12 Tools to Write Better Medium Articles Faster
In the past nine months I’ve become a writer. I wrote things before but never owned the title until I published my first dozen articles on Medium. Now I’m a Top Medium Writer in Technology.
Writing on Medium is a win-win for me and my audience. Writing has helped me become a thought leader. There’s lots of evidence that thought leadership can help you grow your company, raise money, or find a job.
Writing also allows me to help people learn technical skills. I’m passionate about helping other developers, entrepreneurs, and data scientists be more productive. My articles help people choose where to spend their learning budget, save time, and make cool stuff. 😄
While writing on Medium can be extremely rewarding for you and your audience, it’s also a time-consuming endeavor that requires skill. There’s no substitute for practice, but there are a number of tools that can help you write better and faster.
In this article I’ll share those tools — the key articles, apps, and books that helped me on my journey. I hope they help you on yours.
Let’s do it! 🚀
Medium
Without Medium, I don’t know that I would be writing today. The platform makes it extremely easy to get started. It provides a great writing experience and helps my content reach a wide audience.
- This post has tips to help you get started and use Medium effectively.
- For help with images in Medium, check out this post. Key insight — you can’t make an image full-width if the resolution isn’t high enough.
- This post has a plethora of good suggestions for technical writing on Medium. It’s worth a read if you write technical content anywhere.
Medium is an amazing platform with no ads! I suggest that you pony up 🏇 the $5 a month to become a member and support it, if you’re able to do so.
Let’s look at digital tools to improve your writing and make you more productive.
Digital Tools
Convoluted sentences are probably the most common problem I see in technical writing. Paste your content into the Hemmingway App to see which sentences are difficult to follow. This free website helps you turn your prose from passive to active. The Hemingway App has definitely helped me become a better writer.
Most days I find myself with dozens of open browser tabs. OneTab helpse me bring order to my tab chaos. It helps me focus on the task at hand by condensing any tabs I give it into one single tab. It also saves system memory. OneTab is a free Google Chrome extension.
Split your screen into multiple windows with BetterSnapTool (for Mac). You can create keyboard shortcuts to snap the active window to full, half, third, quarter, or any custom area of the screen you like. I generally split my screen between code, docs, or image search on one side and the article I’m writing on the other. BetterSnapTool is $2.99.
CopyClip is a free Mac app that stores your past copied material in an easily accessible list. It saves me boatloads of time.
GIFs can help you take your Medium article to the next level. Medium doesn’t allow you to embed JavaScript, so GIFs of interactive visualizations are the next best thing. GIPHY Capture makes adding GIFs a breeze. GIPHY Capture is free on the Mac — and I hear similar Windows apps are available.
Images
Images and titles are your primary weapons in the battle for potential readers’ attention.
Pixabay is a platform for free, high-quality images. There are many beautiful images that require no attribution and the platform is easily searchable. It has saved me countless hours. A sincere thank you to Pixabay!
Here’s a bonus image-search site. Pexels was just redesigned and has lots of great free photos.
Now let’s look at my six top books that can help you become a better writer.
Six Books
The Elements of Style by Strunk and White is the classic writing style guide. It never goes out of fashion. Definitely give it a read if you haven’t picked it up before — or if it’s been a while.
The Art of Nonfiction by Ayn Rand can help you create a time-saving writing process. It’s also helps you learn how to enliven your prose. Use Rand’s book to make your writing snappier and more lively.
On Writing by Stephen King is inspiring and beautifully written. It’s part memoir and part instruction manual. My takeaways — get rid of adverbs and use more imagery. King reminds us that good writers become good by being both voracious readers and consistent writers.
Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynn Truss offers funny and helpful advice for punctuation. It’s a good example of how to make a dry topic interesting — a key skill for anyone writing about a technical topic. 😄
Words that Work by Frank Luntz contains many suggestions for better writing. Luntz reminds us to use memorable, aspirational, language that resonates with our audience.
Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath is my favorite communication book. If you’re going to read just one book on this list, I suggest you read this one. The book has fabulous advice for writing so that your readers will more likely remember your key points.
Wrap and Recap
Check out these dozen tools and books to help you be more productive writing on Medium.
Recap
Apps and Website
Books
- The Elements of Style
- The Art of Nonfiction
- On Writing
- Eats, Shoots & Leaves
- Words that Work
- Made to Stick
I hope you found these resources to be helpful. If you did, please share this article on your favorite social media platform so other people can find it, too. 😄
The best way to get better and faster at writing is to do more of it. So share what you know — or learn along the way. Write, rewrite, and persist!
I write about data science, Python, and other tech topics. Follow me and check out my other articles here, if you’re into that stuff.
Happy writing! ✍️
Jeff Hale is an entrepreneur who has cofounded three companies, including Rebel Desk. Rebel Desk sells a treadmill that goes under a standing desk so you can walk while you work.
