Helping to write

50 Free Resources That Will Improve Your Writing Skills — Smashing Magazine

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• Copywriting, Blogging, Skills, Resources
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About The Author

Vitaly Friedman loves beautiful content and doesn’t like to give in easily. When he is not writing, he’s most probably running front-end & UX … More about Vitaly ↬

Effective writing skills are to a writer what petrol is to a car. Like the petrol and car relationship, without solid skills writers cannot move ahead. These skills don’t come overnight, and they require patience and determination. You have to work smart and hard to acquire them. Only with experience, you can enter the realm of effective, always-in-demand writers.

Of course, effective writing requires a good command of the language in which you write or want to write. Once you have that command, you need to learn some tips and tricks so that you can have an edge over others in this hard-to-succeed world of writers. There are some gifted writers, granted. But gifted writers also need to polish their skills frequently in order to stay ahead of competition and earn their livelihood.

CustomWritings.com is an academic writing service which provides custom written papers to help students with their grades. Moreover, do not miss an opportunity to turn to writing guides, topic ideas, and samples on their blog to polish your writing skills. Except for these, you can also benefit from free tools that will ease the entire writing process - free plagiarism checker, citation generator, words to pages as well as words to minutes converter when you are working on a speech.

More after jump! Continue reading below ↓

1.

Use English Punctuation Correctly
A quick and useful crash course in English punctuation.

HyperGrammar
An extensive electronic grammar course at the University of Ottawa’s Writing Centre.

Grammar Girl
Mignon Fogarty’s quick and dirty tips for better writing. Grammar Girl provides short, friendly tips to improve your writing. Covering the grammar rules and word choice guidelines that can confound even the best writers, Grammar Girl makes complex grammar questions simple with memory tricks to help you recall and apply those troublesome grammar rules.

Better Writing Skills
This site contains 26 short articles with writing tips about ampersands, punctuation, character spacing, apostrophes, semicolons and commas, difference between i.e. and e.g. etc.

The Guide to Grammar and Writing
An older, yet very useful site that will help you to improve your writing on word & sentence level, paragraph level and also essay & research paper level.

Paradigm Online Writing Assistant
This site contains some useful articles that explain common grammar mistakes, basic punctuation, basic sentence concepts etc. Worth visiting and reading. The Learning Centre contains similar articles, but with more examples.

Jack Lynch’s Guide to Grammar and Style
These notes are a miscellany of grammatical rules and explanations, comments on style, and suggestions on usage put by Jack Lynch, an Associate Professor in the English department of the Newark campus of Rutgers University, for his classes.

English Style Guide - Economist
This guide is based on the style book which is given to all journalists at The Economist. The site contains various hints on how to use metaphors, punctuation, figures, hyphens etc. Brief and precise.

Technical Writing
An extensive guidance on grammar and style for technical writing.

40+ Tips to Improve your Grammar and Punctuation
“Purdue University maintains an online writing lab and I spent some time digging through it. Originally the goal was to grab some good tips that would help me out at work and on this site, but there is simply too much not to share.”

2. Common mistakes and problems

Common Errors in English
A collection of common errors in English, with detailed explanations and descriptions of each error.

AskOxford: Better Writing
A very useful reference for classic errors and helpful hints with a terrible site navigation.

Dr. Grammar’s Frequently Asked Questions
Answers to common grammar questions related to English grammar, with examples and additional explanations.

English Grammar FAQ
A list of common English language problems and how to solve them. This list was compiled through an extensive archive of postings to alt.usage.english by John Lawler, Linguistics, U. Michigan, Ann Arbor.

3. General Writing Skills

Writer’s Digest
Writer’s Digest offers information on writing better and getting published. The site also includes community forums, blogs and huge lists of resources for writers.

Infoplease: General Writing Skills
Various articles that aim to teach students how to write better.

The Elements of Style
A freely available online version of the book “The Elements of Style” by William Strunk, Jr., the classic reference book.

Poynter Writing Tools
A blog dedicated to writers and journalists. Poynter also provides Fifty Writing Tools: Quick List, a collection of podcasts related to writing.

learning lab / writing skills
This site offers over 20 .pdf-documents with main rules and common mistakes related to summarising, paraphrasing, referencing, sentences, paragraphs, linking words and business writing. Handy.

Using English
UsingEnglish.com provides a large collection of English as a Second Language (ESL) tools & resources for students, teachers, learners and academics. Browse our grammar glossary and references of irregular verbs, phrasal verbs and idioms, ESL forums, articles, teacher handouts and printables, and find useful links and information on English. Topics cover the spectrum of ESL, EFL, ESOL, and EAP subject areas.

Online Writing Courses
Free courses are a great way to improve your writing skills. The courses shown here focus on several types of creative writing, including poetry, essay writing and fiction writing.

4. Practical Guides To Better Writing Skills

Copywriting 101: An Introduction to Copywriting
This tutorial is designed to get you up and running with the basics of writing great copy in ten easy lessons. Afterwards, you’ll get recommendations for professional copywriting training, plus links to tutorials on SEO copywriting and writing killer headlines.

A Guide to Writing Well “This guide was mainly distilled from On Writing Well by William Zinsser and The Elements of Style by Strunk and White. Other sources are listed in the bibliography. My memory being stubborn and lazy, I compiled this so I could easily refresh myself on writing well. I hope it will also be helpful to others. ”

Online Copywriting 101: The Ultimate Cheat Sheet
The ultimate cheat sheet with various Web copy resources that copywriters can use to lean the best writing tips and ideas.

Headlines and Trigger Words

• 50 Trigger Words and Phrases for Powerful Multimedia Content
• 21 Traffic Triggers for Social Media Marketing
• How To Write Magnetic Headlines (and even more headlines)
• Passive Voice Is Redeemed For Web Headings
• 5 Simple Ways to Open Your Blog Post With a Bang
• Landing Page Tutorials and Case Studies
• Copywriting for e-Commerce

Common mistakes and errors

• 10 flagrant grammar mistakes that make you look stupid
• The Seven Deadly Sins of Website Copy
• Six Common Punctuation Errors that Bedevil Bloggers

Writing tips from experts

• 10 Writing Tips from the Masters
• George Orwell’s tips on better writing
• Stephen King’s Top 7 Tips for Becoming a Better Writer
• Ernest Hemingway’s Top 5 Tips for Writing Well
• Writing hacks (hacks for writing) by Scott Berkun

Practical tips

• 10 Steps Toward Better Writing
• A Guide To Becoming A Better Writer: 15 Practical Tips
• 10 simple things you can do to improve your writing
• 7 Can’t-Miss Ways To Kick-Start The Writing Habit
• 10 Writing Tips for Web Designers
• Activate Your Verbs
• How to Write Faster, Better, and Easier
• Writing Tips for Non-Writers Who Don’t Want to Work at Writing
• How to Write Persuasive Links
• A Guide to Becoming a Better Writer: 15 Practical Tips
• 21 Must-Read Tips To Write Better Web Content

5.

CopyBlogger
Now that blogging has become the smartest strategy for growing an authoritative web site, it’s your copywriting skills that will set you apart and help you succeed. And this is where Copyblogger comes into play. Brian Clark’s popular blog covers useful copywriting tips, guidelines and ideas.

Write to Done
Leo Babuta’s blog about the craft and the art of writing. The blog covers many topics: journalism, blog writing, freelance writing, fiction, non-fiction, getting a book deal, the business of writing, the habit of writing. Updated twice weekly.

Problogger
Darren Rowse’s blog helps bloggers to add income streams to their blogs – among other things, Darren also has hundreds of useful articles related to copy writing.

Men with Pens
A regularly updated blog with useful tips for writers, freelancers and entrepreneurs.

Time to Write
Jurgen Wolff’s tips, ideas, inspirations for writers and would-be writers and other creative people.

Daily Writing Posts
“Whether you are an attorney, manager, student or blogger, writing skills are essential for your success. Considering the rise of the information age, they are even more important, as people are surrounded by e-mails, wikis, social networks and so on.

“It can be difficult to hone one’s writing skills within this fast paced environment. Daily Writing Tips is a blog where you will find simple yet effective tips to improve your writing.”

CopyWriting
“Copywriting website is jam-packed with useful information, articles, resources and services geared to show you how to write mouth-watering, profit-generating copy. Copy that changes minds and dramatically boosts your results. So come right in… you’re going to like what you see! It has copywriting courses, tools, articles and much more.”

The Copywriter Underground
A copywriting blog by the freelance writer Tom Chandler.

Lifehack: Writing
This collection of resources includes links to 30 posts on Lifehack that may help you to improve your writing skills.

6. Tools

OneLook Dictionary Search
More than 13,5 million words in more than 1024 online dictionaries are indexed by the OneLook search engine. You can find, define, and translate words all at one site.

Definr
A fast, suggest-as-you-type dictionary which you can add to your Firefox search box or use in bookmarklet form (see this post) (via Lifehacker).

Visuwords
Look up words to find their meanings and associations with other words and concepts. Produce diagrams reminiscent of a neural net. Learn how words associate.

Merriam Webster: Visual Dictionary
The Visual Dictionary Online is an interactive dictionary with an innovative approach. From the image to the word and its definition, the Visual Dictionary Online is an all-in-one reference. Search the themes to quickly locate words, or find the meaning of a word by viewing the image it represents. What’s more, the Visual Dictionary Online helps you learn English in a visual and accessible way.

OneLook Reverse Dictionary
OneLook’s reverse dictionary lets you describe a concept and get back a list of words and phrases related to that concept. Your description can be a few words, a sentence, a question, or even just a single word.

Online Spell Checker
Free online spell checker that provides you with quick and accurate results for texts in 28 languages (German, English, Spanish, French, Russian, Italian, Portuguese etc.).

GNU Aspell
GNU Aspell is a Free and Open Source spell checker designed to eventually replace Ispell. It can either be used as a library or as an independent spell checker. Its main feature is that it does a superior job of suggesting possible replacements for a misspelled word than just about any other spell checker out there for the English language.

WordWeb
A one-click English thesaurus and dictionary for Windows that can look up words in almost any program. It works off-line, but can also look up words in web references such as the Wikipedia encyclopedia. Features of the free version include definitions and synonyms, proper nouns, 150 000 root words and 120 000 synonym sets.

write rhymes
As you write, hold the alt key and click on a word to find a rhyme for it.

Verbix
This English conjugator will help you to determine how to use verbs in the proper tense.

Wordcounter
Wordcounter ranks the most frequently used words in any given body of text. Use this to see what words you overuse or maybe just to find some keywords from a document. Text Statistics Generator is an alternative tool: it gives you a quick analysis of number of word occurrences.

Advanced Text Analyzer (requires registration) This free tool analyzes texts, calculating the number of words, lexical density, words per sentence, character per word and the readability of the text as well as word analysis, phrase analysis and graded analysis. Useful!

Graviax Grammar Checker
Grammar rules (XML files containing regular expressions) and grammar checker. Currently only for the English language, although it could be extended. Unit tests are built into the rules. Might form the basis of a grammar checker for OpenOffice.

txt2tags
Txt2tags is a document generator. It reads a text file with minimal markup as bold and //italic// and converts it to the formats HTML, LaTeX, MediaWiki, Google Code Wiki, DokuWiki, Plain text and more.

Markdown
Markdown is a text-to-HTML conversion tool for web writers. Markdown allows you to write using an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain text format, then convert it to structurally valid XHTML (or HTML). Requires Perl 5.6.0 or later.

7. Further Resources

CustomWritings.com — Writing Service
You’re running out of time and need some writing help? The writing service CustomWritings.com provides you with custom texts tailored to your needs.

50 Useful Open Source Resources For Writers and Writing Majors
If you’re a writing major, why not take advantage of all the opportunities to get great free and open source resources that can help you to write, edit and organize your work? Here’s a list of fifty open source tools that you can use to make your writing even better.

English Forums
If you have a question related to English Grammar, join these forums to get advice from others who know the language better or can provide you with some related information.

The Ultimate Writing Productivity Resource
A round-up of applications, services, resources, tools, posts and communities for writers and bloggers who want to improve their writing skills.

100 Useful Web Tools for Writers
100 useful Web tools that will help you with your career, your sanity and your creativity whenever your write.

Something is missing? Please let us know in the comments to this post!

Further Reading on SmashingMag:

• Quick Course On Effective Website Copywriting
• Behind The Scenes of Smashing Magazine
• The Overlooked Importance of Professional Journalism
• Getting Practical With Microcopy
• Five Copywriting Errors That Can Ruin A Company’s Website

Helping Young Children Develop Strong Writing Skills

On this page

• Why is writing important?
• What Can You Do?
• Ideas for Parents: How to Help Your Child Become a Stronger Writer

Note: This article was adapted from two articles written by the U. S. Department of Education and was compiled by Colorín Colorado.

Writing is an important part of our daily lives. It is, however, a difficult skill to learn and master. By getting a head start with some simple activities, you can help your child begin to develop her writing skills at an early age. By doing so you will be contributing to her future success as a student and as an adult while teaching her how to express herself.

In this article, we provide some reasons that writing is an important skill for people of all ages, as well as a list of suggestions that will help your child become a stronger writer.

Why is writing important?

Writing is practical.
Every day, we need to write in order to complete our tasks, whether we are filling out a form at the doctor's office or writing an important letter. These tasks require us to write clearly, and organize information effectively.

Writing is an important element of a student's education.
Whether students are writing by hand or on the computer, many assignments and exams require students to write short answers or longer essays as a way of assessing what they have learned. As students get older, they will be expected to show more sophisticated writing skills, and to complete more sophisticated tasks through their writing. In addition, many colleges and universities require students to write essays as part of their admissions application.

Writing can be an important element of an employee's job.
Employees in many kinds of jobs are required to write on a daily basis. Perhaps they are taking phone messages and doing administrative work, or writing research reports and newspaper articles. Whatever the task, their ability to do their job well may depend on their ability to write. Many job applicants also must submit a resumé and a letter of application when applying to a new job.

Writing is an important form of communication.
Writing letters and emails is a common way of keeping in touch with our friends, relatives, and professional colleagues. Writing is frequently the final stage in communication when we want to leave no room for doubt, which is why we write and sign contracts, leases, and treaties when we make important decisions.

Writing can be an important outlet.
Many people find writing to be therapeutic, and a helpful way to express feelings that cannot be expressed so easily by speaking.

What Can You Do?

It's important to remember that writing can be as difficult a subject to teach and assess as it is to learn. Many students have trouble writing with clarity, coherence, and organization, and this can discourage them from writing if they feel frustrated.

That's where parent involvement can make a big difference. Encouraging your child to develop strong writing skills at a young age, and to become a better writer as she gets older, can have a lifelong positive impact on her writing, and may make writing an easier and more enjoyable process for her

To get you started, the Department of Education offers a number of ideas of things you can do help your child become a stronger writer. While many of these ideas apply to younger children, they can be adapted for older children as well. To learn more about ways to support your children if they continue to struggle with writing in middle and high school, read Tips for Parents of Struggling Adolescent Writers.

Ideas for Parents: How to Help Your Child Become a Stronger Writer

What You Need

• Pencils, crayons, or markers
• Yarn or ribbon
• Writing paper or notebook
• Cardboard or heavy paper
• Construction paper
• Safety scissors

Before getting started

Provide a place
It's important for your child to have a good place to write, such as a desk or table with a smooth, flat surface. It's also crucial to have good lighting.

Provide the materials
Provide plenty of paper (lined and unlined) and things to write with, including pencils, pens, and crayons.

Brainstorm
Talk with your child as much as possible about her ideas and impressions, and encourage her to describe people and events to you.

Activities for young children

Encourage the child to draw and to discuss her drawings
Ask your child questions about her drawings such as:

"What is the boy doing?"

"Does the house look like ours?"

"Can you tell a story about this picture?"

Show an interest in, and ask questions about, the things your child says, draws, and may try to write.

Ask your child to tell you simple stories as you write them down
Copy the story as your child tells it, without making changes. Ask her to clarify anything you don't understand.

Encourage your child to write her name
Practice writing her name with her, and point out the letters in her name when you see them in other places (on signs, in stores, etc.). She may start by only writing the first few letters of her name, but soon the rest will follow.

Use games
There are numerous games and puzzles that help children with spelling while increasing their vocabulary. Some of these may include crossword puzzles, word games, anagrams, and cryptograms designed especially for children. Flash cards are fun to use too, and they're easy to make at home.

Turn your child's writing into books
Paste her drawings and writings on pieces of construction paper. For each book, make a cover out of heavier paper or cardboard, and add special art, a title, and her name as author. Punch holes in the pages and cover, and bind the book together with yarn or ribbon.

Day-to-Day Activities

Make sure your child sees you writing
She will learn about writing by watching you write. Talk with her about your writing so that she begins to understand why writing is important and the many ways it can be used.

Encourage your child to write, even if she's scribbling
Give your child opportunities to practice writing by helping her sign birthday cards, write stories, and make lists.

As your child gets older, write together
Have your child help you with the writing you do, including writing letters, shopping lists, and messages.

Suggest note-taking
Encourage your child to take notes on trips or outings, and to describe what she saw. This could include a description of nature walks, a boat ride, a car trip, or other events that lend themselves to note-taking.

Encourage copying
If your child likes a particular song, suggest that she learn the words by writing them down. Also encourage copying favorite poems or quotations from books and plays.

Encourage your child to read her stories out loud
As your child gets older, ask her to share her stories with you. Listen carefully without interrupting, and give her positive feedback about her ideas and her writing!

Hang a family message board in the kitchen
Offer to write notes there for your child. Be sure that she finds notes left there for her.

Help your child write letters and emails to relatives and friends
These may include thank you notes or just a special note to say hello. Be sure to send your child a letter or card once in awhile too so that she is reminded of how special it is to get a letter in the mail. Consider finding a pen pal for your child.

Encourage keeping a journal
This is excellent writing practice as well as a good outlet for venting feelings. Encourage your child to write about things that happen at home and school, about people she likes or dislikes and why, and about things she wants to remember and do. If she wants to share the journal with you, read the entries and discuss them together.

Things to remember

Allow time
Help your child spend time thinking about a writing project or exercise. Good writers often spend a lot of time thinking, preparing, and researching before starting to write. Your child may dawdle, sharpen a pencil, get papers ready, or look up the spelling of a word. Be patient — this may all be part of her preparation.

Respond to your child's writing
Respond to the ideas your child expresses verbally or in writing. Make it clear that you are interested in what the writing conveys, which means focusing on "what" the child has written rather than "how" it was written. It's usually wise to ignore minor errors, particularly at the stage when your child is just getting ideas together.

Praise your child's writing
Take a positive approach and find good things to say about your child's writing. Is it accurate? Descriptive? Original? Creative? Thoughtful? Interesting?

Avoid writing for your child
Don't write a paper for your child that will be turned in as her work, and don't rewrite your child's work. Meeting a writing deadline, taking responsibility for the finished product, and feeling ownership of it are also important parts of the writing process.

Help your child with her writing as she gets older
Ask your child questions that will help her clarify the details of her stories and assignments as they get longer, and help her organize her thoughts. Talk about the objective of what she is writing.

Provide your child with spelling help when she's ready for it
When your child is just learning how to read and write, she may try different ways to write and spell. Our job is to encourage our children's writing so they will enjoy putting their thoughts and ideas on paper. At first, your child may begin to write words the way that she hears them. For example, she might write "haf" instead of "have", "frn" instead of "friend", and "Frd" instead of "Fred." This actually is a positive step in developing her phonemic awareness. Keep practicing with her, and model the correct spelling of words when you write. As your child gets older and begins to ask more questions about letters and spelling, provide her with the help she needs.

Practice, practice, practice
Writing well takes lots of practice, so make sure your child doesn't get discouraged too easily. It's not easy! Give her plenty of opportunities to practice so that she has the opportunity to improve.

Read together
Reading and writing support each other. The more your child does of each, the better she will be at both. Reading can also stimulate your child to write about her own family or school life. If your child has a particular favorite story or author, ask her why she thinks that story or that person's writing is special.

As you read and write more with your child, you will be building an important foundation, and taking steps that will help your child to become a better reader, writer, and student. Your efforts now will make a difference — and it may be just the difference that your child needs to succeed!

References

U.S. Department of Education. Office of Educational Research and Improvement, Archived Information. "Help Your Child Learn to Write Well." http://www.ed.gov/pubs/parents/Writing/index.html.

U.S. Department of Education. Parent Section: Helping Your Child Become a Reader. "Write On!" http://www.ed.gov/parents/academic/help/reader/part5.html#write.

Reprints

You are welcome to print copies or republish materials for non-commercial use as long as credit is given to Colorín Colorado and the author(s). For commercial use, please contact [email protected].

Major support provided by our founding partner, the American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO.

With generous support provided by the National Education Association.

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10 tips on how to write a book

Aspiring Writers' Guide

If you want to create strong texts or dream of writing a book - whether you are a novice blogger or an experienced author - remember: it is better to learn from word masters. We chose tips from ten great books on writing. You will learn how to deal with creative stagnation and uncertainty. Why read books and not copy the style of the greats. The tips are suitable for both future authors and those who simply love great texts.

1. Write in small portions (from Bird by Bird)

It often happens like this: you are plotting an autobiographical novel about your own childhood, or a play about the life of immigrants, or a treatise about ... well, let's say, the role of a woman in history. But tackling it right away is like climbing the slope of a glacier. Feet slip, fingers turn red, freeze, blood oozes from wounds. Then, from the depths of the subconscious, all your nervous breakdowns come to visit and sit around the table. Don't give them power.

“I breathe slowly and deeply — and finally I notice a five by eight centimeter photo frame, which I have specially placed on my desk to remember about small doses. The frame reminds me: I need to write a piece. Small, like a five by eight photograph. That's all for today. Right now, for example, I will write only one paragraph about the place and time of the action" Ann Lamott.

Say to yourself softly and affectionately: “My joy, we will just write about the river at sunset or about the first date.
That's it."

2. Make sure your topic is interesting to the reader (from the book "Author, Scissors, Paper")

"What can I tell you? Who am i? Why should someone waste time and even more money on me? These questions are asked by any author. First you need to realize: each person has something to tell.

First, determine what kind of topic you have: popular or specialized, for an amateur or a person in the topic. Who do you want to tell your story to? Who will benefit from it? Do you want to educate a wide range of readers or improve the lives of professionals in some field? It is impossible to please both at the same time.

Cool story is always there. Inside the fate, your personal history, there is a rhyme somewhere: a meeting, an event that you just need to remember - and in your imagination the process of creating a story starts.

And even personal experience is not always needed. There are simple criteria for selecting and analyzing whether your topic is suitable for public appearance:

- the text should communicate something very important,

- non-trivial to explain important processes,

- to be keenly useful to the reader,

- substantiate a fresh pattern that concerns the reader and give it a name,

- tell the story of a bright hero.

The reader is waiting for you to take him out of the routine into an unknown world for a long time. So create this world in such a way that you want to stay in it.

3. Make a "good novel" checklist (from the book "Literary Marathon")

If you have a desire to create your own novel, the first thing to do would be to understand what "a good novel" means to you. Answer this question in writing.

You can answer vaguely, or you can answer in great detail: first-person narration, superheroes, the Alps, massive invasions of evil elves.

Why is this list useful? The point is, if something is your reading preference, then you can probably excel as a writer as well. These language, color, and style choices resonate with you the most for some reason. These are things that you understand.

You can create such checklists for what you have to write most often - articles, reviews, reports.

4. Use hooks in text (from Living Text)

There are many ways to get started. Some work great in one book but don't work at all in another. You have to choose. Know how to choose.

For example, the False Prologue technique. Here the climactic scene is removed from the middle/end of the book and placed at the beginning.

So the reader immediately "tastes" the main and dramatic event of the whole story.

This technique is popular with directors: thanks to it, the film can be started with a tense, spectacular scene. Examples of books with "false prologue": Gabriel Garcia Marquez "One Hundred Years of Solitude", Stephenie Meyer "The Twilight Saga" (book 1), Emily Bronte "Wuthering Heights".

5. Use the board with cards (from Save the Cat!)

Screenwriter Blake Snyder's technique is a cork board and cards. Hang a large cork board on the wall, take cards with episodes, blocks, fragments of your future text (novel, article, report) and use pushpins to attach these cards to the board wherever you like. You can never part with cards at all. You put a pack of cards in your pocket, go to the nearest coffee shop, take out a pack and sit for hours shuffling your deck, laying out episodes, thinking about the sequence, looking for good and bad moments.

The whiteboard allows you to "see" the big picture before you even start writing.

This is a good way to test the different twists, ideas, dialogues, and rhythm of the story and see how well they fit together. This is a way to render text with good structure. It's great!

6.

You need to write clearly, but you should not blindly copy all the elements of oral speech. If we accurately and literally transfer ordinary everyday conversations to paper, we will see how many repetitions there are, inserts like mmm and uh-huh, how often the interlocutors interrupt each other.

“Readers need clarity.

Written words come together and make sense in the mind of the reader. Try to mimic the tone of a personal conversation. So the reader will "hear" your voice, as if you are addressing him, only without the noise that accompanies oral communication.

7.

Many would-be writers are bookworms. However, the thought of looking at great books under a microscope often disgusts them. But once you learn how to read critically, you will enjoy a much more subtle pleasure than ordinary readers.

Learn to go through the text at least twice. First just like that, and then with a pencil. Notice the rhythm, episodes and scenes, pay attention to words, phrases, stylistic devices.

Don't worry: you won't lose your love for books, quite the contrary. It is impossible to overestimate the benefits of analytical reading.

8. Show, don't tell (from the book "Literary Master Class")

Don't write "it was amazing", but make us say "amazing" after reading the passage. The fact is that all these words (terrifying, beautiful, disgusting, exquisite) tell the reader only one thing: “Do my job for me!” Clive Lewis advised.

Mark Twain taught the same thing: "Don't say, 'The old woman screamed.' Take her on stage and make her scream. "

And one more remark on the same subject, from Chekhov:

... you will get a moonlit night if you write that a glass from a broken bottle flashed like a bright star on the mill dam ...

It is necessary to show, not tell, selecting bright, specific details.

9. Find visual aids (from How to Write a Movie in 21 Days)

Have you ever tried to tell someone about your terrible or, conversely, amazing experience, but could not find the words? It all ended with something like “I can’t explain this to you” or “If you were in my place, you would understand.” The thing is, first you need to re-ignite this feeling inside, and then find the right words to describe it.

Find an object that is related to some of your experiences, evokes feelings, such as a lucky coin or a rock from the beach.

If this is a story about your grandfather, you can take his hat from an old chest. If you are writing a story about your grandmother, find the candlestick that belonged to her. If you came up with your own story when you heard a song in a restaurant, take a napkin from that restaurant and listen to that tune again.

Help your feelings to reappear, find helpers for this. Maybe some color will ignite an emotion in you.

10. Ready. Attention. Word sprint! (from the book "Start to write")

This technique teaches you to write without waiting for inspiration. Pick a topic, set a timer for 5 or 10 minutes, and write. If there are problems with the topic, open any book on page 17 and find line 6. This will be your theme.

As time passes, it is important not to hesitate. Let your thoughts run like hounds. Write with a sense of urgency.

Jump over the taboos, illuminate every stray, lonely thought in your head and let it break free.

Verbal sprint helps to turn off value judgment by entering the intuition stream to which high-speed writing is connected.

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Another 320 books on creativity

Music wrote us: we create to the tunes

Music wrote us:
we create to the tunes

Does music help to write books and under what compositions do the authors create — contemporary writers were asked.

When the text is stubbornly not written, you need to somehow help the process. And if all the rituals have already been tried - the desktop is put in order, the dance with the tambourine is performed, and the cat is stroked behind the ear - then it's time to turn to music . But how to do it right, and not to your own detriment? Let's try to figure it out by looking at the methods of the authors.