How to drastically improve your writing skills ?

To write well, you have to be able to write clearly and logically, and you cannot do this unless you can think clearly and logically too. If you cannot do this yet. You should train yourself to do it by taking particular problems and following them through, point by point, to solution, without leaving anything out and without avoiding any difficulties that you meet.

For example, you may take the problem ‘With do I mean when I say that I am a free person?’ and then try to find a solution along something like the following lines: ‘Am I free to do anything I like? No, I am not free to fly to mars, for example. My freedom is limited to what is possible. Am I then free to do anything that it is possible for me to do? No, I am not free to kill my neighbor, for example. My freedom is limited to what is possible and legal. But am I not in fact free to kill my neighbor provided I can do it without being found out? Well, yes, in fact I am. My freedom is therefore limited to what is possible and legal, unless I can avoid being found out in something illegal. Why are there legal limitations to my freedom? Because if I were free to do harm to others, thereby limiting their freedom, they too would be free to do me harm; and under these conditions, I would have less chance of freedom than if I and everybody else accepted certain legal limitations on our freedom in order to protect the latter against arbitrary interference by others Etc,’

At first, you may find clear, step-by thought very difficult. You may find that your mind continually wanders. But practice will improve your ability to think clearly and logically.

In order to increase you vocabulary and to improve your powers of expression, you should read widely and carefully, and keep a notebook in which to write down words and expressions that particularly strike you; for example sparkle, glitter, twinkle, blaze, gleam; butcher-blue eyes, relax into delicious indolence. Use a good dictionary to help you with the exact meanings and used of words.

Always remember that regular and frequent practice is essential if you are to learn to write well. You learn to write by writing. It is no good waiting until you have an inspiration before you write. Even with the most famous writers, inspiration is rare. Writing is 99 per cent hard work and 1 per cent inspiration, so the sooner you get into the habit of disciplining yourself to write, the better.

If you keep your eyes and ears open, you will find plenty of things to write about around you. Often a little piece of conversation heard in the street can start you thinking along interesting new lines. Imagine that you are a stranger who is not familiar with the things that you see around you, and start from there.

Read the newspaper carefully. Every day there are examples of human joy and human tragedy in it which can give you ideas for articles, essays or short stories.

Keep a notebook in which to put down things that you notice, or ideas that come to you when you are out walking, when you are reading a book or a magazine, or any other time. Some people get ideas in the bath, or when they wake up during the night. Unless they write these ideas down at once, they often forget them.

Try to develop a warm, human understanding of people, their problems, their joys and their sorrows, so that you are genuinely interested in everyone you meet and every incident you see. You will then material for your work as a writer where before you could perhaps see nothing of interest.

To be a successful writer, you must write interestingly; but different kinds of people have different interests, and it is most unlikely that you will be able to appeal to all of them. You therefore have to know exactly what type of reader you are writing for, and exactly what kinds of things interest such a reader.

By carefully reading magazines which are written for particular kinds of readers (e.g. women’s magazines, magazines for teenagers, magazines for well-educated men), you can find out the things that interest particular types of readers.

Most people are interested in the present. Even when they read about the past or the future, it is the latter’s connections with, or relevance to, the present that particularly interests them. You should therefore choose subjects of topical interest-the latest fashions in some particular field, problems which worry people nowadays, and so on. You should write about Christmas when people are making preparations for this festival, and about summer holidays when the summer is approaching.

As much as possible, choose subjects of which you have personal experience. You will be able to write on these much more convincingly and with greater authority than on subjects about which you have only second-hand information.

Presentation is of very great importance in good writing. Your opening paragraph should arrest the reader’s attention and show him what you are writing about and why. If you are going to give the reader some information, tell him what subject you are going to deal with. If you are going to argue in support of a particular point of view, way what this point of view is. There is no harm in startling the reader in this first paragraph by putting forward a new and apparently paradoxical point of view, provided you have convincing arguments to support it in the rest of what you write.

The main body of your piece of writing should collect together and present the ideas promised in the first paragraph, or give good arguments to support the view put forward there. You should come to the point at once; say what you promised to say, avoiding irrelevant material, and then finish.

Your last paragraph or sentence should bring what you have written to a neat, satisfying end, leaving the reader with a clear idea of what you have been saying.

To write interestingly, you must yourself be intensely interested in what you are writing, and you must convey this felling of eagerness to your readers. You must also believe intensely in what you are writing, and convince you readers of your honesty. You cannot arouse their interest and sympathy unless they fell that you yourself are interested, and that you feel strongly about what you are saying.

Do not, however, force upon the reader those of your own private problems which few, if any, other people share. People are very interested in problems which they too face, or which they may easily have to face in the near future, but they do not want to read the personal complaining and protests of someone whom they consider a crank, or whom they suspect of being mentally unbalanced.

Do not strive to create an impression. Forget about yourself, think only of the reader, and write naturally, avoiding self-consciousness. If you have something interesting to write about and can express it clearly, simply and with the human touch, it is sure to appeal to some classed of readers. But if you deliberately try to copy a style which is not your own, this will quickly become obvious to the reader, he will feel that you are not sincere, and he will not go on reading what you have written. As you read more and more works written in a particular style, your own will gradually change; but this will be a natural process, and your new style will be yours, because it comes up from your unconscious, unlike which you are deliberately copying.

This does not mean that you should not cultivate vivid expression. If you train yourself to see and hear things keenly and responsively, as an artist or a musician does, you will be able to describe them vividly yet without artificiality.

It is best to write simply and in a conversational tone. Lean, plain English in the fashion these days, and an elaborated decorated style is quite out of date. Avoid jargon (e.g. re your letter to hand meaning with reference to the letter which I have received from you’) and officials (e.g. it is apprehended that meaning ‘I suppose’) hackneyed expressions (e.g. Adam’s ale for ‘water’ and do one’s level best for ‘do the best one can’) rhetorical flourishes (e.g. this is a subject of great impotence to many people nowadays, and therefore one which I feel I should discuss seriously and honestly.

The reader knows whether he thinks it important or not; and he certainly does not need to be told that, if it is of great importance, it deserves to be discussed seriously and honestly), empty verbiage (e.g. I feel obliged to add that, doubtless, many people appreciate that it is a matter of the greatest importance that information about possible cases of cruelty to children should be passed on to the appropriate authorities immediately, in which the first 20 words are empty verbiage) and circumlocutions (e.g. I will cause investigations to be made with a view to ascertaining the information, instead of ‘I will find out’).

Prefer the concrete to the abstract word whenever possible, be definite, call a spade a spade, and avoid euphemisms. The latter have been called the cult of cosines, which means the pretence that everything is all right when it is not. In Hitler’s Germany, for example, the expression special treatment was used as a euphemism for torture and murder of the most savage kinds…..

Avoid stating the obvious; e.g. your readers do not want to be told that aero planes sometimes crash, or that children learn from their parents as well as from their teachers.

Use the same style throughout whatever you are writing. If you are writing formally, do not introduce slang expressions; and if our are writing in a conversational style, do not introduce literally or learned expressions. A mixture of styles, such as the following, is absurd: ‘In the absence, on home leave, of my boss, your application for sympathetic consideration of your claim to a pension has been pushed on to me. I have had no alternative but to give it the thumbs down, owing to the fact that your old man had ceased to be in the service of her Majesty when he kicked the bucket.’

If, while you are writing, you cannot think of the right word at once, it is a good idea to put in another, or to leave a blank, so as not to interrupt your flow of thought. Then, when you have finished, you can go back and find exactly the right word for what you were trying to say. In any case, read your work over critically after you have finished it, replacing weak, vague, inexact words by others which say just what you mean.

By

L.A. Hill