How To Improve Your Writing Skills With Ten Easy Tips

You never stop learning how to improve your writing skills. The art of writing is a craft, and the more you write, the better it gets each day.

Every writer wants to learn more and hone their writing. But creative writing has so many facets that it can be a little overwhelming.

If you are writing a novel or an article, you don’t want to agonize over grammar, syntax, or lexis. You want your words to flow naturally in the writing process.

However, there are simple ways to keep improving. Keeping the following ten points in mind as you write will help you turn average writing into excellent writing.

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10 Easy ways to improve your writing skills

These are not strict rules you need to obey with every word you write.

In fact, there are a lot of myths about writing.

But they can help you with clarity, consistency, elements of style, and accuracy.

You want to convey your story or message to your readers with positive writing.

But most of all, you want your readers to enjoy or gain value from reading your words.

What you have to say is essential.

But how you say it is where you can improve your writing.

No matter what you write, you can always hone your writing skills.

And the more you write, the better you get.

By keeping the following ten points in mind as you write, your writing will continue to improve.

1. Find your writing voice

Your writer’s voice is unique. It’s you.

Your voice in writing is similar to how you speak. Being you is about your beliefs, emotions, and personality.

It’s also about syntax, which is your word choice, how you put words together, or how you structure phrases.

But you change the way you speak in different situations. So you can change your writer’s voice too.

You use a different voice when talking to a friend in a bar than in a job interview with a prospective employer.

Your speech patterns are different when talking to a young child than how you speak to a doctor.

Your voice is unique, but you have situational variations. Finding your writing voice and perfecting it takes time. But the easy way to get there is to remember that it’s personal.

It’s about being you and only you.

2. Use active voice; almost always

It is the easiest good writing habit to apply when learning to write well.

Passive forms are generally weak, and it’s easy to change almost any phrase into an active form.

For example, the house was surrounded by police is passive. The police surrounded the house is active.

Anytime you see the verb to be in any form followed by a past participle, fix it.

Once you get into the habit of using the active voice, your writing will become much clearer and more descriptive.

3. Keep your register consistent

Once you recognize the differences, you need to avoid mixing them.

If you start writing using informal structures and suddenly change to formal, it can confuse a reader.

Here’s a simple example.

You start writing a piece using contracted forms such as, I think it’s raining, so I won’t go out today.

Then later, you write, I am very sorry I will not be able to go out today due to the inclement weather. You now have mixed formality.

You can read more about how to control register in writing.

4. Watch out for homonyms

Every writer can make a mistake with words that sound the same.

It always pays to do a quick check, even if you think you know some of the commonly confused homonyms.

Here are a few examples of words that are easy to get wrong.

Pore over and pour over.

Advise and advice.

Capital and capitol.

Principal and principle.

Ensure and insure.

Getting words like these wrong is embarrassing for a writer.

Always take a minute or two to check and make sure you are using the correct word.

5. Go easy on adverbs

Yes, Stephen King called them weeds in the garden.

But adverbs exist in grammar to help modify other words. There is no golden rule that says you can’t use adverbs.

But using them too often weakens your writing, message, and story.

When writing a novel or a short story, pay attention to adverbs with dialogue verbs. It’s better to keep them to a minimum.

The easy way to do this is to set your radar for any words ending in LY. Watch out for words like angrily, happily, modestly, or aggressively.

Always check to see if you can replace them with better and more descriptive vocabulary.

You can always do a quick check with the Hemingway app if you’re unsure how to identify adverbs.

6. Check the comma

If you are pedantic about punctuation when you are writing, it will slow you down.

You can always take the time to check for punctuation mistakes or improvements when you finish writing your piece and start editing and proofreading.

One of the great writers, Oscar Wilde, famously said, “I spent all morning putting in a comma and all afternoon taking it out.”

Yes, commas can be tricky. But it can help if you develop a basic understanding of commas.

There are a lot of comma rules. But the best one to learn is when joining independent or dependent clauses.

It’s easy once you get the hang of it.

A good example is a comma with but. You use a comma to join two independent clauses.

But there is no comma if you join an independent and dependent clause.

7. Research and check your facts

Trusting your memory with facts is a trap for a new writer or author.

It is especially true for day, date, and year historical references in a novel or nonfiction work.

Always double-check your facts if referencing historical events in a book or even a blog post.

Another tip is to watch out for typos with dates. It’s easy to mistype 1719 instead of 1619 or 1993 instead of 1939.

8. Understand tone in your writing

Tone in writing is how you say something.

The best way to explain tone is to think about how you use emoticons in messages. You add one to say you are happy, pleased, angry, or surprised.

In writing, you can’t use these icons. You need to show and express emotions in your words.

You can do it easily by choosing the appropriate vocabulary to express any emotion.

Here’s an example of expressing sarcasm.

Oh, fantastic. You bought me a pair of socks again for my birthday. You’re all heart.

Tone is one of the most powerful tools a writer has in the toolbox.

If you are writing a novel, you can use different tones to develop your characters’ personalities.

9. Reduce your writing tics

Every writer uses tic words or phrases without thinking.

I know for me, it’s the words just, so, and very. I use them far too frequently and spend my time chasing and deleting them after any first draft.

But I get rid of most of them as I’m writing.

Another tic can be using the grammatical expletive too often.

If you write a lot, knowing your tic words and phrases can be a big time saver.

It also makes you think as you write because you need to find better vocabulary or structure alternatives.

10. Know your readers

For me, this is one of the biggest writing tips for any writer.

If you can imagine the people you think will read your writing, you can write for them.

It depends on what you are writing. If it’s a novel, what age group or demographic might be interested?

A paranormal vampire romance would likely attract younger readers and, perhaps mostly, young women.

A World War 1 novel about early fighter pilots and biplanes would generally be ideal for an older male reader.

It’s the same logic for a blog. If your central theme and subjects are beauty and makeup, you are unlikely to gain too many male readers.

When you know your readers, you can adjust your voice, tone, subjects, and topics to suit them.

The best way to improve your writing skills is to imagine who will read it.

Summary

You don’t need to follow all these writing points I have noted in this article to the letter.

But they can help you improve your writing skills if you keep them in mind.

Writing every day is good advice, too, because you will develop good habits faster.

Try to develop new and positive writing habits that, after a while, you don’t need to think about.

They will come naturally to you as you write.

You might have noticed that I didn’t mention a lot about grammar, spelling, and punctuation correction.

These are technical issues, and with all the grammar checkers and online tools available now, it’s easy to check and find mistakes.

Sure, checking can help. But it doesn’t improve the quality, emotion, tone, voice, and communicative value of your writing.

These are the areas where only you, as a writer, can improve your writing skills.

Related reading: The Skills A Writer Needs That Are Not About Writing

How To Improve Your Writing Skills With Ten Easy Tips