How to Improve Your Writing Skills

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Thinking about becoming the next Ernest Hemingway? Or Stephen King? It takes a great deal of practice, planning, experience of the world and talent.

Steps

1. Write down ideas for your writing, subtitles, or even topic. (It's best to do all of this unless you're given a topic!)
   
2. Narrow down your list to important facts and details so you have your set planned.
   
3. Write an outline.
   
4. By now you should have basically your whole story planned. If not: make an additional outline, edit your work, add some brainstorm ideas, or make an idea web.
   
5. You're now ready to start your "sloppy copy," otherwise known as your first draft! Begin by writing down an essay-looking model from which to work.
   
6. Revise your work with another color.
   
7. Edit! Look in the dictionary to check your spelling and look in the thesaurus to vary your word choices and make your written voice more interesting.
   
8. Read your new draft aloud to anyone and accept any feedback. Doing this aloud will just let you know whether it needs some work. If you got ahead of yourself and forgot letters or punctuation, you will immediately realize it. Add any changes in a third color.
   
9. Do your second draft. Do not skip lines. Write in "essay form."
   
10. If you are happy with the essay now, you can turn it in for credit/publishing, after editing for spelling and grammar. If you're not, do steps 6, 7, and 8 again.
    

Tips

• Make a mnemonic device to help you remember things you often forget.
  
• Similes and metaphors are fun to use!
  
• Read books, newspapers, and magazines to help you find interesting facts you could use in your writing.
  
• The info sources are for finding info about a "knowledge essay".
  
• Teachers admire people who work hard instead of racing to finish the essay at the last minute.
  
• If you are going to use a computer, write out your story or essay by hand first, then type it on a computer. Writing by hand prepares you for essay tests. It also encourages very different ways of thinking; computers can tend to make work look more "finished" or "official" than it really is.
  
• Use complete words and sentences. An essay or story is not a chatroom.
  
• Good writers read a lot. Read all the time: magazines, novels, the paper, anything. Reading a wide range of material increases your vocabulary and gives you a sense of what you're trying to achieve.
  
• Just have fun while writing. Writing shouldn't be torture, it is a skill.
  

Warnings

• Be careful to stay on topic. If you are writing about something important, you may find that your main message becomes buried under trivial stuff. This makes editing particularly important. Depending on your topic and form of writing, you may find it helpful to include subtitles. Subtitles may keep you focused and may help readers skip material that they do not necessarily need to read. If you have a habit of going off topic, look at each paragraph. Does the paragraph contain just one main idea? You may have information that is irrelevant or belongs somewhere else in the paper. Also be sure to use transition words. Adverbs such as “however,” “therefore,” and “finally” can make your writing easier to follow and more pleasing to the ear.
  
• Be sure that your writing is well organized! Poorly organized writing may not read well and may even confuse your readers. As you go from paragraph to paragraph, check for cohesion. Try to put your paragraphs into some kind of logical order. Oftentimes, you will do well to save the best for last. In a persuasive essay, try to save your best argument for last. In a feature article, save the most interesting information for the end (or the beginning).
  
• Writing takes patience.
  
• Use synonyms with care. There is no quicker way to sound ignorant than to use a word as the wrong part of speech or in the wrong context. Always look up words in the dictionary and make sure you understand their meaning before using them. Also consider connotations of words and know the importance of good word choice.
  
• Do not plagiarize! Realize that your references are very important in essays. They even lend credibility to your research. If you are writing something for a writing class, you may want to ask your teacher how to cite your references because there are many different styles. Be careful how you use words and phrases from the original text. You may need to use quotation marks around certain words that you borrow from the original, depending on how common the words are.
  

Things You'll Need

• A dictionary
  
• A thesaurus
  
• Lots of paper - legal pads (long-sized & yellow color) work well
  
• Pens (in various colors)
  
• An encyclopedia
  
• Info sources
  
• A writer's guide (optional)
  
• A writing workbook for practice (optional)
  
• A computer (for the final draft)
  
• Reading material (optional)
  

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