A Lesson All Writers Need and a Video to Improve Your Writing

Techniques to expand your success and hone your craft

You work on marketing. You publish regularly. You self-edit until your fingers bleed.

And you’re getting nowhere near the audience response you hoped for.

It’s eating away at your self-esteem and demolishing your motivation to write.

And guess what?

I’m also a club member of the “I don’t know what I’m doing wrong” tribe.

But I’ve got an idea I think might help us both.

And it’s one word.

Experiment.

Experiment with topics (or even combine them)

If you’ve written enough, you’ve probably aware of the topics you write about that make your bank account sing a little louder.

Maybe it’s relationships. Maybe it’s technology. Maybe it’s self-help.

Try shaking things up a bit and experimenting.

For instance, if you usually write about parenting, try a related topic like relationships.

Think of how many relationship articles you can write based on your parenting experience.

Here are some examples.

• How to make time for romance(or dating) when you’re low on time and energy
• How physical and emotional burnout can impact your relationship with your partner
• How lack of self-care can damage your relationships

Of course, I’m assuming parenting leaves you with time constraints, burnout, and little to no time for meditation, long baths, or yoga. If it doesn’t, send me your tips. I need them desperately.

Other easy topic switches to try are moving from psychology to self-improvement, physical fitness to health, or art to creativity.

You can also go rogue and write about topics totally out of your wheelhouse.

What can it hurt?

It can’t hurt.

At best, you grow a more diverse following, a larger audience, and a lot more earning potential.

At worst, you realize you can’t write successfully about specific topics, and you simply revert back to your “money maker” subject matter.

No harm, no foul.

Experiment with voice

Voice is the persona you create for your audience.

The New York Times explains voice in the following way:

“A writer’s voice is the way his or her personality comes through on the page, via everything from word choice and sentence structure to tone and punctuation.”

The words you use, the sentences you write, and the emotions you appeal to are critical to creating a voice that attracts readers.

So experiment by varying these elements.

Word choice

For example, if you use academic language to teach your audience a lesson, try more using more conversational language. Talk like you’re speaking to a friend sharing advice instead of an academic trying to give a lecture.

Experiment with tone

Master Class defines tone. They state:

“In literary terms, tone typically refers to the mood implied by an author’s word choice and the way that the text can make a reader feel.”

And believe it or not, you can get across your point using a variety of different emotions in the reader.

Think about it like I do as a teacher trying to teach her class of students. Some are only motivated by fear. Some are only inspired by encouragement. Some are reached by simply being sympathetic to their struggles.

And as a writer, you should experiment with tone to increase your audience reach.

Example:

You write an article on how to lose weight. You could try writing one article in an inspirational tone, explaining your tips on shedding the pounds while reminding readers things like they can do it, that losing the weight will improve their relationships, and that reaching their goal weight will transform their lives in wonderful ways.

Or you could vary the tone by writing an article on losing weight more urgently. This might involve warning your audience that unless they lose weight, their relationships will suffer, their job performance will decrease, and their very lives will be in danger.

Here’s a list of tone words from Junior Historians. I give it to my writing students when we discuss tone. I love that the tones are separated into categories to make changing them easier.

Take a look. Play around. See which approaches get the best results.

It’s especially effective to use a variety of tones when you write on a niche topic.

Why?

Sometimes an audience needs for you to use a variety of tones because they need different “people” at different times.

For example, at any given moment, your readers might need a shoulder to cry on, a cheerleader to pump them up, or a good swift kick in the you-know-what.

So try a few different tones and see what happens. If you do, you’ll learn more about who your audience is, what they need from you, and what techniques motivate them the most.

The bottom line:

Author Elizabeth Gilbert states:

“Part of the elasticity that you need in order to continue to try to create, is the foregone conclusion that not all of it is going to be fabulously effective. But it’s all going to be a part of a long lifetime body of experimentation.”

Suppose you never play around with all of the different ways you can reach an audience. In that case, you’re losing a chance to grow as a writer, increase your audience, and achieve a larger paycheck.

They say that “variety is the spice of life, right?

Well, sprinkle the pepper, salt, and seasoning packet on your writing-on what you write, how you write, and who you are when you write.

See what happens. You might find the spice shelf was just what you needed.

Oh, and by the way, here’s that video I mentioned. I hope it helps.

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