How to improve your writing style in 9 steps?

Are you having trouble keeping your readers’ attention? Maybe it’s not your content, but your style that makes them yawn unnecessarily. To increase the power of your writing, you need to focus on your readers’ style requirements, your authenticity, and the right writing technique.

Your 9-step plan for an attention-grabbing post

I The difference is not in the details and facts, but rather in the way it is written. Creating good online content is a skill that needs to be honed over time, however, there are a few basics that anyone can use to achieve a certain level of fluency in writing that may have previously eluded them. Here are 10 ways to improve your writing style that will significantly improve the quality of your article.

Write with your target audience in mind

The first step is to always writing for the reader you are addressing. Indeed, what interests one demographic group does not necessarily interest another. Knowing your target reader helps you write copy that interests them, taking into account their preferences, even before a single word is written on the page. For example, if you’re writing for a group of lawyers, they’ll be more interested in facts and figures than when you’re writing copy for a fashion magazine, where you’ll need to focus on how it looks and feels.

Sketch out your main ideas first

Once you know which group you’re writing to, choose a concept that interests them and outline the main ideas so you can start with a coherent framework in mind, instead of just improvising. Once you get into the habit of sketching out the outline of the beginning, middle, and end, you can often do this step in your head. If your plan is too long, start cutting it down.

Keep it short and simple

Each main section of your outline should be easily summarized in a short paragraph. However, if you are writing more than a simple review article, your outline may need to first focus on the themes of the different chapters and then break it down into interesting ideas related to the theme of each main section of the chapter. It’s about making each idea easy to read, easy to digest, and not making it boring or complicated. Avoid sentences that are too long, endless blocks of paragraphs without subheadings, and chapters that are too long to digest in one sitting.

Avoid redundancy

Whatever topic you are covering, get to the point. If you repeat yourself in writing, it will seem boring and unnecessary. Don’t repeat your ideas unless you add useful information, such as when you use a story, metaphor, or example to clarify the thought process..

Use an active tone

Passive verbs in your sentences make reading less exciting, so use active verbs that create action in the story. Present tense is also a good way to draw the reader into the present moment of your story, instead of letting them focus on the past or future. If your subject is not acting directly and other actors are intervening in your sentence, revise it out loud to make your style more impactful.

Fiction and creative authors will need to focus on being descriptive as well, to create a 3D world with their words. They will therefore also have to show what their characters think, what they believe and what they feel through their actions, instead of dictating to the reader what to think about these actions. They will need to be able to describe things in a new way, rather than using common words that are flat and uninteresting.

Present examples, metaphors and stories

Even if you don’t write fiction, and want to write blogs and/or magazine articles, you can still benefit from presenting your intentions to the reader, through examples, metaphors and stories. These types of techniques can make your style captivating and addictive, too. It also helps captivate the reader on many levels, invoking a common experience that triggers memory and, sometimes, sensory feedback.

Be creative with layouts

Your writing style is about more than the words on your page. It also concerns how these words are arranged on the page. Take advantage of formats that can make your writing style easy to read and concise, like bulleted lists or numbers.. Separate a large paragraph in two, if necessary, by adding spaces. This is particularly useful for texts written in successive paragraphs. These consecutive paragraphs tend to visually intersect when on a computer screen.

Do a press review

With all the tools that can help you check spelling and correct errors, there’s no reason not to do an editorial review of your own work. Good spelling and grammar make your articles look professional. Your style will be even more polished. However, if you want to learn more about your style, you can get a professional critique of some of your writing and use these tips to take your work to a new level.