The Top 2 Best Ways To Be a Better Writer
Not clickbait, seriously. These 2 things will make you a better writer.
You may think this is clickbait, but it’s not.
I have been a writer my entire life. I have a shelf of journals I started as a kid and wrote stories and poems and songs, and then I started blogging online around 2001-ish on LiveJournal before moving to Blogspot, WordPress, and eventually Medium.
I’ve spent the last 3 years as a paid writer, where I have really settled into a specialty in editing books for other writers — my favorite thing to do!
I absolutely love diving into a manuscript and helping an author polish and reword and make their book stronger.
I am constantly on a quest to improve my own writing and that of others.
The 2 things you can do to become a better writer right now are:
- Practice.
- Read more.
Truly.
Writing is a skill — much like singing, art, and playing an instrument. Sure, some level of natural talent exists, but with enough practice, anyone can become good at it.
Practicing
You can practice writing in several ways, such as just picking a topic and writing a blog post or writing in a journal, but the BEST way to improve as a writer is to use writing prompts and writing exercises to practice.
Prompts and exercises force you to write within certain parameters, which makes you think differently and more critically about the story.
Here is one of my very favorite writing exercises, which I did NOT include in my new book Concept to Conclusion: How to Write a Book (there are others!) to help you stretch yourself creatively:
PROMPT: Write a short story however you want and then come back and write the SAME story, but from a different character’s perspective. My favorite example of this is how Gregory Maguire wrote Wicked from the wicked witch’s perspective in The Wizard of Oz. Long before it was a huge Broadway show, it was an extremely good book.
Sometimes you’ll see successful series authors adding additional books in an existing series this way. One example is the book Ender’s Shadow by Orson Scott Card; it tells the entire story of Ender’s Game from Bean’s perspective. Another example is author Veronica Roth, who did this with her book Four in the Divergent series.
Writing it from another character’s perspective changes the entire story. Think about what that character knows or doesn’t know that the main character/narrator didn’t (or did).
A great source of writing prompts is r/writingprompts on Reddit, which constantly has new prompts added by users and can be very thought-provoking.
Read More
Reading anything — comic books, novels, the news — expands your world, expands your vocabulary, and helps you learn, which then helps you write better.
You don’t have to start reading for hours each day. You can incorporate it into your life. At night in bed, instead of scrolling through Instagram or Reddit, read instead for 20 minutes. Or listen to an audiobook in the car on the way to work a couple of days each week instead of the radio (or read on the train). Read on the toilet instead of looking at Facebook. Read the news while you eat breakfast or read a book while you have lunch at your desk instead of answering an email.
You don’t have to read a book each day to get the benefits, just try incorporating more reading into your day in small increments throughout the week.
Some big benefits you can get from reading more often are:
- Mental stimulation — reading has been shown to enhance connectivity in your brain, and keeping your brain active can slow down a decline in memory and brain function.
- Stress relief/distraction — losing yourself in a great story can help relieve stress and put your mind at ease.
- Education — you can learn new things.
- Improves concentration — instead of being pulled in a million directions, reading helps you focus on one thing and avoid distractions.
- Entertainment — reading a great story is fun!
- Expands vocabulary — the more you read, the more words you’ll be exposed to and learn.
- Improve critical thinking and analytical skills — when reading and critiquing a story (or solving a mystery before the end of the book!), you’re using critical thinking and analytical skills to decipher the book and the writing. Plus, if you’ve ever dissected the book with friends or in a book club, you’ll think even more critically about the writing.
Truly, writing more often and reading are the best ways to improve your writing skills!
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Check out my book Concept to Conclusion: How to Write a Book and learn how to conceptualize, outline, write, publish, and market a nonfiction book. Or check out my newest release, an anxiety journal: But…what if? A Journal For Anxious People.
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