Five Down and Dirty Ways to Improve the Things You Write

Contrary to what some people may believe, writing is not a talent: it's a skill. Talents come naturally. They're a part of the deal from day one, encoded in your genes just as sure as that tooth gap and your freckles. (And yes, I do realize neither of those things are necessarily genetic, but shhhh.) Skills, on the other hand, can be acquired; refined; built. 

So if you weren't born spouting prose as elegant and well-crafted as a Dickinson prose poem, fear not: you can still be a great writer. Even if all you want to do is turn out more consistently amusing grocery lists, or really wow your significant other with a handmade Valentine's day card, there are a few things you can do to make yourself a better writer.

This just ain't gonna cut it this year, Romeo.

Now, a few of the more obvious ways, everybody already knows by now (or at least you should, if you've looked into the matter at all): read more, write more, practice, observe. These are the basics. 

But today, I don't want to talk about the basics. I want to talk about quick, almost cheater-y tips, to help your writing improve. So here they are, the top five tricks to level-up your writing:

#5: Do your research.

It doesn't matter if you're writing a query letter, a love letter, or a resume: before you can write your own, you need to know the medium. Look up resume formats. Spend some time on Query Shark, figuring out how a fiction query should look. Ask friends and family if they've ever received a love letter, and whether it was sufficiently romantic. Take this opportunity to learn from others' mistakes, and get a handle on the fundamentals.

#4: Make it your own.

Practically the whole point of writing is to communicate something about yourself, right? (Even if all you're communicating is that you want bananas and milk) One of the best ways to make your writing sing is to put your own personality into it. Stated another way, one of the fastest ways to make your writing flop is to copy someone else, or just write words that you think are "supposed" to be said, rather than saying what you actually want to say. For example, don't tell your love-note-recipient that her eyes are "blue as the sky." That's lazy writing. Instead, take some time and actually think about her eyes. What color are they, really? Maybe they're really the color of your first car, a '98 Honda Civic with one headlight and gum stuck in the bottom of the cupholders, but damn, you loved that car, you never felt more free in your life than when you were driving that car, and that's how she makes you feel. 

At first glance, telling your girlfriend her eyes are "blue as the sky" might seem like a better bet than saying they're the color of low-end four-door, but trust me. If she's a keeper, she'll appreciate a genuine thought way more than a pre-packaged cliche. And anyway, this post is about how to write better, not how to get more dates. Sheesh.

#3. Use fewer words.

This happens in your second draft. Your first draft is just you, telling the truth about you in original, authentic language. On your resume, though, this might mean you end up with a 200-word description of that job you had at a summer camp, and this is probably not your best bet. On your second draft, your job is to go back and cut every word you possibly can. Just shave that sucker down to the bone. Pretend you're Hemingway. Pretend you're on a sinking ship and each word is a 50-pound weight you're hauling over the side. 

This, clearly, is an area in which I could use improvement. If I ever went back and re-drafted these posts, they would probably end up about 40% shorter, and with 90% fewer typos. 

Whether you're drafting a resume or an email asking for the week off so you can fly to Jamaica with your boyfriend, every word counts. Each word should be important enough to merit its 50 pounds. Don't throw the words around: respect them, value them, and they'll work hard for you.

#2. Let it sit.

No matter how many times you revise something over the course of an afternoon, there will still be mistakes and places you could improve. We develop a kind of blindness to things we're creating, sometimes, and we become the last person alive qualified to tell if it's actually any good or not. Some of the things I've written, I wanted to throw out as soon as they were done; I hated them, and hated myself for being incompetent enough to produce them. But I let them sit, and in a week or a month I come back, and I realize, "Hey, this is actually good." 

Or, more often, the reverse of that.

After you've drafted, revised, trimmed the words, put it away for at least two days, preferably a week--longer, if it's a longer piece. When its done simmering in its own word-juices, pull it back out and read it out loud. Better yet, have a friend read it to you. This will help you track down any lingering unnecessary words, or destroy any lazy language, or smooth out pacing issues.


#1. Know when to break the rules.

This is possibly the best tip I can give you, and also the hardest to explain. Good writing can break major rules of convention, format, or style, yet still be engaging and effective for its purpose. If you know the medium, you know the rules, and you break those rules in some purposeful, meaningful way, you can make yourself stand out. But this is a bit like choosing to print your resume out in neon purple ink: it might make you stand out, but not necessarily in a good way. Greatness means taking risks, though, so go ahead and e.e. cummings the heck out of your sentence structure and punctuation, or pull a Joyce Carol Oates all over your resume--if you have a reason, and confidence that you can pull it off.

Of course, these five tips can't replace the fundamentals of improving as a writer: reading widely and often, and writing daily. Do that, and you won't need shortcuts to trick people into thinking you're a better writer: you will BE a better writer.