4 Tips on How to Improve Your Writing Skills and Make More Money

Learning how to improve your writing skills will benefit you irrespective of whether you are a student, blogger, marketer, lawyer, doctor etc.  But you will reap the maximum benefits if you are a freelance writer

We have all been counseled, encouraged and pestered to develop better writing skills from elementary school onwards.  But once school, college and other academic pursuits are over, you stop all efforts to improve your writing skills. This is probably because you have many other things to do.

But that is not the case with freelance writers. They earn their bread and butter from writing. And if you are a freelance writer, you already know how much your pay depends upon the quality, style and refinement of your writing. So, without wasting any more time and space, let us get to the 4 tips on how to improve your writing skills.

Writing Tip # 1-Start Sentences with a Bang

No you do not have to use the word ‘bang’ in the beginning of every sentence. Keep verb and subject as close to the opening of the sentence as much as possible. This is an important trick to improve your writing skills by quite a few levels. Read examples below to understand this trick better:

Mary had a little lamb

Mary, who was the school principal’s daughter and looked as pretty as a doll, bought a lamb .

 See the difference between both the sentences?

The first one uses subject ‘Mary’ and verb ‘had’ together and right at the beginning, while the second one places 13 words in between Mary (subject) and the verb ‘bought’ (which describes the action taken by Mary).

It may not always be possible to start sentences with a verb or keep the subject and verb at the beginning of all sentences you write. But you can use this trick whenever you feel that your writing seems to be a bit off, despite creating excellent content. A simple re-arrangement of the position of the subject and verb may be all that it takes.

Writing Tip # 2- Strengthen Your Verbs

Strong verbs are way better than weaker ones. This is an important lesson in how to improve your writing skills. Strong verbs describe sizzling action, whereas weak verbs weaken your writing. I am not asking you to exclusively use strong verbs in your writing, but use them as much as you can.

Weak verbs are a part of passive voice and if you are writing copy for a website, blog posts or anything except academic research papers, active voice works best. Also avoid unnecessary crutches like tend to, sort of, could have, must have etc to support your verbs. Keep the verbs alone and strong enough to communicate the action of the subject.

Let us go through a few examples:

It must be admitted that a mistake was indeed done by the children.

The children committed a mistake.

The first sentence is in passive voice, has weak verb and is uninteresting and wordy. The second sentence on the other hand uses active voice, has a strong verb and instantly grabs your attention.

Writing Tip # 3- Don’t Abuse the Adverbs

Using adverbs should be limited to the bare necessity. Adverbs say more about the verb, but use your logic to determine how much more you want to say about your verbs. After writing your article/ post, go through it to check the use of adverbs. Then try removing these adverbs to see if the sentence works fine without them (which in all probability would). Add back the removed adverbs only if your sentence / verb appears weaker without them.

My dress was completely ruined by the rain.

The rain ruined my dress.

The first sentence not only uses an adverb ‘completely’ but also uses passive voice and is wordy. The second sentence uses active voice and conveys the message in an effective manner.

Writing Tip # 4- Play with Sentence Length and Types

Using same kind of sentences all throughout your writing will cause readers to lose attention soon. Play around with different sentence lengths and types.  Try mixing and matching simple, compound and complex sentences throughout your content

Synopsis

These 4 tips are just a small beginning to improve your writing skills. Writing is an art that gets better by practicing day in and day out. Keep learning tips to improve your writing; keep writing and keep looking out for more writing tips here. All the best to you in earning more money from writing!

Tags: editing, freelance, freelance writer, freelance writing, how to improve your writing skills, improve your writing skills, make money writing, make more money, money, writing, writing skills, writing tips

Category: Make Money Online Tips