Actionable Tips To Make Your Writing Unique
We’re all here to be better writers.
There’s hundreds of writing tips out there, (deep breath in) but what happens when you master them all and you’re still not getting noticed because everything you write sounds like the same shit your neighbour wrote and you just feel like another squirrel aimlessly chucking acorns on the forest floor? (breathe out).
OK woooow, I didn’t mean that. Your writing is exquisite.
What I mean is: if you want to get noticed, try making your writing unique.
Here’s some tips on that.
Develop Your Writing Personality
Now, “develop a personality” sounds vague; but the rest of these tips will help you do that. But first, figure out how you want your writing to sound.
Take a moment (hour, day, year, whatever) to figure out your tone.
Do you want to write with humour?
Do you want to be blunt?
Do you want to be supportive and overly positive?
Do you want to be calming and poetic?
Do you want to be sarcastic?
Do you want to swear like an over-worked mom who just stubbed her toe (notice how I didn’t say “like a sailor”… more on that later)?
This may take some self-reflection. Look back on your own favourite pieces and notice when you get that happy little flutter of pride in your chest.
If you’re really committed, collect all those sentences and see what they have in common. Use this as your compass and bring out that style even more.
Make Up Your Own Metaphors
This is where writing gets fun. You have a creative mind, use it!
Writing your own metaphors helps develop tone, or personality. You get to show the weird ways your brain works, and create fleeting images in the readers mind.
Whenever you’re tempted to say, “slow as molasses” make up something different like, “slower than an unlucky bingo dabber on a Sunday.”
Or change, “fits like a glove” to “fits like your favourite jeans in high school.”
This likely echoes other writing tips you’ve read. You’ll often come across the advice “cut out cliches,” and I agree wholeheartedly. But don’t just cut them out — replace them with something better.
Keep in mind the tone you settled on and work it into these metaphors.
Look Up Synonyms
No, it’s not cheating to type, “synonym amazing” into Google.
We’re human, sometimes we need inspiration.
It can bring your writing up a few scales on the “interesting scale” (not a real thing, made that up) because your words are different than everyone else’s.
Instead of amazing, try phenomenal.
Beautiful? Irresistible.
Great? Glorious.
You can do this as you’re writing, or as you’re reading over your finished piece.
Be Brave
Experiment with sentence length, swear words, unexpected sentence openers — whatever feels natural.
The best writing reads like a conversation with a friend. When you’re writing with your own personality, you’ll feel tempted to write like you talk.
Give in. Let it flow, then read it again later for clarity. Don’t get too crazy though; play around with grammatical rules but don’t expel them entirely.
When I started writing for work I was writing in “marketing speak.”
It was boring. There was no personality. I sounded like a textbook (which isn’t entirely my fault — I read a lot of textbooks in university).
When my boss gave me the advice to write more casually, it was like he blew the starting whistle at an elementary school sports day and all the things running around in my brain were unleashed, screaming.
Now, I write like I talk and take chances on weird grammatical structures to make that happen.
In Summary
To make your writing unique, develop your writing personality, make up metaphors, look up synonyms, and be brave.
For a real-life example of how this works, here’s a boring version of my intro paragraph:
“We’re all here to be better writers.
There’s hundreds of writing tips out there. If you feel like you’ve mastered them all but you’re still not getting noticed, consider these tips to make your writing unique.”
Here’s what I did to spice it up:
✅ I added personality.
✅ I used an original metaphor.
✅ I Googled a synonym for amazing (exquisite).
✅ I used an odd grammatical structure (a purposely long sentence with a warning to breathe in).
Did it work?
