How to Write Effectively
by Kelly
Knowing how to write effectively is a pretty useful skill — sharpening your prose can improve your performance at work, increase readership on your blog, or just impress friends and family. You don’t have to be a professional writer to hone this skill, and there are several easy ways of doing so!
- Be clear, coherent, and succinct. The best writing is straightforward and articulate. Writers like Albert Camus, for example, don’t bother too much with flowery adjectives, yet turn out excellent literature nonetheless. Remember that quality is valued over quantity.
- Use spell check and edit your grammar. Nothing screams “sloppy writing” more than typos and shoddy grammar. This is easy to fix, however! Keep a dictionary on hand (or use the internet), spell check, proof-read, and so on. Never, ever turn in a paper or hit publish on your blog unless you’ve given the post several read-overs. Believe me, even the strictest grammar nut misses the occasional misspelling. Your readers won’t.
- Be passionate. If you aren’t interested in what you’re writing, chances are your reader won’t either. Granted, if your writing a proposal for work or a philosophy paper for school, the subject matter may be hard to get excited over. Yet there are ways to get around this: approach the paper creatively, switch up the format, or use nifty word choice.
- Use powerful language. In literature, there are boring words that get overused. For example, during dialogue, there’s a lot of “he said,” “she said”. Why not use “he exclaimed” or “she announced”? Or, instead of “He ran towards…” you could write “He sprinted…” or “He ambled…” In these instances, you are simply using a more nuanced word, which gives your sentence a little more jazz and more meaning to the reader. But at the same time…
- Put down the thesaurus and pick up a novel! If you are relying heavily on a thesaurus, you’re probably using words incorrectly. Believe me, the way to learn new vocabulary is to read voraciously. The best advice I can give to improve your writing is to read books. Case in point, I was editing my younger brother’s college essay, when I noticed he was using several five dollar words completely out of context. I asked my brother to sit down and rewrite those sentences in his own words. The result? A completely clear and authentic piece of writing! You don’t have to sound like Shakespeare to be a good writer. The best writers use their own voice and stick to the limits of their own vocabulary. Keep the thesaurus for inspiration, nothing more.
- Show not tell. This is pretty middle school advice, but at the same time it bears repeating. When your prose becomes too dry, look for ways to show the action and create drama without creating a laundry list of what’s going on. Create an interesting dialogue or take a paragraph to describe the setting. Explain emotions rather than actions. This will serve to keep your writing both engaging and unique.
Things to Avoid
- Typos, misspelling, bad grammar.
- Excessive cliches.
- Too much slang (unless it’s in dialogue, and even then, use moderately).
- Re-using the same fancy words over and over…believe me, your readers will notice.
- Writing in a dialect. This is very hard to pull off, and some of the very few novels that do are Clockwork Orange and Trainspotting. Unless you know you can pull this off, please avoid. Nothing is worse than attempting to dissect a fake accent…on paper.
Don’t Be Afraid to…
- Swear (again, use moderation, but at the right moments swearing can be appropriate).
- Start a blog, submit your writing to a school newspaper or a community literature magazine, create a zine. Get your stuff out there, try to get published! You don’t have anything to lose.
Tools of the Trade:
- On Writing by Stephen King
- The Elements of Style by Strunk & White
- a nice pen/journal to get your juices flowing
Do you have any tips to write more effectively? Please share them!
- Dollface
Gah! “He said”/”She Said” vs. “He/She exclaimed” is so frustrating to me. I’ve had several teachers mark me down for writing “said” instead of other words. And, I’ve sat through class long lectures about why a person should use “said” instead of those other colorful words.
@ Jackie — Yeah, I know what you mean. I tend to go for more “exciting” words, but sometimes you just gotta stick to basics. These are my tips but by no means are they the definite “rule” to go by. Thanks for commenting!
King and I agree that “said” is most often the way to go. If you have to write “she exclaimed” to get your point across, then you haven’t done an effective job of letting the reader know that she was excited enough to bother exclaiming.
However, what I frequently do rather than rely on dialogue tags like “she said”, is use action beats. Just dialogue, followed by action.
“Blah-de-blah.” He paced across the carpet precisely, four steps to the left, about face, four steps back. If he paused, it was on the second step, never on the first or third, never a beat off center stage.
So what you’re getting is the important stuff — the dialogue — followed by a visual representation of HOW he’s saying it. Showing, not telling.
Sonya, that is a great example. Very solid advice :)