Trying to learn some writing hacks that would make you a professional writer might not be as difficult as you think. In this article, we have put together some hacks that will help you improve the quality of your writing in short order.
The truth is, becoming a professional writer takes practice. Even if you do not consider yourself a masterpiece writer, you convert your thoughts more often than you know. At least, you write emails, you make posts on social media and also make updates on your resume, and who knows your LinkedIn profile. There is a long list of things that you indulge in that requires a lot of texting.
You need to become a professional writer that writes with quality, whether when doing a writing gig or personally texting an acquaintance. In this guide, we have divided this professional writing hack into three parts:
- Giving your writing a structure.
- Writing with confidence.
- Making your writing more conversational.
Without further mouthing, let us delve into our professional writing tutorial.
Giving Your Writing A Structure
Here are some tips that will help you write an article in a very structured way. At least, with this detailed guide, you would be able to put out your thoughts in a very organised way. Here are some tips.
- Ensure you are concise on the concepts that you are writing about:
According to a very popular quote by Albert Einstein, “If you don’t know how to explain it to a 6-year-old, you do not understand it yourself.” Before you starting writing a piece, you need to take a moment to see if you can explain the concept you want to write about to a 6-year-old.
If the aim of your writing is to communicate an idea to a particular audience, ask yourself if they can grasp the idea easily upon reading your masterpiece. Before you start to write an article, have a clear cut purpose of the idea you want to communicate to your audience, then stick to it.
- If the idea you want to write about is complex, outline it:
It does not cost you too much idea organising to put together a text message, right? But if you were trying to write a complex article that has so many ideological viewpoints, requests and questions, it might require getting them sorted out before you commence writing.
With the aid of an outline, you can be writing time and increase the productivity of your content. Some examples of content that can be complex to write are sales copies, product review articles, or articles SEO practices stipulate that they should be written as long-form content.
- Anticipate the questions of your audience:
Another best approach for writing professionally is to anticipate the questions that our readers ask. In SEO, this is usually known as search intent. If you want your article to be found on the search engine, you should anticipate the kind of queries your audience would make.
Your audience needs to have enough context to grasp the content that you have written for them fully.
- Infuse your personality into your writing:
Whenever you allow your personality to shine through your content, it will give your work a unique style. Endeavour to make use of phrases and slang that you would normally use when verbally communicating. This is one of the best ways to avoid plagiarism in writing.
You can go as far as throwing in some personal anecdote into your literary piece (professional writers do that a lot). Here is the most important hack for wannabe professional writers; “be yourself”.
Writing With Confidence
This is the third part of this professional writing guide. Sometimes, it is better to write the way we talk. This will help your content to be informative and purely conversational. I’m not talking about using slurs and making excessively wordy sentences. We are talking about writing articles that make your literature piece sound like you are full of conviction.
Here are a few practical guides to starting practising to become a confident writer.
- Go easy on the prepositional phrases:
Prepositional phrases are grammatical elements that contribute to our writing by making them wordy and complex. The truth is, it is not difficult to understand prepositional phrases, but most times, the concept that we are trying to communicate do not need explanation.
You can give your writing the much-needed clarity boost by avoiding prepositions. If you have insight on using them, find some smart prepositions that can be simplified, then use them in your write up.
- Avoid filler words and phrases:
You would agree that some words will always show up in your writing all the time, and yet they contribute less to your content. Although, most of the time, these phrases and words add meaning and colour to your content. But the majority of the time, all they do is add clutter to your articles.
- Do not pad words that are weak with adverbs:
Adverbs can be defined as words that usually end with –ly. They are used to modify adjectives and verbs. It is okay to use them once in a while, but if they become habitual, you will find yourself making weak word choices.
So, exempli gratia, instead of ran fast, write “sprinted” instead. Was the bone straight hair “extremely funny”? Nope, use “hilarious” instead.
Making Your Article Writing To Be More Conversational
- Use simple words:
According to best selling author John Grisham, there are three types of words: the ones we know, the ones we should know and the words that nobody knows.
Always try to forget about the third type of words that John Grisham talked about. There is a thin line between having an article with rich vocab and hard words that are just for show off. You can make use of hard words if you plan on being very poetic. Other than that, try to keep the communication lines direct and simple.
- Make good use of contractions:
Some examples of contractions include: they’re, can’t, didn’t, etc. If you do not make use of contractions in your articles, your articles would appear to be stiff and formal without them.
- Try to transcribe yourself when writing:
Have you ever tried to record yourself when you are talking? A writer can go pro by just implementing this simple hack. You can even turn out to be one of the best conversational writers out there.
In practice, try to transcribe a conversation that you recorded. Try this word-for-word, removing false starts and fillers like um, uh, you know, etc. With this hack, you would be able to get started with conversational writing.
With the process of transcribing already transcribed audio, you can pick up some writing principles and learn some of what you ought and ought not to do as a professional writer.
- Throw away your grammar rule book:
Professional writers sometimes like to start sentences with conjunctions. Unless you are writing a formal article, you are at liberty to start a sentence with “and”. Also, in informal articles, feel free to end sentences with a preposition.
- Write simple sentences:
Professional writers can write complex and long sentences with flair, but they don’t make the most out of it. That’s because they are professionals. When you write short and less complex sentences, your content will be easier to read. You can vary your sentence length if you wish, but make sure that it has meaning and a nice flow.
- Read it out loud:
Speaking of writing flow, reading your content aloud is a hack that can help you to know whether it has a nice flow. If it sounds stuffy, then you can reduce the length of some sentences. However, if it sounds choppy, then you can go on ahead and add some long sentences to the write-up.
- Do not over-explain everything in your content:
If you have taken the pleasure to put your thoughts in order, then you should be able to write articles in simplicity and clarity.
The idea here is to give your readers just enough text to understand you without having to bore you. If you discover that you are getting into a lot of unclear thought patterns with too many details than your need, look at the information in the article and ask yourself whether it is enough to make your audience understand your message. If it is not, simply get rid of that overwhelming chunk of text in your article.