Write better, with emotion
How to sharpen your writing and write better day by day
Words can empower stories and bring a wave of emotions. Words can fuel conversations and tie a strong connection with people. But writing, as many of us writers know very well, it's not easy. It has to reach people at the right time, at the right moment, and it needs more than words.
Whether you are an experienced writer or at the beginning of this exciting journey, I hope these tips will help you write better. These are something I've learned over the years and still trying to sharpen with every piece of content at the tip of my fingers.
Use short sentences. Write with simple words
Readers often tend to scroll, to skip parts of reading because of their lack of patience. When you’re writing shorter sentences, the attention span increases. You can also keep the interest by using simple words everyone understands and uses in their daily vocabulary. Use contractions to shorten your sentences and make them easy to read.
Keep it simple. Write to your audience like speaking to a friend.
Put everything into writing. Even your own emotions
“The key to all of this — making words come alive, adding a human element, and being personable and compelling — is to be specific. To show, not merely tell.” ― Ann Handley, Everybody Writes
You're not only writing words. You're writing emotions, stories. Emotions are at the core of the human experience. According to psychologist Paul Eckman, there are 6 types of basic emotions experienced in all human cultures: happiness, sadness, disgust, fear, surprise, and anger. Mix these with other emotions to create a story. Writing with emotion will empower your story and it will have more impact upon the reader.
Read more, write better
“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut.” ― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
I've always been a book lover and this helped me a lot in my writing career. Read books about writing. Read different types of books. It can make you more creative, give you an important source of inspiration, and information. For example, Brandon Sanderson’s books are always inspiring for me. His books make my imagination go wild. In Elantris, his words came to life in my head and made me imagine the dark magic of the city more visually. It made me feel like a character in the story.
Reading also helped me become more versatile in writing various types of content. This can mean a new article about an industry for work, a poem for my personal collection, or a fiction story for a contest. Just read and then write.
Practice several types of content
Curiosity is the human trait that needs to be explored by writers. When I first started writing, I was into poetry. During school years, mainly due to literature classes, I've discovered prose and it made me dive into this type of content as well. Later on, I've explored writing even more while doing advertising internships and starting my first job in e-commerce.
Personal experiences can provide you the home to writing different types of content, but they can also make you curious to try new things and find your most insightful area.
Read your story the next day. Ask a friend to read it
Every time I'm writing an article, a case study, a landing page, or a social media post, I ask for a first impression. It doesn't matter if you ask a colleague at work or if it's a friend, it matters. After you edit your story for the 10th time, check your grammar with Grammarly, and your spelling with Hemingway, make sure you do this step. I've applied this for a few years now and it helped me improve my writing a lot. Also, reading your new writing the next day it makes you rewrite sentences better and perfect your writing style.
Write today and tomorrow. Then write some more. Write for you, but also write for others. Write with emotion. You will end up writing better day by day.
What has helped you write better?
