A wise man once said “a blank page has more value when compared to a filled one” yet what to write on that blank page is the real question. Writing is very intimidating for many people if they write professionally. The fear of being criticised and the fear of their content being rejected by the client or the reader makes it difficult for the writer to be creative and consistent.
Many people give up their writing career just because it becomes difficult for them to provide the reader with the content that they deserve. But the good news is, writing doesn’t have to be an agonizing and fearful experience.
You might suffer from dreadful conditions like writer’s block or might not be able to come up with a new approach while writing an article with a common niche. These kinds of things push any writer towards failure and quitting.
There are routines and skill honing techniques that you can regularly practice to make your writing skills formidably amazing and reader-friendly. We are here to guide you through the process and help you master the skill of writing by using 8 effective writing skills that every writer must know.
Here are the 8 skills you must know as a writer
Polish your vocabulary
Any writer is generally known by how well he/she uses their vernacular to make their sentences stand out and give their content a more professional tint. There are writers like Dr. Shashi Tharoor who is known for his bewildering and stunning vocabulary. ‘Limpid’ which means Clear or ‘perspicacity’ which means shrewdness are the kind of words that he has provided to revolutionise the English language.
When you possess a good vocabulary there is no topic, no agenda, no approach that you cannot write on. Reading a handful of new words and applying them in sentences everyday will help you to achieve an impressive and mesmerising vocabulary. It doesn’t mean that you need fancy words. The basic idea behind it is that the reader must get the idea behind what you want to convey.
Freewriting
While writing about anything, generally writers use their first draft as their final draft leaving a gigantic margin of upgrading and reforming. Freewriting is the technique that provides you with chances to improve your article by a mile.
Writing freely without worrying about the grammar, punctuation and spelling mistakes for ten to fifteen minutes will bestow you with three to four different visions of the same topic that you are writing on.
This will help you to increase your range and will also help you forge an article that is cultivated and masterful. You can use an approach from one article and vocabulary from another or mix and match till you feel like it is perfect and ready to be shared with the rest of the world.
Word mapping
Word mapping or clustering is the technique that helps a writer to get new ideas and approaches in the most efficient way. When you take the main word out of the topic and write more related words to it around the main word it forms a cluster of content.
This stock of ideas will help you to be consistent and dodge the fearful phenomenon we know as writer’s block. This will make an outline of the article and create a specified ladder that you can climb easily to create the best content possible related to that particular topic.
Understand what reader wants
A writer generally fails because of not understanding what his audience is expecting from him. His creative side might create a barricade to maintain a certain level of integrity and class that he thinks is the most profound way of writing.
This mistake costs many writers a fortune. But, when you write with the perspective of a reader your approach changes drastically and the words that you use, the technique that you use for sentence formation and the core thinking process, changes on a colossal level.
A writer’s job is to satisfy the reader and understanding the reader’s perspective plays a vital role in him/her becoming successful.
Know your product
As a professional writer you will be asked to write about certain products in order to sell them online. It becomes extremely important for you to know about the pros and cons of that product. If you know the pros, then you can easily sell them and likewise can hide the cons of it to execute the selling in the most efficient way. Balancing features with benefits can go a long way for you as a professional copywriter.
Revising
The macro changes that you need to make will fall under the revising process. Adding material, removing it or rearranging it falls under revising the article. This will make you satisfied with the tone and pace of the article and these substantial changes will improve the article drastically.
Editing
Pressing that backspace button after working hard on an article can cause an ache in a writer’s heart, but as painful as this is, it has a huge impact on any article. Revising to find mistakes and editing accordingly can change the course of an article’s future on a major level.
Reading between the lines to find the slightest of mistakes and correcting them accordingly is a professional’s approach. Considering the sentence’s efficiency and impact, correcting errors like grammatical mistakes, punctuations and spelling mistakes will help you achieve many milestones as a writer.
Proofreading
Proofreading is the final step and the most significant skill that you need to master. It is very similar to editing, but it forces you to dive into more detail and ensure that your piece is ready for anyone and everyone. Formatting the article, using appropriate fonts and revising every other detail will help you to create the best version of any article.
Wrapping up
Here we have to understand how important it is to master the 8 skills mentioned above to create an article worthy of reading. A successful writer will always follow these steps and create a relationship with the reader through his words.
