How to Improve Writing Skills and Write Like a Pro

Good writing skill demands extensive practice and patience. Though the skill itself is not a rocket science, it can’t be achieved overnight. Good command of the language is a must. You can kick off learning the skill when you have good a grasp of the language. To begin with, develop a smart approach to polish the language and practice writing. Overall, a person needs good determination to stick to his goal until his writing gets attention of significant readers. Here are a few steps that you can take to become a professional writer.

Read and observe

What should you read? Select reading materials wisely, and diversify it. Give focus more on a particular type of writing that you want to write. For example, to be a fiction writer, read fiction books more. Diversify reading list with other type of reading materials. Read the matters that you want to write. Pick the works of top writers of your interest to read. As you go through the texts, pay attention to their sentence structure, words use, style and tone.

Write and practice

Practice makes a man perfect – this is one of the secrets of successful writers. Gifted writers also need to polish their skills through regular writing. Make a schedule of writing and compose a minimum number of words per day. You can start with 100 words and the number could be increased as the days go. Don’t know what to write? Select any topic randomly from a top website. Alternatively, you can write, rewrite or paraphrase your selected writers’ texts. By doing this, you can learn their writing style. After a few days you should practice to come up with your own idea to write, because each writer has own creativity.

Brush up grammar and punctuation

If you lack confidence about grammar use, you are not alone. A native speakers also need to polish their grammar. Wrong use of grammar and punctuation will loss quality. Sometimes we tend to forget about white space and other typos. So fix those issues to make sentences more professional. Add some advance grammar books in your bookshelf for quick reference of grammar that you doubt on written sentences.

Understand writing process.

Every writer has their own writing style and tone, but their composing process is almost same. However, general procedure involves research, outline, write, proofread and edit. Learn how to write your first draft, rules to let your words flow, and when to proofread, etc. Educate yourself about the procedure so that you can write like a pro. Understand the hurdles pro writers that they face (like – writers’ block) and how to overcome from the issues.

Understand audience and medium

All of your works will go in vain if you fail to write right matter for right audience in write way. Academic style writing is not suitable for an online newspaper. Similarly, a blog post should not be written in a poetic way. That is why, it is important to understand audience properly and the publishing platform to get maximum reach of an article.

Develop own style and tone

As you read, write and practice, you get more control on writing. After becoming flexible about writing you can start developing your own style and tone. A unique style will let you stand out in the crowd of writers. The more you write, the more you will be popular for your unique style.

Know structure and formats

Each content type, both for online and offline publishing platforms, has its own structure and formats. Know different writing structures like academic, fiction, non-fiction, journalistic and so on. Understand their structure and formats to write content in the right way. In business communication, you need to follow a structure, rules and formats to communicate with your stakeholders effectively. In academic writing, there has some structure about thesis and dissertation writing.

Know effective writing rules

Now you have good practice in writing and you know about right format and structure of an industry. But do you know what makes a sentence effective? Lack of this quality, the written words will be just space filler. If you have written an email to convince your reader to take an action, and the reader does not do it, the texts will be worthless.

Here are some rules to write persuasively

• Apply plain English to convey your message across.

• Learn rhetoric triangle of writing to craft messages in the right way.

• Use AIDA method to structure paragraphs to convince your reader.

Learn to edit

After you compose a first draft, let your words cold for 24 hours. Next day, read like a reader and proofread like an editor. Cut unnecessary words to make sentences more clear and appealing. Check out grammar, spelling and punctuation errors. Care about typos. Let someone else to check your work, if possible use grammar checking tool to make your writing flawless. Learn How to Edit Your Own Writing.

Allow tools

In your writing journey, include some tools that will help you to make sentences perfect and boost your productivity. Here are some worth mentioning tools to include in writing process

Pomodoro – A focus booster technic to remain focused as you write

Grammarly – A paid grammar checking tool make your sentences flawless.

Writers often face ‘Writer's Block’ and procrastination. To overcome from these hurdles, you can set up a writing time and stay away from receiving phone calls and other online notifications in that time. When you start pomodoro counter, say no to social media checking and other mind interrupting matters.

Allocate a particular time to write. Take necessary preparation before you start writing. Draft an outline about what you are going to compose and gather as much information as possible before you start writing. Then let your words flow. In your first draft, do not stop your writing flow for correction, because you can do it later. Subscribe to some writing websites to remain notified about writing tips, tricks, and tools; and for many helpful materials.