Writing skills are the essential part of the communication. Having great writing skills enables you to convey your message with the clarity to the audience and have a great impact on the audience as compared to the other modes of the communication like face-to-face communication, telephonic communication. The better you write, the more easily readers will understand you. It takes time and a lot of practice needed for writing well. For the effective writing, the sentences will logically and grammatically connect to form an impressive piece of writing. Your writing must be communicative so that it communicates a meaning to the reader. To communicate clearly and effectively we need to learn, practice and apply writing skills.
How to Improve Writing Skills
There are various practices by doing which one can improve his/her writing skills and can able to write in an effective manner. Following are some practices discussed on the effective and communicative writing:
- Crystal Clear Concept: A famous scientist, Albert Einstein said, “If you cannot explain it to a six-year-old, you do not understand it yourself.” Before start writing gives some time to yourself and thinks about the whole concept which you are going to write about. Try to explain the whole matter to that six-year-old child who is present inside your mind and then follow the same pattern in your writing. By doing this, you can write meaningful content which can convey your message to the readers clearly and they are capable of understanding the thing which you want to deliver.
- Sort Out Complex Matter: It does not take too much time to do these pre-writing things; it will nourish your writing skills. If you are going to write the complex message which consists of various angles, questions to the readers or requests then before start writing, arrange all the material in your mind in a well-mannered way so that it will be easy for the readers to understand your thoughts. Also, you will make some quick notes on the whole matter and outline the complex things and sort it out in an excellent way.
- Predict Your Reader’s Question: This is an important step which you should take if you want to write in an effective way. Put yourself in your readers’ shoes and think about the queries of your audience which will strike the reader’s mind after reading your content and clear the all confusions within the same writing so that readers will get the answers of their questions. By doing this you can reward yourself with the satisfactory audience. You should write enough contexts so that they can understand what you have written for them if it does not so then add up more material to make yourself clear.
- Prevent Over-Explanation: It is necessary to prevent the addition of unwanted ideas or over explanations, just add only the important ideas which you want to convey in your context and avoid the overwhelming information on the unimportant things. By adding the unnecessary details into your writing you will bore your readers because everyone spends their time to read a useful thing instead of wasting their time on unwanted things. So, avoid the over-explanation of the unwanted details and make it to the point and simple for the readers.
- Make Limited Use of Prepositional Phrases: Using the excessive prepositions in the contexts make your writing wordy and complex for the reader, so go easy on the prepositional phrases. Excellent usage of prepositions gives the clarity to your context and makes your writing easy for the reader to understand. So practice the usage of prepositions so that you can understand the effective usage and able to put them in the right place and right order.
- Get Rid of Filler Words: There are always some general words in our writing which are grammatically true but in actual, there is no need of that words in the context, these are called filler words or phrases. You have to get rid of these words to make your writing effective and simple and for doing so you have to edit your work after completing it. Don’t hesitate to edit your work. This will help you in making your writing clear, simple and to the point. So, always go through your work after completing it and eliminate the fillers.
- Excessive Use of Adverbs: Adverbs are the words or phrases that modify the meaning of an adjective or verb. These are the words which generally end with ‘-ly’. Try to use the synonyms instead of the adverbs. For instance, if you are writing “ran really fast” instead of it write “sprinted.” Use of adverbs is okay once in a while, but when you find yourself using them all the time, you are probably making weak word choices. So expand your word knowledge and try new words in your writing which make your content shine.
- Use of Simple Words: Generally there are three kinds of words. Firstly, the words we know. Secondly, words we should know and lastly, words nobody knows. So forget about the third type and put your concentration on the second type of words because these are the words which make your writing understandable to your audience. There is a huge difference between the rich vocabulary and dropping million-dollar words into your writing just to show off. Just keep your language simple and direct so that everybody can get your message.
- Use of Contractions: Make the use of contractions in your writing; it looks good when you are using them in your writing unless you are writing something formal. This will make your context beautiful and also make the sentence more conversational. For example instead of “we are going” use, “we’re going.”
- Record Conversations: Try to transcribe your recorded conversations with other people. Record your conversations and then write it up by removing fillers. This will help you to become fine the conversational writer. You can write conversational things in a well-mannered way if you practice this technique. Write the short conversations word-to-word and then edit your work. This will help you to understand the facts like what to do or what not to. This also helps you how to put the conversational feelings into your writing. Also, you can choose any of your favourite movie’s scenes and try to write it down this also helps you in the same way.
- Simple Sentences: In the starting, keep your sentence simple and short this will illustrate your ideas completely. Try not to use complex sentences as complex sentences generally difficult to understand by most of the readers. Try to vary your sentence length this will maintain the reading flow of the readers and make your context interesting. Put your emphasis on the main ideas so that you will stick to the main content and maintain the relevancy throughout the context.
- Reading Your Work Loudly: Yes, read your work loudly so that you can find out that where the flow is breaking and you can edit it by putting longer sentences. Always do this after finishing your work; it really improves your work. You are able to find out your flaws. Once you find them, work on them so that when your work goes public you don’t have to face the disappointment regarding your writing.
- Show Your Personality: To develop a writing style, infuse your personality into your writing. Just use phrases and slang that you use usually in your daily life. This will make your work different from others and shows your personality in the context. But avoid this thing when you are for any formal purpose. Otherwise, just be yourself always when you write. Always use your style, your tone, and your ability to deliver a message in new and interesting ways.
The ability to effectively convey your message and tell your story through the written words is one of the most important skills that you can develop. The more you write, edit, and proofread, the better you get at it. Clear writing means getting to the point as quickly as possible. It’s about knowing what you want to say before you start writing. By following the above-discussed steps you can definitely see changes in your writing skills and by the time you will become a good writer. Nowadays, there are numbers of applications and games by which you can polish your abilities of writing and gain more knowledge like the vocabulary games, word games etc. Keep these steps in mind before your next writing project. Hopefully, these techniques and exercises will improve your writing clarity as well as other writing skills. Moreover, help you to communicate more powerfully and engage your readers.
