Man, time moves fast. It was almost 2 years ago that I wrote my original post giving 10 Writing Tips In Two Minutes. Whereas I want to try to keep the other article in your mind, it also occurred to me that there are more tips that could help people that, though maybe not fitting within 2 minutes, will fit within 3 minutes. At least that’s all the time it would take me to read them. 🙂
With that said let’s get going.
1. Create an outline. Sounds like work but it can really help you keep your focus on whatever you want to write about.
2. If you see a squiggly line underneath certain words, it either means you spelled it wrong or your spell check doesn’t recognize the word. Don’t ignore it; fix it.
3. Always keep a piece of paper or something else you can record on with you so if you have an idea to write about you can note it & come back to it later on.
4. If you have a favorite word you know you always use, after you’ve finished writing go back to see if you’re written it too many times, and if so eliminate some of them.
5. If your writing feels too formal you probably didn’t use any, or many, contractions. Use them; they make you feel real to your audience.
6. If you use large words make sure you’re using them properly. Using them makes you look smart to people who won’t look them up in a dictionary, but if your using them correctly then dabbling in the art of sesquipedalian can be a bit of fun. 🙂
7. Learn how to create paragraphs where the content is related so you’re not putting white space between sentences “just because”. People don’t want to read articles where every sentence is considered a paragraph any more than they want to read paragraphs that go on forever.
8. If you’re describing something, make sure you give enough without going too far. If you write “a guy with brown hair” that could be almost anyone. At the same time, Grisham once wrote 50 pages on how to build a car in the middle of a novel for a one line plot item two chapters later; way too much information.
9. Using things like smiley faces, lol, etc, help people know when you’re not being overly serious. It’s not always easy in short pieces like what shows up on blogs to convey your intent all the time.
10. When you’re done, if you’re not an experienced writer go back, read what you wrote, and verify that you got the proper point across. In an article I wrote for someone else once I wrote 3 words wrong and totally changed the meaning of the entire article. Trust me, it happens to all of us.
So, did it take you only 3 minutes? If it too longer no biggie as long as you got something out of it. Let me know if it helped, or if I need to explain anything further. Enjoy!
