How to improve your writing: 9 easy tips
Every writer hits a wall. That moment when you feel you can’t really be a writer. That ugly imposter syndrome, or just plain insecurity.
Whatever the cause, it can be terrifying to think about everything you don’t know. If you want to improve your craft, where do you even start?
Before I started my shift from amateur to professional writer, I was frozen with fear. But I knew I loved to write, and that was the only thing I wanted to do with my life. Everything else felt wrong.
I had to improve. It felt like my very life depended on it.
If you love to write, and you want to get better, here are 9 simple things I did to improve, which you can easily do as well. These 9 steps took me from writing for fun to writing professionally. That doesn’t have to be your goal, but if you want to get better, here’s how you do it.
Before you start
Before you put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard, let’s be honest), there are steps you can take to build your skills and confidence.
Many people will tell you that the way to improve your writing is just to write. This is true to a point. Yes, you need to practice, but if you write without learning any underlying principles, you might be cementing bad habits.
Imagine practicing baseball without learning how to swing a bat. Maybe you’re swinging it right, but most likely, you’re going to whiff during the big game.
Take the time to learn before you jump in, and you’ll thank yourself later.
1. Read books about writing
Reading books in general is a great way to improve your writing, but you’ll make even more progress if you read books about writing. Books that explain the underlying principles of storytelling, or how to unlock your inspiration.
In short, books that tell you how to do the thing you want to do.
Imagine you want to build a rocket ship. Would you go stare at rocket ships that were already built? Or would you read about the underlying principles of physics and how people have built rockets in the past?
“I wouldn’t be a professional writer without the skills I learned in this book.”
A great place to start is Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg. I have recommended this book like a billion times now on this blog, and I’ll keep doing it.
Goldberg not only provides a general philosophy of writing, she breaks it down into individual exercises to improve your style and help writing come more easily. I wouldn’t be a professional writer without the skills I learned in this book.
If you need more books to start you off, check out our video, “books to make you a better writer.”
2. Learn grammar
Not trying to be elitist here, but grammar exists for a reason. The rules of grammar are meant to help you communicate more clearly, not just to annoy you.
Language is your tool. Learn how to use your tools correctly. Once you know the rules, you’ll be able to innovate and bend them, but you have to learn the right way to hold the hammer before building a better one.
A great book for this is The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr, also available in audio book.
If you’re not the type to learn by reading or listening, and you’d rather learn by practice, then take a writing class. By having a teacher edit your work regularly, you’ll learn grammar through feedback.
3. Make time to practice
Natalie Goldberg says it best, “It is odd that we never question the feasibility of a football team practicing long hours for one game; yet in writing we rarely give ourselves the space for practice.”
If you’re feeling intimidated by the big novel you have in mind, give yourself time to practice.
Schedule some time every week to practice your writing. When I say “practice,” I mean do exercises or short writing prompts.
Here are a few things you can do during your practice session to get your pen moving:
Free write. Set a timer for ten minutes and write whatever comes into your head.
Use a writing prompt. You can find these all over the internet, but reedsy.com has contests to help you stay focused and complete the prompts.
Write flash fiction or short poems. Flash fiction is a story only a few hundred words long. If you can tell a story in that length, you can certainly tell a longer story.
The point of these practice sessions is not to create something for publication, although you might come up with an idea you really enjoy. The point is simply to practice your craft.
Give yourself the gift of time to practice. If you’re not sure how to make that time, check out our article: 3 ways to make more time to write.
While you write
Now that we feel prepared, we’ve got to actually do the thing. For most people, this is the scariest part.
If you’re feeling blocked and can’t even bring yourself to sit down and write, check out our 9 Ways to Beat Writer’s Block article.
But if you’re ready and willing to get started and just want to improve, try these three tips while you write.
4. Say dialogue aloud
Stilted, unnatural dialogue can wreck a book that’s otherwise well-written.
When writing speech, say the words aloud as you write or immediately after you write the sentence. This will help you sound more like how people talk and less like a scifi alien trying to infiltrate human organizations.
This isn’t to say that you should write exactly how people speak. That could get annoying because we do a lot of umm’s and ah’s and fillers and pauses that don’t read super well in book form.
But this will keep your dialogue from distracting your reader due to awkwardness.
5. Write with others
If you want to become a better writer, you’ll benefit from joining a writer’s group or simply surrounding yourself with other writers.
This has a few benefits:
You’ll get inspired by others’ ideas
Run your ideas or questions by other people who have probably encountered the same problems
Use social pressure to stay focused on your projects
Whether it’s informally meeting up with your writer friends or joining a more formal writer’s critique group, spending time around writers will improve your writing and keep you inspired.
If you don’t know writers already, MeetUp is a great app to find writer’s groups!
6. Read in your genre
While you’re working on a project, you’ll need to continually refill your inspiration tank. Especially with a long project like a novel, you can’t run all the way to the finish line on your initial burst of steam.
Read books while you write, but specifically, read books in your genre.
You can also engage in other forms of media to keep you inspired, but reading in your genre specifically will help you improve.
So if you’re writing a horror book, grab some of the top-selling horror books of all time. If you’re writing a romcom, check out last month’s bestsellers. This works for whatever genre you’re working in. If you’re writing something that’s a genre crossover, try to find similar books.
To get even more benefit, don’t read passively. Try to figure out how the story works. If a particular section thrills you, or you love one character with all your heart, try and figure out why. What is the author doing that makes it effective?
After the draft
Once you’ve finally finished your first draft, you’ve reached the stage where you have the greatest opportunity to improve.
During the editing stages, you can review what you’ve done and decide what works and what doesn’t. However, staring at your own work can often be both painful and ineffective.
Follow these three steps to get the most out of your editing process.
7. Get beta readers
It’s hard to grade your own work. Often, we worry about small things that don’t matter, while the big mistakes completely elude us.
Avoid this by immediately seeking feedback for your draft from “beta readers.”
Find three people you trust and give them your draft to read through.
If you don’t want your friends or family reading your work, it’s easy to find beta readers on Twitter. Tweet about your book and say you’re looking for beta readers. Use #betareaders to get more visibility.
Should you decide to go to Twitter for a beta reader, make it clear whether you’ll be paying. $20 is considered a good courtesy payment for a reader, but many people will read for free, simply for the pleasure of helping out a fellow writer!
Once you’ve found your readers, ask them to provide their thoughts throughout, but, primarily, you want them to answer the following three questions:
What did they enjoy?
What was confusing?
What did they not enjoy?
I like to frame the questions around joy and confusion, rather than “what was good or bad,” because those kind of value judgments might not only hurt your feelings, but they’ll make your readers nervous. Keeping the conversation around subjective feelings will help the feedback flow more honestly.
8. Edit one thing at a time
I know I promised you nine easy tips… this tip isn’t so easy. At least, it might be easy to execute, but it certainly takes a long time.
If you really want to improve your writing, you need to become a better editor. You won’t do that by just staring at your manuscript over and over.
When you edit, you need to edit for one thing at a time. Having that specific goal in mind as you read through will help you stay focused and improve your manuscript without getting overwhelmed.
Edit for each of these in order, one at a time:
Grammar and spelling. Use spell check and let your word processor do the work for you… although be aware it’s going to miss some stuff.
Consistency. This is a simple fact check. You don’t have to read very closely on this edit round, just look for facts and make sure you’re consistent. Does your redhead always have red hair? Are ages and timeline correct? Keep a word doc or use a story organization app to record all of your facts.
Style. During this editing round, read your sentences for their flow and sound. Are you using the same words too often? Are your sentences too long or too short? Style is one of the hardest aspects of writing to master, but focusing on the feel of your writing during this editing stage will improve you most.
Character Dialogue. Does your dialogue sound natural? Do your characters have distinct voices? Make sure they sound consistently like themselves, not all like you.
Do one last catch-all read-through. Try to read like you would normally: as a reader. I usually save this step until after my beta readers give their feedback, and I’ve revised to include their thoughts.
Give yourself some time between read-through’s if you need it. And you’ll probably need it. If your eyes glaze over and you’re no longer reading the text, that’s not going to be a helpful edit.
Make sure to celebrate after each edit! Editing is hard, so give yourself a reward for making it through.
9. Read it aloud (or have Google read it)
Editing can be hard if you look at the same words on the same screen over and over. To shake up your brain and get a fresh look at your work, read it aloud. Either read it aloud to yourself, or have Google or another online application read it for you.
This might feel time-consuming, but it will pay big dividends. You’ll notice entirely new things and open up new parts of your brain. If you’re not sure if a chapter is working, listen to it aloud and take notes as you go.
Not a great listener? I get it. You can get a similar boost to your editing by changing the format. Pick a different font type and size and print out your work.
Now, it will look fresh to your eyes, and you’ll be able to pick out things you want to change much more easily.
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