How to Write Better: Six Simple Tips
Concrete ways to take your writing to the next level
What distinguishes good writing from bad writing? Most of us intuitively know the difference as we are reading, for some reason may tend to forget as we sit down to write a piece. Here are some of my reflections, from reading and writing on Medium for 3 months so far.
1. Use accessible language
We get it, you studied SAT vocabulary and wrote a couple essays for English class in high school. I don’t care about your education, or how complicated your topic is—there is no excuse for not using language that is clear and easy to understand. This is true if you are writing for either the layperson or a niche audience. It is much more impressive if you are able to explain a complex concept in simple language, than if you are too busy showing off with superfluous (😉) and unnecessarily complex words.
2. Aim for “evergreen” writing
An evergreen piece of writing can stand the test of time. As opposed to a news report about a local event, evergreen writing remains relevant for years, and will give value to readers regardless of when they read it. Try your best to generalize, generalize, and generalize. This also applies to geographical location. For example, I live in Toronto, but instead of solely focusing on the Canadian context and limiting my relevancy, I would try to broaden my scope as much as possible. By tweaking a few parts here and there, I am able to maximize my potential to reach as many readers as possible, while retaining the spirit of my original idea.
3. Do not write like this is your diary
No one cares about the specifics of your day-to-day. For example, in the original draft of my article “There are no healthy people on a dying planet”, I wrote about how I was inspired by a climate change webinar I attended the other day, and how even though I couldn’t say I had a “passion” for climate change, I was really inspired by the speakers and so decided to write an article. All that may be true and interesting to me, the writer—sometimes extra context may be important—but you should always ask yourself, does it really add any extra value to your reader? If the answer is no, skip the fluff.
4. Have a point, and get back to it
It’s easy to get side-tracked and go off on tangents. That’s how our brains work, we love to make connections. Adding subtitle headers is a great idea to keep both you and your reader focused, and also remind your reader what they are reading about. Use the ellipses feature (plus sign → rightmost button → “add a new part”) for a clean way to signal a change in topic to the reader. Consider summarizing key takeaway points for them to hang on to at the end of your article.
5. When you come up with an idea, write down everything that is in your brain first
Then you can worry about flow, structure, and grammar. There’s no point spending your time polishing up a half-baked idea. And take the chance to brush up on your grammar rules as well:
6. Proofread
When you are finally done writing, skim over your piece to clean up your grammar and punctuation. Add what you need to add. Take away what you need to remove. Then, step away from it for a couple hours—go take a walk, make a cup of coffee. With your mind refreshed, come back, and read your article out loud. It is much easier to edit for flow that way.
In conclusion
Writing is a muscle that must be trained through discipline and practice. When honed and used well, writing can be a powerful way to use your voice. The six tips I have for you to improve your writing are to always use accessible language, aim for “evergreen” writing, avoid unnecessary specifics, use sub-headers and summaries to stay focused, write down your ideas first before worrying about grammar, and finally to read out loud as you are proofreading. Luckily, we are on a platform that has a ton of talented and experienced writers, who share a lot more resources about writing worth checking out. One such community is The Writing Cooperative, among others. Best of luck, and I hope to read some of your pieces soon!
