An organic way to improve your writing skills
Start with the basics and you’ll grow into a writing superhero
A big part of the writing challenge this month has been about acceptance and understanding.
Many of the authors who took on the writing challenge had reasonable doubts about their ability to communicate effectively, much less get started on something they felt would be a compelling read to others. For some, it was extremely difficult just to write in English if their native tongue was in German, Portuguese, French or Italian.
Nevertheless, we all wanted to hear the author’s point of view in their natural voice. It didn’t need to be fabricated or glossed over. Everyone was encouraged to try and tell the best story they could. From there, they could offer it up to writing challenge participants for feedback and critique.
But make no mistake.
To get better at writing, you need to practice.
Just like riding a bike, making pizza, exercising regularly, design sprint facilitation, parenting, sleeping and being accepting of your own strengths and weaknesses… all of these things take time and practice to improve.
One of my favorite analogies for this sort of improvement is how things organically grow in nature. You start as a seed, but eventually grow if you’re in an optimal environment for it. Eventually you’ll branch out, build a solid foundation, evolve into something amazing and give inspiration for others who are attempting to grow themselves.
Using that same analogy, here’s what I typically recommend for those that are completely new to writing, but want to give it a try.
Stage 1: Haikus
A lot of helpful articles on the web will direct new writers to be clear on the concepts you’re writing about, anticipate your readers’ questions or refrain from padding weak words with adverbs. We’re going to ignore all of that right now, because they don’t care about you like I do.
Get rid of all that artificial pressure to get something perfect your first time around, and start with the simple approach of writing Haikus.
A Haiku is a Japanese poem of seventeen syllables, in three lines of five, seven, and five, traditionally evoking images of the natural world. For this first stage, they can damn well be about anything you like.
Here are a couple of examples:
Eating peanuts and
Raisins before going to bed
Extreme flatulence
Stranger Things is back
Season 3, Netflix, July 4
Nose bleeds are coming
As long as you follow the golden rule of five syllables in line 1, seven in line 2 and five on line 3, you’ll be a budding Japanese-style poet and a fledgling writer at the same time. How freakin cool is that… and it’s only Stage 1!!!
Do one Haiku every day for a week. If you can’t manage that, I question your motivation to improve your writing, my young padawan.
Make it happen, and get ready for…
Stage 2: Statement Sandwiches
This exercise gets you started with actual writing, but in a very confined structure. Similar to Haikus’, statement sandwiches utilize a strict model for putting content together.
You’ll use the following sequence:
- A one sentence statement of either fact or strong opinion
- Two sentences that explain the first line in a separate paragraph.
- A one sentence closing statement that binds the first two together.
As before, here’s an example of what a statement sandwich tends to look like after it’s constructed.
Most parents have an attention problem.
They aren’t paying attention to their son or daughter growing up with a phone in their face. Those same children suffer the consequences by not having an active parent who’s receptive to both their micro and macro signals for validation.
That lack of attention will manifest into a valid rationale for not paying attention to their parents when they grow up.
Here’s another example, using a more light-hearted topic:
Man do I love cupcakes.
Not just any cupcakes mind you. I’m talking about the ones that are as expensive as a Starbucks coffee with fifteen different types of milk.
Those kinds of cupcakes give people religious experiences.
Whatever you choose to write about, make sure it follows this structure. You can violate all sorts of writing norms about run-on sentences, gerunds, improper use of verbs and the overuse of adjectives. The important thing is to practice this 1–2–1 writing structure.
Give yourself another week of this, writing every day. Sometimes it helps to put all of them in one digital document or small analog notepad. You do you.
At the end of week two, it’s time to hear yourself speak and learn from it.
Stage 3: Transcribing Your Spoken Word
Wait, weren’t we just doing nothing but writing for two weeks straight? What are we doing with audio, and why am I listening to myself talk?
Conversational writing is a good way of looking at the words you naturally use in your discussions with others. You wouldn’t necessarily write exactly what you say in this exercise, but you do start to discover how you use spoken word language to get your point across.
Here’s how you get it done:
- Ask a friend or loved one if you can record your next conversation with them. Tell them it’s about a silly article you read online about improving their writing skills, and take the sarcastic punishment that will naturally come your way as a result.
- Speak at length about it while you record. Usually 5–10 minutes is all you need.
- Later on, listen to the recording and transcribe what you said (the main words/sentences you used) in the conversation.
- Finally, add some additional content to craft a story (fictional or real), based on the context of the discussion.
You want to aim for at least 1–3 paragraphs of spoken word transcription. You can skip the ‘Um’, ‘Ah’ and long pauses within the conversation, and just focus on your speech. From there, you can arrange, correct and add material to help communicate what you were trying to say.
The important thing to remember is that you’re not using your voice to write the perfect article. You’re transcribing your spoken word to practice writing in your natural voice. Think of it as a necessary stepping stone to ‘thinking’ about your writing while you’re actually writing.
Our final stage is really easy. So easy that it may make you pause.
Stage 4: Working with Story Outlines
Whenever you prepare some sort of presentation, report or involved document, there’s a table of contents (or outline) of the material. Something that serves as the guiding structure to quickly uncover the information you’re looking for.
Story outlines are a useful tool to structure the themes of your content before you get to the task of writing something out. They functional as a high level overview of the topic you want to elaborate on. They’re also a foundational component for your content to flow from one state to the next.
For example, let’s say our topic was “Finding a Mentor”. You could start with a generic outline like this:
- Introduction to the topic (Mentorship)
- Problem and/or challenge statement (It’s hard to find a reliable mentor)
- Potential solutions or methods (Join a peer network / offer to work for free)
- Personal approach to problem/challenge (Podcast interview to learn more about them and connect)
- Recommendations/Next Steps (Be patient, tell me a story about your favorite mentor and where you found them)
After writing the outline, you can being your writing on any particular section that you want to tackle first. Most will jump right to the top and begin writing there. Others might want to do some up-front research on how others have found great mentors.
Once you’ve completed all of the sections in your outline, you’ll need to check the flow of the article/document from one section to the next. Read the words out loud. Would you repeat them in a conversation with someone about mentorship? Does the transition between potential solutions and your personal approach seem natural?
You won’t know for sure, but practice makes perfect.
If you can manage at least one new piece of written content per week using outlines, you’ll be in great shape. You can even start utilizing the wide array of online tools and resources to improve your grammatical structure, spelling and word usage.
Give it a shot!
It isn’t a perfect system, but it’s helped a lot of people I’ve networked with on their writing skills.
Feel free to take one or several of these techniques and try them out for yourself. I’d love to hear how they work for you. :)
Join the Kung Fu Writing Challenge
This article is part of the 30 minute writing challenge I’m doing throughout the month of June to help and encourage others to improve upon their writing skills and become better practitioners of prose.
If you’re interested in taking the challenge, check out this article for more information: https://medium.com/dallas-design-sprints/heres-how-to-participate-in-our-month-long-writing-challenge-41ca795a5176
