How to Improve Writing Skills As a Beginner
1. Write Every Day
One of the best writing tips I can give you is to write every day. You need to practice writing to become a better writer. Can you write about anything? Well, yes, you can.
I own several blogs and write about various topics from parenting tips to pregnancy tips to freelancing tips to budgeting tips.
The fact that I’m writing online content in various topics helps me maintain my writing skill and helps me gain more experience writing for an online audience. As a new writer or freelance writer, it’s probably best to kill two birds with one stone by writing every day in your niche.
This can help you build your writer portfolio and improve your overall writing skill.
Other ways to incorporate writing every day is to write social media posts. If you have a Twitter profile or a Facebook profile, start creating a post a day and write two or three sentences on what you’re promoting or doing.
This can help you with copywriting techniques and paring down your words to fit a social media post.
2. Create an Outline
One of the best ways to improve your writing skill is to create an outline of everything you write.
This is especially true if you land a freelance writing job.
Clients want a coherent and complete post, so having an outline can help make sure you include everything your client wants.
For me, I think about what I want to write about and create subtopics and then other ideas I want to write about. For more help, you can see how other freelance writers and bloggers develop their writing process.
3. Read What You Want to Write About
Okay. Reading can also help with improving your writing skills as many of you know. This is the same for freelance writers. If you read what you want to write about – your writing niche – then you’ll effectively become a better writer overall.
Why?
Well, you’ll understand your niche better. You’ll also read from other bloggers and writers and marketers on their take on your writing niche. How do they talk about the popular health food called Keto bombs, for example?
You also get to read how these writers use their words and write sentences for an online audience. All of this can help you develop your writing skills.
When I began as a freelance writer, I read a WHOLE LOT about freelance writing and blogging.
I absorbed HOW each blog post was written, how they structured their sentences and the type of language they used into my own writing.
4. Choose Simple Words
Keep it simple, Sam (K.I.S.S)!
You may think you sound smarter if you use complex words – but that’s not true.
In the online world, you want your writing to be at a 4th-8th grade reading level.
That’s right!
There’s no need to write a blog post like your thesis paper for college. In fact, that probably won’t help you gain blog traffic or clients.
What’s better is to ditch those big fancy words and use simple, yet effective words when you write. It’s almost like you’re writing as you would be talking – just without much slang and ums.
5. Convey Your Message Easily
Clients want smart writing that’s engaging and will capture their message perfectly.
As a writing tip, you need to learn how to convey that message from your client easily in your writing. This means not being too wordy when describing things.
Now, don’t get me wrong – I’ve been known to be a tad wordy at times in my writing, but I think I make up for it with my ease of writing.
That’s why it’s important to have that first draft. Write and then let it sit.
You have to take the time to transform that first draft into the article you’ll submit to your client. This may mean cutting entire paragraphs, or changing ideas around.
6. Avoid Filler Words
Filler words like: that, very, just, really, etc.. are just that..filler.
There is no need to add those extra words in your sentences, unless it’s there for intention. I work hard not to have those extra filler words and I often do, but I’m still editing my work and trying to catch all those extra words before I hit publish!
I know I’m not the best writer. I don’t have an English degree. But, that hasn’t stopped me from making a living as a writer! If I can do it, you can too!
There’s a balance of using enough words to convey your message. This will take time to develop and help you improve your skills as a new writer.
7. Keep Sentences and Paragraphs Short
If you’ve noticed in this blog post, I’m generally writing one sentence paragraphs.
This makes it easy for you – the reader – to read my content. If you want to become a freelance writer and write online, then write shorter paragraphs and shorter sentences.
Online users don’t have the best attention spans, so make your writing easy on the eyes!
8. Invest in an Editing Tool
I personally use Grammarly for all my edits online. From blog writing to client pieces to social media posts and more.
It’s my go-to editing tool and has helped me fine-tune my writing. As a freelance writer, one of the tools you need is an editing tool. You may think you just need a proofreader like your partner or friend, but I also urge you to have an editing tool first.
For me, I edit my writing with Grammarly, proofread it myself and then have my husband read it as final read through.
9. Just Write
The first step to help you improve your writing is to just write and keep on writing. Try not to edit while you work (I still do this) and let your creative juices flow. After I create my outline, it’s much easier to just write it all out.
Since I blog every day, I am used to writing a lot and it’s getting easier and easier to… just write!
Bonus: Spend Time On Your Headline and Introductions
One of the best ways to improve your writing skills is to take the time for your introductions.
Your headline and introduction will be the first thing people will see on social media or as soon as they click over to your post from Google or from other sites.
While there are amazing headline templates you can use, you don’t have to be soo fancy to have a really good headline.
What I like to do with my headlines is to:
Use Juicy Words (simple, easy, fast, brilliant, amazing, quick, etc.) – these are adjectives and superlatives that you can inject in your headline for more click throughs.
Highlight the benefit – What will people get out of your post? For this one, it’s improving your writing skills.
Identify a person – for many of my headlines I identify who this post is for – beginners, freelance writers, new bloggers, etc..
