9 Ways You Can Improve Your Creative Writing Skills
Creative Writing Skills
No matter how far you get and what you become, there is always room for improvement.
Especially in creative writing skills, there is always something new that you can learn and practice.
You can learn new words, idioms, phrases, and expressions. You can also always work on your style and tone to make it better.
In this post, we are looking at 9 different ways in which you can improve your creative writing ability.
- Perfect Your Grammar
- Increase Your Vocabulary
- Learn to Write for Humans
- Get in the Habit of Planning Ahead
- Practice Using New Words
- Don’t Beat Around the Bush
- Keep Everything Short and Sweet
- Pick the Right Tools
- Check, Check and Check
1. Perfect Your Grammar
The first thing that should be on your checklist to improve your writing skills is perfecting your grammar.
Even if some other aspect of your writing is lacking (e.g., engagement, delivery), it won’t have that much of a damaging effect on your reputation as an author.
But, if there are some glaring grammatical errors or tense mistakes, it can quickly crumble the integrity of your content.
If you don’t know about the basic and rudimentary rules of grammar, try taking a crash course. There are many of these that you can find online.
But, if you are acquainted with the elementary stuff, and are trying to increase your knowledge on the more subtle grammatical elements, try using a dedicated tool instead.
Websites like Grammarly can be a great way to perfect your grammar since they can, apart from pointing out your errors, also tell you the reason and logic behind them.
2. Increase Your Vocabulary
While no one likes to hear a writer show off their vocabulary, there’s nothing wrong with adding a few snazzy words here and there.
You should keep a stock of some advanced and fancy-sounding words to use in your content.
Mind you, don’t overdo it. Keep it nice and subtle. Remember, with fancy words, the rule is: subtle is enjoyable.
Coming to how you can increase your vocabulary, there are different ways that you can try. One of the most effective ones, however, is to use a paraphrasing app.
Paraphrasers, in general, work by replacing certain words in the text with synonyms. To learn new words, you can enter any of your old content in a paraphrasing tool.
Once it complete paraphrasing, compare it with the original one.
You will then be able to see which words the tool has changed, and the synonyms it has used in their place.
3. Learn to Write for Humans
When you start as a writer, it feels natural to introduce complex and seldom-heard words in your content.
You could also be inclined to come up with twisted and complicated sentence structures just to show how comfortable you are with…linguistics.
But, here’s the bitter truth: no one wants to hear stuff like that.
As a writer, you should aim to make the audience comfortable and at ease with your content.
Using complex words may make you feel like an intellectual and a polymath, but it can make the reader feel undermined or belittled.
Be conversational. Write as if you are talking to a friend.
4. Get in the Habit of Planning Ahead
Sure, it sounds impressive if a writer can come up with some brilliant content on the spot without any prior planning.
But, creating a roadmap for your content beforehand can it make it look professional and well-organized.
If you want to write something, take some time and come up with an outline of the topics that you want to include.
Then, do your research and get reliable stats from authoritative websites. Giving links to the original sources is, by the way, a great way to increase the credibility of your content.
5. Practice Using New Words
Learning new words is not enough. You should also see the instances where they are suitable as well as their connotations.
Take an example.
‘Deracinate’ is a synonym of ‘Eliminate’. However, ‘Deracination’ is used in the sense of uprooting whereas ‘elimination’ has a more neutral and broader connotation.
We can say, for example, that the issues in the content have been eliminated, but it won’t sound right if we say that they have been deracinated.
It would be a tad bit too dramatic.
So, it is important to understand the connotations and the sense in which a particular word is used.
That can be done by repeatedly practicing using the new words and using them in your sentences.
6. Don’t Beat Around the Bush
There are some instances in creative writing when you have to beat around the bush a little e.g., in copywriting and promotional content, etc.
But, if your content is educational or if it is being written to answer a specific question, then there should be little to no delay in getting to the point.
If you are, say, writing a post on ‘How to Debug Your Website’, you don’t want to make your readers wait for 10 minutes by first explaining what the internet is and what websites are.
People know that much. You should start off directly with the point at hand.
If you want to give some background info, you can do it after giving the answer/solution.
And even then, you should not treat your readers like pre-school kids. Don’t tell them what they already know.
7. Keep Everything Short and Sweet
When we talk about keeping the content short, it does not apply only to paragraph length. It also applies to sentence length.
We could, for the purpose of giving you an example, make this sentence so big that it could get difficult for you to follow it along until it comes to a close at the end of the paragraph.
Or we could keep it simple. And give you an example this way. By keeping our sentences short. And easy to read. And as you can see, it does not give you as much trouble to peruse.
Now, both the above paragraphs are more or less the same length. But you can see quite clearly which one of them is more reader-friendly.
8. Pick the Right Tools
Contrary to what some people may think, using assistive tools for writing content does not detract in any way from a writer’s level of skill and ability.
Having the right tools to work with is very important. If you feel like you are not doing well with your content, it could be due to using old and outdated tools.
For professional writers, there are three types of tools that are essential for coming up with quality content:
- Pre-writing tools
- Writing tools (…for actually coming up with the content)
- Post-writing tools
Pre-writing tools can be classified as the apps and software that help a writer come up with ideas, topics, guidelines, and keywords (if we are talking about SEO).
The actual writing tools mainly consist of text editors. In other words, they are the tools that enable a writer to create the content by writing down the words and sentences.
When it comes to text editors, you can either use them on the web or download them on your device.
Using an online text editor can be a good choice for users who don’t wish to go through any downloading processes or payment rigmaroles.
Another benefit, while we are on it, is that online text editors can (in usual cases) save your files on their cloud storage and save you from the worry of keeping them in your storage.
And finally, the post-writing tools are the apps that help you polish and perfect your content after you’re done writing it e.g., grammar and readability checkers.
9. Check, Check and Check
Your job as a creative writer does not end once your content is complete.
Checking and proofreading the content after you’re done writing it is of paramount importance.
We did, way back in the first heading, discuss how grammatical errors can be detrimental to the overall quality of your writing.
Well, merely being careful during the writing phase is not enough for avoiding errors and mistakes. We’re human. Mistakes happen.
However, letting those mistakes and errors by is not something you can afford to do.
Conclusion
And there you have it.
These were some of the ways in which you can improve your skill and capability as a creative writer.
Try acting on these tips as much as you can and with as much time as you can afford to spend on them.
And remember: progress is not always linear. Don’t worry if you don’t feel a drastic improvement in your writing.
