If you are a writer, journalist or a creative person who wants to improve your writing, obtain resources to generate ideas or find new techniques with which to satisfy your hunger to create and tell stories, in this article we want to provide you with a compendium of strategies and suggestions for be a better writer.
Whether you are affected by the fearsome creative block or want to expand your spectrum of techniques with which to write more and better , this series of tactics and recommendations will be very effective and useful. Take note.
Techniques and resources to improve your writing
1) Write a daily page: “Writer’s block is a comforting lie that we tell ourselves so we can stop writing and go do other more enjoyable things,” said Beth Dunn, writer and editor at HubSpot. Write email responses, a personal journal page, a cover letter, or an excerpt from a journal. Whatever, but every day at the same time, keep this routine.
2) The 750 word exercise: Putting into practice the famous automatic writing technique -which was already carried out by the French surrealists-, you can try to dump a sequence of ideas or words on a sheet of paper -completely completing about 750 words-. It does not matter if it is an incongruous or incomplete text, since it will be private and will help you to degrease the hinges of your talent as a writer.
3) Use applications like Twords: If you are a blogger, you will know the crucial importance of updating content frequently and consistently to obtain good results and gain traffic and visitors. To achieve your purposes, we recommend Twords, “the app that pushes you to write”, with which you will receive notifications, know your writing patterns and improve your responsibility thanks to its library, articles and other resources.
4) Keep your own inspiration file handy: Whether it’s in the form of a digital folder on your computer or an envelope or a physical file full of cutouts and prints, it’s essential that you generate your own file with interesting documents to inspire you and brainstorm moments. Creative lock. Poetry, announcements, news, articles, emails, screenshots … Any format is valid! Another option is to save links in a Delicious bookmark.
5) Question on networks: Interaction on social platforms can also help you refine the stories you tell and refine your style as a writer. You can ask your Twitter and Facebook followers or readers of your blog about solving a plot, encourage them to vote on their favorites or participate in elections about your next articles. Online surveys are another option.
6) Use word generators: If you are one of the people who usually use resources such as fantastic binomials -consistent in writing stories, poems or texts based on two random words from different semantic fields-, you can choose words using automatic generators such as Tagul or Wordle.
7) Get organized with tools like Trello: Online task managers are very effective for digital journalists, creatives, and writers, since planning is an essential part of the job. You can use this tool to manage and order your ideas, collaborate with other people, propose due dates, collect sources and set the periods to complete certain tasks.
8) Use the oTranscribe tool: This online tool is extremely useful when transcribing an interview you have conducted. It is a transcription web application created by Elliott Bentley, a graphic writer for the Wall Street Journal. The audio player is integrated with the editor, with which you can pause; play, rewind and fast forward using keyboard shortcuts. Every second, it automatically saves the transcript in the browser’s storage. You can export it using plain text or Google Docs. Additionally, it is open source under the MIT license.
9) Background noise to motivate you with Coffitivity: A recent study by the University of Chicago revealed that a moderate level of ambient noise, or “white noise,” helps people to be more creative. This online generator called Coffitivity offers you different cafeteria background sounds with different intensities to have background as you type.
10) Pomodoro technique to write more productively: In this article we already told you about this famous tactic created by Franceso Cirillo to manage time, dividing your day into totally distraction-free work periods combined with brief optimal breaks for productivity. For example, you can rest five minutes for every half hour worked. To put the Pomodor technique into practice, you can use applications such as E.gtimer or Tomato Timer.
11) Escape distractions with ZenPen: This tool is ideal so that attention does not drift if you work typing from your computer and want to be totally focused. This web application provides you with a minimalist writing area, with some features to stylize the text. When you’re done, you can copy and paste the text into the editor for your blog or website.
12) It improves thanks to the technology of Prompts: If you like to write entries or ideas with your iPhone, you can download this paid application for iOS whose investment may be worth it. Use an algorithm to make suggestions for what to write next. It also gives you statistics on your writing habits, regularly reminds you when to write, and allows you to schedule the best day and time to write based on your writing history.
13) Use BrainyQuote: If you want to include in a newspaper article or piece a quote from a famous author, politician, celebrity or other public figure with the aim of strengthening your writing or inspiring your readers. BrainyQuote is a comprehensive library full of millions of quotes that you can search by author or subject.
14) Simplify your writing thanks to Hemingway: The famous writer gives name to this eponymous mobile application for editing. With it, you can evaluate your way of writing and identify opportunities to make it simpler, easier and more readable.
15) Evaluate your writing with AtomicWriter: This online tool will evaluate your writing depending on the reading level of your specific target audience and the content they like best. How to use it? By connecting your Google Analytics accounts and your social networks to AtomicWriter, then paste the content into the application. It will analyze your historical and engagement data extracted from those accounts, and tell you if your text is appropriate for your target. If you want to further increase the level of writing assessment, we recommend ProWritingAid, which highlights overused words, redundancies, plagiarism, and sentence length, making it easier for writers to identify problem areas and strengthen them.
16) Find clichés with Cliché Finder: If you want to help make your writing more specific, and for this you want to avoid clichéd clichés, you can copy and paste your text in the search engine of this tool, which will highlight existing ones to be able to replace them with more specific text.
17) Create your own stylebook: You can use it as the basis for your reference media’s stylebooks and works by famous authors of this type. By searching Google, you can also find the guidelines of magazines, writers and journalists to improve your writing or use an inclusive, rich and respectful language.
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