What are some good tips for (beginner) writers?

Read more

Great writers are generally avid readers. If you want to get better at writing, you can move in the right direction simply by reading more. Reading nonfiction books like Antifragile or Thinking Fast and Slow will help you to improve your writing and critical thinking skills. Reading fiction books can help too, especially if you’re reading authors like Hemmingway.

Brainstorm before you sit down to write

When you have a writing assignment coming up, spend time thinking about the topic and what you want to say before you sit down to write. This will help you to clarify your thoughts and enable your words to flow more freely when you actually sit down to write. I recommend thinking about what you want to say when you’re casually walking, in the shower and/or doing some light research about the topic you’re going to cover.

Get your ideas down as fast as you can

When you do sit down to write, it’s important to write your ideas down as fast as you can. This enables your ideas to flow naturally and you won’t get hung up about about sentence structure before you should. It’s easy to come back and refine your writing once you have all your ideas down. My writing is better when I focus on my raw ideas first and then spend time smoothing over how I communicate them.

Iterate on your ideas (a few times)

We all learn in school that we should write drafts of essays as we progress to our finished product. No doubt, this is a worthwhile activity as it’s important to hone your initial draft and proofread for spelling and grammatical errors. From draft 1 to 2 of my essays, I notice a huge improvement in content and flow. This continues for another few drafts, and then I quickly start to see diminishing returns to continued editing. You should spend time iterating on your ideas but then publish your work as soon as you think it’s mostly ready.

Originally published at www.quora.com.