their craft through interviews, books, or lectures. Some have even written interesting books about that itself, with Stephen King’s “On Writing” showing that he writes every morning without fail.
Other writers might fill notebooks with handwritten first drafts. Maya Angelou rented hotel rooms to write in isolation. Haruki Murakami didn’t feel confident writing in Japanese to start with, so he wrote in the English he understood, writing in very clear and simple language that become a hallmark of his style.
Their methods might not work for you exactly of course, and you deserve to define yourself as your own person, but understanding their approaches helps you develop your own. These writers have already solved many of the problems you’ll face so it can’t hurt to listen.
- Learn About The “Rules” (Even If You Break Them)
It’s easy for anyone to go into an art form and think they’ll break the rules, but the truth is that you have to learn what the rules are before you break them. Cormac McCarthy may have felt limited by punctuation, but that didn’t mean he didn’t know how to use it.
Putting it more simply – understanding traditional writing rules gives you power over them. If you learn proper grammar, punctuation, and structure – then decide consciously when to deviate from them – you have more of a chance to say something new if your style does innovate.
Breaking writing rules without understanding them often leads to confused readers. Breaking them deliberately. You can think of rules as tools rather than restrictions, then as you get skilled with them, you’ll know how to proceed from there.
- Don’t Limit Yourself To Your Keyboard
It’s likely strange to say that most writing people do today comes from tapping a virtual keyboard with thumbs or working buttons on a keyboard. The art of handwriting may be less necessary in the modern world, but that doesn’t make it less important.
Different writing tools spark different kinds of creativity. Handwriting engages your brain differently than typing, and you can even consider voice recording to capture your natural speech patterns and learn from that too.
But it’s not just about writing with a keyboard you should try and get away from (at least, doing this alone), but the location a keyboard forces you to be in. Writing in different locations – cafes, parks, libraries – with pen and paper can help you learn new ways of expressing yourself. Some writers find their groove with specific pens or notebooks
You get to decide your own approach, and that in itself can be quite fun!
- Get Involved In Literary Culture
It’s fun to get involved in literary culture, as you can see here. Better yet, you don’t have to feel overwhelmed or worried about it, just read about the books you like. It’s nice to stretch your horizons of course, but if you start with Young Adult novels, that’s just as valid as anything else.
Learning some writers you like, reading some interviews they’ve written, connecting with blogs you like, reading criticism you find interesting, perhaps going to a book festival nearby, all of it counts.
Literary culture helps you understand who the major players are, what the common narratives and standards may be, and what books are being sold. It may seem as though people read less than ever before thanks to the various media we have access to, but the truth is, book buying is on the up. You too can support it, especially local authors you care about.
- Set Yourself A Writing Goal
Consistent writing is better than anything else, even if you’re not stunned by the quality of your work each time. Maybe you’ll aim to write about 500 words a day. That’s not too much, you can do that at a keyboard in about 15 minutes if you want to, and you can edit it later.
Or, you could start a journal and write in that before you go to bed. Having constant writing practice means you’re continually oiling your tools so to speak, making sure the machinery works and you don’t atrophy or rust.
A writing goal can also combine into a large writing piece, be that trying to write a haiku every few days to play with the form. You don’t have to show anyone this of course, but it’s nice to have an element of writing on the go in your life.
- Focus On Content Over Style, First & Foremost
Except for (sometimes, arguably) poetry, writing isn’t about style over substance. It’s about conveying a message and saying something. You can write ten thousand words on nothing as beautifully as possible, and perhaps this could be an artistic statement in itself, but it will only seem like a beautiful car with no fuel – to be appreciated, but never really utilized.
As such, learning to write content, ensuring your points make sense, are rational, and can be understood, is a very good place to start. This is why essay writing is so helpful, and many famous writers have dabbled in this form outside of their chosen disciplines. It’s because essay writing forces you to focus on content, even simply, and then consider style after if you wish.
It’s always better to have something to write about, as opposed to being someone who can write about nothing with style. You don’t have to be either/or, but starting as the first can certainly help you refine your own approach to writing later, whereas someone who nails style but has nothing to say will rarely ever improve.
With this advice, we hope you can improve your capabilities as a writer, to a point which is most comfortable for you.
