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5 Ways to Improve Your Writing
5 Ways to Improve Your Writing
Thomas Frank
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12:51 · Apr 30, 2021
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Among his many other accomplishments,
0:04
Benjamin Franklin was one of the most well-respected writers of his time,
0:07
but that wasn't always the case.
0:09
Early on in his career at one point,
0:11
Benjamin Franklin found himself in the midst of an epistolary duel,
0:14
which basically just means he was arguing with somebody through letter writing.
0:17
And at one point during this argument Benjamin Franklin's father found these letters.
0:21
And in typical dad fashion,
0:23
took the opportunity to tell old Ben just how bad his writing was.
0:27
Now, most of us probably wouldn't want our dads critiquing our writing,
0:29
we'd get a little defensive.
0:30
But Benjamin Franklin took this criticism to heart.
0:33
And in response, he started seeking out the best writing he could get his
0:36
hands on,
0:37
so he could deliberately study it and start honing his writing craft.
0:40
And through this process, he became that well-respected writer and thinker.
0:44
Now, you might not have "Become the most well-respected writer of my generation" at
0:49
the top of your to-do list,
0:50
but even if that's not the case,
0:51
improving your writing skills is one of the best things you can do for
0:54
moving forward in your career
0:55
and becoming a better communicator.
0:57
So today I wanna share five huge tips for improving your writing,
1:01
whether it's a cover letter or a novel,
1:04
we're gonna talk about ways to improve how often you write,
1:06
building a writing habit,
1:07
but we'll also talk about some ways to improve the clarity of your writing
1:10
and also how interesting it is.
1:13
Let's actually start there, this interesting, this angle.
1:16
How do you make your own writing more interesting and more fun to read?
1:19
Well, this reminds me of a quote I once heard somewhere,
1:22
or maybe I made it up, I'm not sure, but it goes like this.
1:24
"An interesting person is an interested person."
1:27
In other words, if you want your writing to have some flare to it,
1:30
go out and apply your interest, both to cool experiences,
1:33
but also to learning from a wide variety of sources.
1:36
And that's the first main tip here, read widely.
1:39
As the author Cormac McCarthy once put it, "Books are made out of books."
1:43
And the best authors are the ones who have a wide repertoire of experiences
1:47
and knowledge,
1:48
and different authors they've read to pull from,
1:50
so they can take things
1:51
and creatively mash them up into something you've never read before.
1:54
If you only read one author or one genre, then,
1:57
your writing is gonna feel kind of samey.
1:59
It's like trying to cook a chicken with nothing
2:01
but black pepper on your spice rack.
2:02
If you wanna make something truly delicious, and truly interesting to eat,
2:06
then you may wanna have some more spices on that spice rack.
2:09
So expand your reading palette.
2:11
And if you wanna do this in a way similar to how Ben Franklin
2:14
did it,
2:14
then also try to actively engage with what you read as well.
2:18
One good way to do this is
2:20
when you come across a phrase
2:21
or passage that you really like,
2:23
pause, ask yourself, "Well, how would I write this?"
2:26
Or, "How would another author "that I really like write this?"
2:28
And in asking yourself this question, going through this mental remixing exercise,
2:32
you're engaging with the material in a way that's much more intense than
2:36
if you just read it
2:37
and then passed on.
2:38
I'm also in the habit of highlighting these passages
2:41
and saving them to my Readwise
2:42
so I can come back to them
2:43
and ponder them sometimes.
2:44
This is one that has been stuck in my head particularly as of late.
2:48
"Night City was like a deranged experiment "in social Darwinism,
2:52
"designed by a bored researcher who kept one thumb "permanently on the fast-forward button."
2:56
So actively engaging with a wide array of material is a great way to
3:01
sort of build an armory of different weapons you can use for different challenges,
3:05
different situations, but if you wanna be able to use them to wield them
3:08
well,
3:09
then you need to write often, build the skill of writing.
3:12
And as you probably know, writing often is kind of hard to do.
3:16
I see writing as kind of like riding a bicycle,
3:18
it's all about building momentum.
3:20
And that first initial challenge of getting on the bike is usually the hardest
3:24
one.
3:25
After that, a lot of times you can coast,
3:26
put a little bit of effort in and you keep moving forward.
3:29
So how do you build that initial bit of momentum?
3:31
So one way you can do this is to build for yourself a writing
3:34
ritual,
3:34
which is basically a set of habits
3:36
that make getting into the writing process a little bit easier.
3:38
This can get you over that resistance.
3:40
And this can involve writing in a specific place
3:42
or having a list of things
3:44
that you do before you start writing.
3:46
Personally, when I was writing my book,
3:47
"10 Steps to Earning Awesome Grades,"
3:49
which I think I published about six years ago now,
3:52
there was this little office in the leasing office in my apartment building where
3:56
you could go to study.
3:57
It had wifi, it had totally blank walls,
3:59
and it had this wooden desk going around the border of the room.
4:02
That was basically it.
4:03
So it wasn't a very fun place to be,
4:06
but it was a place where my video games weren't there,
4:09
my friends were there, it was total solitude.
4:12
So I would go there
4:12
and I would put in my 500 words per day,
4:14
which I kind of used that goal to get this book done,
4:17
and there was this sort of motivation.
4:19
I would go in there and I kind of wanted to leave.
4:21
So I would get my 500 words done as quickly as possible.
4:25
Or at least I thought that, because interestingly enough,
4:28
once you build the writing momentum in the beginning of a session,
4:31
you often now have those creative juices flowing.
4:34
You're in a state of flow and you will write more, in many cases,
4:37
than you thought you would.
4:38
So I went there with the intention of doing 500 words,
4:41
and came out having written 1,500 or sometimes 2000.
4:44
So having a specific writing place,
4:46
even a place that's kind of not all that pleasant, can be helpful.
4:50
And you can also have certain habits in your writing ritual as well.
4:52
Maybe having some noise-canceling headphones
4:54
that let you have some more control over the environment where you're writing,
4:57
maybe having a specific playlist that you like to write to.
5:00
I've got one called Sunday Study
5:01
that I almost always use
5:02
when I write and I'll have
5:03
that linked in the description below,
5:04
if you wanna check it out,
5:05
or maybe having a specific scent or a specific drink,
5:08
like a candle that you write with,
5:10
or making a cup of coffee or a cup of tea.
5:12
Whatever it is, find your writing ritual
5:15
and use it to get over
5:16
that writing resistance.
5:18
Now, we used the bike metaphor before,
5:20
and I stand by the belief that starting is the hardest part.
5:23
But just like bike riding, writing-- Writing, riding, writing.
5:27
Writing is about keeping momentum going.
5:31
When you're in a session,
5:32
you wanna keep the flow going
5:34
so you can keep creative things coming out of your brain
5:36
and onto the page.
5:37
And one of the biggest killers of that momentum is editing while you write.
5:42
So the next big tip is to separate your writing process from your editing
5:46
process.
5:47
When you edit your writing, when you see a sentence that you just wrote,
5:50
and you're like, "I gotta go back
5:50
and change that," "I saw a spelling error,
5:52
I gotta go back
5:53
and fix that," you're actually getting into a different state of mind,
5:56
you're doing a context switch,
5:57
and you're now in a mind state that is less creative.
6:01
You've arrested that momentum.
6:02
And if you're constantly editing what you've just written,
6:05
then you really never get any good momentum going in the first place.
6:08
Another metaphor that I like to use for writing is of mining for gold.
6:11
If you never get down to, I don't know,
6:14
20 feet deep under the ground,
6:16
you're never gonna get the gold in the first place.
6:17
So you have to build enough momentum to excavate a bunch of dirt,
6:21
a bunch of not very useful stuff,
6:22
to get to the point in a writing session where the real good gems
6:26
come out.
6:27
You can come back and edit them later.
6:28
The other point of this is
6:30
that you often don't know what the end product is going to look like
6:34
after you've gone through several different iterations.
6:36
So it's kind of pointless to try and do a first draft that's perfect,
6:40
because it's always gonna change.
6:41
A great example of this, maybe my favorite,
6:43
comes from the cinematic masterpiece that is "Emperor's New Groove."
6:47
If you don't know about the troubled history of this movie,
6:50
when it started out in development,
6:51
it was supposed to be a much more serious story kind of in the
6:54
vein of the "Lion King,"
6:55
that kind of a feel.
6:56
And what we ended up with was this buddy comedy movie,
6:59
one of Disney's best movies ever,
7:01
but very different than it initially had been conceptualized.
7:04
So just realize that what you start writing right now is probably not gonna
7:08
look anything like your final product.
7:10
So just let yourself get ideas onto the paper.
7:12
Like I say, get a mess on the paper,
7:15
and you can come back later and clean that mess up.
7:17
It's a lot easier than trying to craft something perfect from a blank page.
7:21
Okay, so let's look at the edit process now.
7:22
You've got your first draft down on the paper or on the computer screen,
7:26
and now you wanna hone it
7:27
and make it as good
7:27
as it can be.
7:28
What's the first step to doing that?
7:30
Well, I think a good first candidate is reading your writing out loud,
7:33
like I'm gonna do right now with this script.
7:36
"We tend think of writing
7:37
as a silent art form
7:38
"but it has a lot more in common with music "than you might think.
7:41
"And because we don't often think about this fact,
7:43
"we often overlook another very important piece "of good writing, rhythm.
7:47
"For example, you might use too many sentences "of similar lengths in a row.
7:50
"For example, you might keep using similar phrases "or you might elongate your sentences,
7:54
"leaving the length a little too long, "stringing too many clauses together,
7:57
"running on and on and on.
7:59
"You might also just use phrases "that have a lot of similarity,
8:01
"or you might have simply a word."
8:04
Simply a word, "Simply forgotten a word."
8:06
See?
8:07
Now, reading out loud can feel a bit awkward,
8:09
especially if there's another person in the room.
8:11
Ask me, I go through scripts all the time with my editor in the
8:13
room.
8:14
And yes, it is a little bit awkward.
8:15
But if you don't do it,
8:16
you're liable to gloss over things
8:18
that could help make the reading experience less awkward for your reader.
8:22
And that's really the most important thing, right?
8:24
Reading out loud not only exposes you to the rhythm of your writing,
8:27
but it also slows you down necessarily.
8:29
When we read silently, when we're reading for comprehension,
8:32
we read between 200 to 400 words per minute on average.
8:35
When we're scanning through our own writing, trying to find little things to fix,
8:39
we go even faster than that.
8:41
And the faster you go, the easier it is to skip over things.
8:44
But when we read out loud,
8:46
most people can't read comfortably out loud at more than 150 words per minute.
8:49
And at that pace, it's very easy to pick out spelling errors, grammar issues,
8:54
or opportunities to simplify.
8:56
And that's our last tip here.
8:57
There's this great quote in the book "On Writing Well" from the author Williams
9:00
Zinsser that goes,
9:02
"The secret of good writing is to strip every sentence "to its cleanest components."
9:06
I wanna give you a great example of this.
9:08
Back in World War II, President Franklin D.
9:09
Roosevelt's aids put out this statement, and this is a mouthful,
9:13
so bear with me here.
9:15
"Such preparations shall be made
9:16
"as will completely obscure all Federal buildings
9:18
"and non-Federal buildings "occupied by the Federal government "during an air raid for any
9:22
period of time from visibility "by reason of internal
9:25
or external illumination."
9:27
President Roosevelt took that and changed it to this,
9:30
"Tell them that in buildings "where they have to keep the work going "to
9:33
put something across the windows."
9:34
He removed 20 words of that original sentence,
9:37
and the ones that were remaining got way, way simpler, and in doing so,
9:40
he communicated so much more,
9:42
because the original blurb of text actually communicated nothing to most people.
9:46
If you felt your brain kind of sliding out of your ear
9:48
when I read that first blurb,
9:49
you're not alone.
9:50
It was a bunch of jargon.
9:51
It was almost impossible to understand.
9:53
And sometimes, your own writing takes on a similar quality.
9:56
Sometimes, we're trying to sound smart and use big vocabulary.
9:59
Sometimes, we don't even really consider the simplicity
10:01
and it gets a little bit too complex.
10:03
And simplicity doesn't necessarily mean stripping things down to as few words as possible,
10:07
because sometimes, words add color, words add description,
10:10
they make things more vivid and interesting.
10:13
But a lot of times,
10:14
words are there just because we want them to be there.
10:16
We have a lot of, I think, trauma,
10:18
from our teachers telling us word limits
10:20
that we had to hit for essays in high school
10:22
and in elementary school,
10:23
right?
10:24
And a lot of times,
10:24
we're trying to use big words that make us sound a little bit intelligent.
10:27
But from a reader's perspective,
10:29
they would almost always rather have you use the word use than utilize,
10:35
words than lexicon, because it's easier to parse, easier to understand.
10:39
These big words don't really add anything to the reading experience.
10:43
If you wanna take your writing even further,
10:45
there's a great class on Skillshare all about writing personal essays from Roxanne Gay,
10:49
who has written for the New York Times
10:50
and has written several published books of her own.
10:53
It's a fantastic class that'll help you hone your writing skills
10:56
and help you apply them to personal essays,
10:58
personal statements for job applications,
11:01
all kinds of stuff
11:02
that comes up in the daily life of even non-writers.
11:05
And because her class is on Skillshare, when you get access to it,
11:08
you get access to thousands of other classes.
11:10
And writing is a hugely well-represented area on Skillshare.
11:13
There are classes on writing with humor.
11:15
There are classes on writing fiction.
11:17
There are a ton of classes that can hone your skillset in this area.
11:20
So it's a great way to, just as Ben Franklin once did,
11:23
start deliberately practicing, deliberately studying.
11:27
Also on Skillshare, you're gonna find a few classes from yours truly.
11:30
I've got one on productivity for creatives,
11:31
which has a whole section on building that creative writing habit,
11:35
which can also be applied to any other creative work.
11:37
I've got classes on building your productivity system, on building strong habits.
11:41
So it's also a great place for becoming more productive.
11:44
And Skillshare is a very affordable learning platform too,
11:46
with their annual plans starting at less than 10 bucks a month.
11:49
And that's just the normal pricing.
11:50
Actually right now, if you're one of the first 1,000 people to click the
11:53
link in the description down below
11:54
and sign up,
11:55
you can get 30% off that normal annual price.
11:58
And this is even available to you
11:59
if you've already gone through a free trial.
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So you can use
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that special pricing to get back into Skillshare
12:03
and take any of the classes you want,
12:05
from marketing classes to public speaking classes,
12:08
to classes on digital illustration and video editing.
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So once again, be one of the first 1,000 people to use
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that link in the description down below
12:14
and sign up to get a full 30% off your annual premium subscription.
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Doing that is also a great way to support this channel.
12:20
So if you choose to support my sponsors, seriously, thank you so much.
12:23
And thank you for watching this video all the way to the end.
12:26
Seriously, you are awesome.
12:28
Got one last thing here, and that is to ask you a simple question.
12:31
What is your best writing tip that I didn't mention in this video?
12:33
Leave your answer in the comments down below.
12:35
We can all learn together, become better writers together.
12:37
And I've got a playlist of videos here with some more writing tips,
12:40
writing apps I've recommended in the past.
12:42
So check them out, if you're curious.
12:44
Beyond that, you can get subscribed if you haven't done so already,
12:46
or go and do literally whatever you want, 'cause, as always,
12:49
I'm not your dad.
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