Aspiring novel writers, small business owners who rely on excellent communication to increase sales, and college students all have excellent reasons to actively work on improving their writing skills. The same goes for just about anyone else. 

While everyone has unique goals, some tips are universally beneficial. Dive right in to discover tips you can start implementing right away. 

1. Read Lots and Commit to Immersing Yourself in Beautiful Language

You’re human — and that means you’re a social creature. The words you read influence your writing, whether you realize it or not. 

Do you have a packed schedule punctuated by emails, social media, and advertising messages? You may be reading a lot, but you need to infuse your life with high-quality texts to level your writing up. Classic novels, superbly-crafted op-eds, well-written medical journal articles, and even political speeches are all handy tools. 

Diversifying your reading material adds new words and sentence structures to your repertoire, even if you don’t spend time thinking about what makes excellent writing so good. However, you’ll benefit even more if you consider what you like and dislike about texts you engage with.

2. Practice Doesn’t Make Perfect, but It Sure Helps

Being a prolific writer doesn’t automatically improve your style, structure, or vocabulary. The average social media post illustrates this fact perfectly. However, there’s no doubt that you have to write often and get into a flow to become a better writer. 

You can:

Switch from writing hastily-crafted work emails to considering the beauty and clarity of your words. (Apparently, even young lawyers struggle with writing emails — but great emails are good for business no matter what industry you’re in.)

Start a blog. Adding a blog to your small business website helps attract visitors while simultaneously allowing you to practice your writing skills. 

Spend time on the kind of writing you’d like to get better at every week. You may want to write a novel or memoir. You might want to better at essays or academic writing. Make sure to set some time aside to practice.

3. Work with an Editor to Benefit from Expert Mentoring

Are you hoping to become a better writer because you’d eventually like to get paid for it in some form? Aspiring professional writers aren’t the only ones who fit into this box. Well-written blog posts, ebooks, advertising materials, and emails can often help small business owners attract more customers. 

Hiring a copy editor is a great step if you would like to get feedback on your progress. Some copy editors simply edit your work, while others are happy to explain what you could do better and why. You can learn a lot from the experience either way. 

4. Devote More Time to Editing

Editing is just as important as writing and therefore deserves just as much time — especially if you are a beginning writer. It helps to pay special attention to these common habits:

• Many writers repeat themselves. Take out anything that doesn’t either need to be there or add beauty. It’s easy to “fall in love” with a particular sentence fragment, but be relentless and remove it if it doesn’t add value.
• Many writers have catchphrases and favorite words. Examine your paragraphs for “word echos” and try to add more flavor to your vocabulary. If you notice the same set of words in every single thing you write, consider banning those words for a while.
• Varied sentence structures make writing more interesting, so make sure you spice it up. Repetition can be punchy, but make sure it’s intentional.
• Many people turn to overly flowery or formal language to improve their writing. Straight and to the point is often better. (Never use words you don’t understand, and try not to use words you don’t feel at home with.)
• Some writers edit immediately after finishing the first draft. Don’t. You’ll read what you intended to write rather than what you did and miss out on the ability to catch typos and terrible sentences. (Once you get to work, try enlarging the font, changing it, printing your text, or starting at the end of your text. You’ll see more if you look at your work differently.)
• Some modern writers rely on editing software. While AI-powered editors can play a role in your process, they aren’t people or writers. Never give your AI editor the final say.

5. Know Your Audience

Who are you writing for? What are their burning questions or problems? Pondering these questions gives your writing purpose and structure, and it’s an important part of the writing process.

Imagine a single person representing your audience when writing a novel, blog post, or essay. Your writing instantly gains a human touch when you do this.

6. Consider the Structure of Your Text and Make an Outline

Is not knowing where to start one of your biggest roadblocks? You aren’t alone! Don’t worry. You don’t have to start with an introduction and work your way down to a conclusion, magically conjuring words and structure in the process. 

Make writing easier on yourself by considering the overall structure of your text before you start writing, and then make a rough outline. The text you are writing doesn’t have to be long for you to benefit from an outline, which simply acts as a compass. 

Your progress won’t be linear — you’ll have setbacks as well as wins. That’s OK. Becoming a better writer is a long process, but you can make progress every day. 

Reading, writing, and editing a lot are your first steps. Next up, make sure you get honest feedback from someone who knows what they’re doing. That can be a copy editor you hire, a teacher, or even other aspiring writers in an online group. Take the useful tips you gain onboard, and ditch the rest to  find your own unique writing voice.