Write ‘blind’ with this tips
Author: Sneha | March 15, 2018
You may not be a professional writer. Yet no matter what type of profession you are in, chances are you will need to write something on a professional level at one time or another.
#1 Know Your Audience
For any type of writing, from resumes to posts, the first thing you need to do is identify your audience; the people who will read your work. The audience for a sales letter from your company or client is much different from the audience for a blog post like this or a children’s story. The audience you’re writing for will determine the tone, style, and even the subject matter of your material.
Before you start to write, make a few notes about your intended audience. This will help you make sure that what you write will appeal to this audience and will fit their needs and wants. If you’re writing for children, for example, knowing the age range for the children you’re writing for will help you make sure your story or nonfiction piece is age-appropriate for your readers.
#2 Know Your Purpose for Writing
Besides knowing the audience you are writing for, you should also identify your purpose for writing for this audience. If you identify your purpose upfront, you’ll be able to keep your writing tightly focused on that purpose. You’ll also be able to guide your readers to taking any action you might want them to take.
Make a few notes as to the purpose of whatever it is you’re going to write. You’ll be more likely to fulfill this purpose if you take time to become very aware of it before you start writing.
#3 Plan Before You Write
Planning is actually a separate step in the writing process. Yet many people try to do the planning and the writing all in one step. Then they tend to get frustrated because the writing takes too long or is too difficult to do. If you plan what you will write before you sit down to actually write it, the writing will be much faster and easier. Plus, your overall writing will be much better. Planning what you need to write can be an enjoyable step in the writing process.
#4 Decide on Structure
As you’re planning your post, decide on the best structure for it. That is, create a way to best organize the information you will be writing about. If you create a structure for your project as you’re planning your writing, this structure will provide you with a blueprint for your project. With the blueprint in place, all you’ll need to do to complete the project when you sit down to write is follow the blueprint.
A good article usually starts with a catchy title, followed by a “hook” sentence (called the lead), which is part of an introductory paragraph that pulls in the reader. This paragraph is followed by the body of the article, which covers the main points of the piece, and the article ends with a concluding paragraph.
If you’re unsure as to how you should structure the content you need to write, study something similar. Make note of how it was structured. The same structure might work well for your content. Many writers find that once they have decided how they will structure or organize their article, story, report, etc., the material seems to write itself.
#5 Write Simply
For the most part, the best writing is easy to read and easy to understand. Try to write simply. Avoid obscure vocabulary in most of your writing. Make sure your article can be best understood by a tenth grade student. Only use technical jargon when you have first identified your audience, so you know they will understand it without extensive explanations. Vary your sentence length. Use many short sentences with a few longer sentences mixed in each paragraph. Be sure your sentences “pull” the reader through the text in a logical order.
#6 Use Online Resources to Get Started
The Internet is full of great resources. If you can’t seem to get started on a particular writing project, go online to locate a few samples to use as templates or patterns for your own writing. For example, if you need to write a resume, go to www.google.com and type in “resume templates” in the search engine window. Sites with a variety of resume templates will pop up. If you need to write a business letter but you aren’t quite sure how to organize it, then google “how to write a business letter” and you’ll find many articles that will include samples of business letters. Samples and templates are used by professional writers all the time, although they may change the templates somewhat to suit their needs. Eventually, you’ll be able to do that, too.
#7 Use Active Voice
Active voice tends to make the writing more engaging and immediate for the reader. To give your material an active voice, stick to basic simple sentence structure for the most part. Start your sentences with a noun or pronoun, followed by a verb and then the object of that verb.
Like this:
Also use simple verb forms. Instead of writing, “he would sweep the porch every morning,” write, “he swept the porch every morning.”
Avoid beginning too many sentences with a participle phrase (generally a verb that ends in -ing). Here’s an example of a sentence starting with a participle phrase:
Crossing the street and walking toward the park, Mary hurried to her job.
It isn’t incorrect to begin a sentence with a participle phrase. It just slows down the reader (making your material less active) if too many sentences on a page begin this way.
Tip #8 Use Precise Verbs
Precise verbs help readers create clearer mental images of the information you are trying to convey. For example, “he stomped over to the coffeepot” is much clearer and less clunky than saying, “he angrily walked over to the coffeepot.”
Here are some simple verbs, along with more precise counterparts:
Verb Precise Verb
Ran Raced, streaked, charged
Talked Chatted, discussed, debated
Sat Plopped, Flopped, plunked
#9 Use Precise Nouns
It may take a bit longer to come up with a noun that tells your reader precisely what you are describing. But just like precise verbs, precise nouns make your writing stronger and they enable the reader to get a clearer, more accurate mental image of what you’re trying to convey. For example, a brown ball could mean any number of things, but a meatball gives a very specific image to the reader.
#10 Watch for Words You Tend to Overuse
Most writers have a few key phrases or words they tend to overuse. When you’ve finished writing a chapter of a novel, or a nonfiction article, etc., go back over your work, looking for the specific words you tend to overuse. Consult a thesaurus and change some of these words to other words that have the same meaning.
#11 Write Tight
Writing tight means making every word count. To write tight, eliminate any unnecessary words. Why say, “he nodded his head”, for example, when all you need to say is, “he nodded”, (because what else would he nod but his head?).
Wordy Tight
shrugged his shoulders shrugged
said softly whispered
#12 Proof Your Work
Before you send your work out to your intended readers, proof it one last time. Check for spelling mistakes, punctuation and grammatical errors, and general typos.
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