5 ways to instantly make your writing twice as good as it was

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Back in the middle of last year, Freelance Folder published an article called ‘5 Ways to Instantly Become a Better Writer’, which can be summed up as follows:–

If you’re serious about writing online—and if you’re a designer on the web, you should be—then you need to be following these rules religiously. Otherwise you’ll just look like an incompetent gibbon, right? Having said that, the list is by no means exhaustive, so I’m going to add five of my own rules for how to step up to the task, smack it between the eyes before it knows what’s coming, and have it on the ground in an arm-lock begging for mercy in three seconds flat. Here we go:–

  1. Half-cocked is half-assed
  2. Read your work aloud
  3. Less is more
  4. Be yourself
  5. Spend time on a headline

1
Half-cocked is half-assed

Sometimes I read something which provokes a strong inclination to respond. I immediately start writing up a heated/enthusiastic/insightful/awesome response. Then, about halfway through, I start to lose momentum. The initial energy which was released when I read the article has been spent, and I’m left running uphill on my own steam.

At this point, I typically pause and re-read what I’ve written so far. By re-reading, I’m re-considering the whole post. Usually, at this point I realize my initial reaction was a flash in the pan, and I haven’t actually got enough to say—one way or another—to make it worth saying.

Unfortunately, 98% of the denizens of the Tubes don’t do us this favor. Once their initial conviction wears off, they figure they might as well finish anyway. So they do. And it’s rubbish. Half-cocked, half-assed drivel.

The moral of the story is plan your writing. A spontaneously-produced article—rather like a spontaneously-produced theory, business strategy, meal, or bodily fluid—will typically be either brilliant, or an unsightly and embarrassing waste. Brilliance is rather rare.

2
Read your work aloud

If you haven’t done this before, you’ll probably be surprised at how much it helps. Careful now—I’m not talking about reciting the words on-screen in the typical, sing-song monotone you picked up in primary school when “See the horse run. See Jack shoot” was hard reading. I mean that you should pretend like the article you’re writing is something you’re telling someone.

You aren’t reading a script. You’re telling a prospective client, or a colleague, or a friend about something which genuinely interests both of you. You have feelings and opinions, and you’re an expert, and they want to listen. When you read an article aloud, you can tell if it’s interesting or not. You can sense if a turn of phrase works, or if it’s just tacky. You can feel where the words you’ve written are clumsy and make you stumble, or where they’re smooth and draw you along.

The moral of the story: if your article doesn’t read aloud in a way which sounds natural, and which would keep the attention of someone already interested in the topic, I’m sorry but you’re boring. Cricket-chirpingly, tumbleweed-rollingly dreary. How can you possibly be so dull if you actually care about the subject? (For the answer, see point 4). Write it again, jackass. And then read it aloud again.

3
Less is more

It’s a big cliche because it’s true. Every single sentence, every single word, every single glyph on the screen which doesn’t actually need to be there is one extra moment of your reader’s time you just wasted. Waste enough of his time, and he will stamp his feet, click his heels together, and frolic away like a merry lamb into the fruitful Google Forest. He won’t come back.

Riding the cliche train all the way to the station:– you know an article is finished when there’s nothing more you can take away. That’s why you proofread. That’s why you edit. Make every sentence and every word count. If a word doesn’t have to be there, cut it out. If you can replace it with a simpler word, do it. Every sentence should do two things: firstly, it should convey some necessary meaning; secondly, it should make your reader want to read the sentence after it. William Strunk was right:–

A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.

The moral: your flowery prose, poetic turns of phrase, and constant repetition probably sound great if you’re you. If you’re everybody else, though, it’s just twigs and leaves obscuring the trunk. Stop writing to impress yourself, and start writing to impress the people you want reading your stuff.

4
Be yourself

Much like in a job interview, uncertainty leads to anxiety, anxiety leads to fear, fear leads to hate, hate leads to—no, sorry, that’s something else. Fear leads to the stench of failure that a reader, like any other carnivore, can detect at a thousand paces with the wind going in the wrong direction.

Why would you be uncertain? Not because you don’t know the topic, since you aren’t going off all half-cocked, are you? If your topic was P90 submachineguns, you’d be like a colonel in the Navy Seals or something. So what is it? Obviously, the problem is that you feel like a phony when you write the way you think you’re meant to. Your article is like a cardboard cracker. It looks edible, but when you try to eat it, it tastes oddly bland and sucks the moisture right out of your mouth.

Who told you that you were supposed to write like a generic sixties business executive? Haven’t you read anything by Naomi Dunford?

The moral? Stop trying to present yourself how you think people expect, and present yourself. You’re not a drone, and no one wants to read anything written by a drone.

5
Spend time on the headline

You’ve lovingly crafted your article letter by letter. It’s taken you the better part of a week. And your mom thinks it’s awesome. Great, kid. Now don’t get cocky. Take the time you spent writing the article, divide it in half, and spend it working out a headline.

“But Bnooon, that’s daaaaaaaays.”

That’s right, days. Now get cracking. Remember, a headline needs the four Us; it has to:–

  1. urgently compel your reader onward, by implying in an
  2. ultra-specific way how
  3. useful the article will be, and how
  4. unique its benefits.

And unless you’re a copywriting pro, or you just ain’t serious, you cannot leave this page without clicking through to Copyblogger’s excellent, to-the-point series on how to write magnetic headlines.

The moral? What, did you think people would just magically know your article is fantastic? Maybe it’s so great that all the words will just simultaneously slam into their eyeballs—bam!—and they’ll absorb the whole thing via osmosis of the optic nerve? What, are you crazy? If you’re writing articles, you need to know that, of all the people who read your headline, for 80% of them that’s all they read. Unless, that is, you’re putting in the long hours molding that headline into a thieving scoundrel who sits at the top of your article and grabs people as they pass by and gives them such a fright that they read the whole thing out of pure, animal self-preservation. So get to it.

D Bnonn Tennant
‘The Information Highwayman’
D Bnonn Tennant, ‘The Information Highwayman’, signs his name to this

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