So You Want To Write Insanely Good Content?
If you’re looking to write insanely good content than you’re SOL. You can only be great at being a write if you were born with it…sorry. Fin.
Just kidding, of course.
I recently came across an e-book titled Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content. The book is definitely well written and features some amazing tips on how to write spectacular content.
You don’t have to be a natural born writer to write content which knocks peoples socks off. Just like many things, it’s essentially just a skill that you have to learn.
Even if you’re only writing a 140 character tweet, you’re writing. It all depends on how you use those words which makes all the difference. I’ll give you guys a few sweet tips I picked up from reading the book!
Expert Writing Tips
Common sense isn’t all that common in society today. With that, a few of the tips given in the book could have went without saying such as “Use Cliches Only Once In A Blue Moon”(obvious irony going on here). However, there was a multitude of tips which if utilized in your own writing arsenal will help you to produce top notch work every time.
Keep in mind, most of these are just sort of ritualistic practices developed by one particular writer. You can develop your own killer writing approach on your own. That being said, take what you need and disregard what you don’t!
Getting Started
Getting started with a writing piece is obviously the hardest hurdle to overcome. Staring at a blank piece of paper or page is a daunting task. Because of this, the author suggests an old school writing trick of beginning your piece with the words “Dear Mom”.
The illusion of writing to someone combined with the fact that there are now concrete words down on your paper will help you overcome mental roadblocks.
The second biggest mistake people make is simply beginning a piece of writing with too much back story. Most of the time the stuff at the beginning of every article is unnecessary. However, many people ramble on about a few different things before ever getting to the real subject at hand.
What the author suggests that you do is simply to begin writing. Your first draft will be horrible but the author assures us that this is essential and crucial to getting out all of our ideas first and foremost. Editing and beaufifying of the content comes later on in the process.
The next step is to simply cut out the unnecessary content at the beginning. It’s a technique known as “taking a running start” followed by “covering your tracks”.
When you get right to the important information immediately it is much more effective and places the reader right in the midst of the topic from the very first word they encounter.
The Flesch-Kincaid Method
The Flesch-Kincaid method was something that I had only heard about before but now have a much better understanding of thanks to this book.
Rudolf Flesch and co-creator J. Peter Kincaid created a readability test in 1975 when they were commissioned by the U.S. Navy. Flesch happened to write a book titled “How To Write Plain English: A Book for Lawyers and Consumers”. With a book like that it’s no wonder the guy is really good at practicing simplicity in writing.
What these two people found was that a reader’s brain is constantly trying to figure out the meaning of what they are reading. Pauses, breaks, punctuation, etc assist the mind in understanding text because these short pauses allow the brain to process what it’s read up until that point.
They created a scale of 0-100. 0 being the most difficult to read and 100 being the easiest.
There are many ways of using this method. In fact, Microsoft Word has a feature which utilizes it. You can use Google to find out if you have the possibility to enable this feature on whatever publishing software you use.
However, the key take away is to know your reader and make sure that your writing is up to par with what your typical reader would be able to understand. A rating of 90+ would be suitable for a child or comedic piece whereas a rating of 30- wouldn’t be suitable for anyone other than a scholar.
Putting The Flesch-Kincaid Method To Work For Your Writing
- Breakup Long Sentences Into Smaller Ones
- Don’t Use Overly Complicated Words If You Don’t Have To
- Use Smaller Paragraphs
- Use Effective Punctuation
Other Useful Writing Tips!
Of course there are many other great tips listed in the book. Here are just a few to get you by. Until you purchase the book that is.
- Hire A Great Editor
- Avoid Writing By Committee
- Find A Writing Buddy
- Keep It Simple – But Not Simplistic
- Use Familiar But Surprising Analogies
- Show Your Reader, Don’t Tell Them
- Start Off The Piece With A Good Opener And End It With A Good Kicker
- Develop Empathy For Your Reader
- Think Like A Reader
- Work In Humor When You Are Editing
- Put In Some Thought Before You Begin Writing
- Don’t Adapt Technological Lingo To Human Interactions
I hope you enjoyed these tips on how to write insanely good content. If you enjoyed them consider checking out the book Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content. Make sure to let me know what you think in the comments section and thanks for reading!