Whatever you’re writing, if it’s meant for an audience, you need to keep a few things in mind in order to make it readable and useful for your particular audience. If it’s a formal essay, it will need intellectual diction and structure which abides to deserved decorum. If it’s a blog post and if your aim is to attract as many readers as possible, it needs to be on a topic of general appeal and it needs to have an interactive, personal tone to keep readers coming back. If it’s a journalistic piece, it needs to be tightly woven and very concise. And for every kind of writing, there is this one standard tip: make sure your introductory paragraph is a compact overview of what you plan to say. Make sure it is convincing, make sure it grips the reader’s attention.
Whenever I’m asked how one might improve his/her writing, I say read a lot. Why? Because no matter what it is you’re writing, your knowledge shows through it. The more your knowledge, the better your writing. When you read, you absorb different writing styles, you feel different voices, you see how tones change for every subject-matter. So whenever you’re writing, keep in mind that it’s not empty, that it has something of value to offer to its audience. No one wants to read purple passages. We need it to mean something, we need it to resonate with our insides.
If you’re writing a blog: The first thing a blogger must keep in mind is her audience’s interest. If you’re targeting a young audience and speaking of dull matters to them, you should either make it very lively or change your topic. You want an audience to follow you, you do not want to speak to empty aisles. Keep in mind their interests, keep in mind your interests, keep in mind that the way you write must be engaging. It should not be very lengthy; it should not be dry. It must not be overwhelming; it must not be wry.
If you’re writing an essay: Essays are formal. Formal writing uses formal language, adheres to proper structure, follows correct grammar, and takes care to use appropriate, intellectual metaphors. In doing all of this, we might make the mistake of writing an essay too lofty and uninteresting. Your material needs to be the life of your essay, and you need to write it so that your audience can read it in one go without dozing off. And of course, good essays always include sound examples and reliable references to support their arguments.
If you’re writing a journalistic article: Make sure your first paragraph introduces your concern clearly. It should answer the 5 Ws (What, where, who, why, when) and should compactly discuss how the event in question took place. It is crucial that your information be verified, and that your sources be reliable. Use academic language, but use it in a way that it is understandable for common people. The trick for journalistic articles is that they’re best when informative and narrative at the same time; that is difficult to achieve but once you get the hang of it, you’ll be flying to the top in no time.
If you’re writing fiction: Always remember, fiction writing requires all kinds of skill. You need to be a master at painting pictures through words, your vocabulary needs to span different cultures and different usages, your word choice needs to be spot on and your writing must never, ever be exhaustive. It’s fiction, it is entertaining, arresting, captivating, and on top of all of that, substantial. When writing fiction, take great care with your characters and understand the parts of them that you won’t even write about. Know who they are, and you’ll be able to mould their stories just the way they should be.
If you’re writing poetry: Ah, poetry. We see it all around us today, ranging from spoken word poetry to contemporary free-verse poetry to classical poetry. Most of us tend to mistreat it and try to force it out of ourselves. That is not how poetry comes. Good poetry is inspired, not coerced. When writing poetry, make sure you actually have something worthwhile to say, make sure you take the time to find fitting words, make sure you actually want to write poetry.
Your reading matters more than anything when writing poetry, you need to have the poetic tradition soaking your heart, drenching your soul, drowning your brain to write poetry.
These are just a few things you should keep in mind while writing in any of the above categories. Do leave comments to contribute to this article!
