Ep 170: How to Be a Better Writer (Pt 5) – Four Writing Tips

Last time, we talked about the 6+1 Traits. When you take time to evaluate your work in each one, you can begin to identify areas of strength and weakness. Over time you can boost the weaker areas and become a better writer. In the months ahead, I'll continue to explore ways we can improve our craft using these traits to organize each recommendation, but for now, I'm wrapping up this part of the series to bring you something new. I'll tell you all about it at the end of this post. Writing tips, tricks, and tweaks offer immediate results, so here are four more tips to help you be a better writer. 1. Ban "the" at the Start of a Sentence My brother, who teaches writing at a university, reminded me of this tip: Never use "the" at the beginning of a sentence. While this may seem extreme—even ridiculous—what it does is force you to find new ways to vary your sentence openers. “The” is a useful word in the English language, but let’s face it: launching a sentence with "the" doesn’t offer much oomph. I could soften the tip and say, “Rarely begin a sentence with ‘the,’” but if you make it a rule—if you never start a sentence with “the”—you’ll force yourself to reach for creative alternatives. Almost any other word will hook the reader better than "the." So do it; or, rather, don’t do it. Don’t start sentences with “the.” See if you don’t write with a livelier style. 2. Vary Sentence Constructions The first tip leads to the next: vary sentence constructions. If you signed up for the free mini-course "Make Your Sentences Sing: 7 Sentence Openers to Add Music to Your Prose," you’ll have one set of options you can use to mix up your sentence constructions. If every sentence began the same way, we'd be bored after only a few paragraphs. So mix up the way you construct your sentences. When you stop using “the” at the beginning of your sentences, you’ll turn to the myriad options available to you. But think, too, of the whole sentence and how one flows to the next. Your sentences can vary not just with how you begin them, but throughout. At the editing stage, take time to craft your sentences with care and then read them aloud. Listen for mood and tone and style—does it match what you’re trying to convey? Listen for pace—does one naturally lead to the next to keep you reading or do they lag and sag? Listen for musicality—do your sentences sing? 3. Vary Sentence Length As we play with our sentences, we'll want to switch up not only the type of sentences we use but also their length. Don’t fret about these sentence-level changes while writing your draft, but as you edit, listening for the effect of your writing from paragraph to paragraph, you’ll hear your sentences work together to form the complete thought or beat. Sometimes when we churn out a draft, we fall into a steady output that spits out sentences of similar length. When you have several medium-length sentences in a row, the piece may struggle to hold a reader's attention. A longer sentence in there somewhere—created by combining two medium-length sentences—may be an easy solution to try. Add punch every once in a while by inserting a super short sentence—even one with only two or three words. That’ll grab the reader's attention better than an exclamation point. Tell the story or explain the logic, then drop in a short one. Try it. You’ll start to see how it breaks up a paragraph and gives the eye a place to stop a moment and think. 4. Be Natural Remember how our English teachers banned contractions and the use ...