Easy exercises to practise & improve your writing skills
Good copy evokes an emotion. It drives a reader to act because of how it makes them feel.
A content writer’s job is to ensure that their copy taps into that emotion in the shortest time possible. Which requires choosing the right words – and keeping your copy tight.
There are plenty of places on the web where you can find useful tips that will help you improve your writing or writing assistant software that will rid your copy of errors. But, if you want to consistently create better content, you need to practise.
Here are three helpful exercises that will help you to up your writing game.
If you have 5 minutes: free writing
Popularlised by English professor Peter Elbow, free writing is exactly what it sounds like.
You’re encouraged to sit down, pick a topic, grab a piece of paper or open a doc, and write. Not to take note of the words you use or the typos you might make. Not to put down fact-packed paragraphs. Just to write.
If you have any anxieties around writing, free writing is a great way to overcome these. Plus, it can help you to overcome writer’s block and give your day a creativity injection. Which is always helpful.
My favourite way to free write is using The Most Dangerous Random Prompt Generator.
The web app generates a prompt, you choose your session length (anything from 3 minutes to 60) and get to writing. There’s no required word count, but if you stop writing for more than five seconds, your progress will be lost.
When you reach the allotted time, your copy is safe and, if there’s anything you might want to use, you can copy it over to a document. Alternatively, you can restart your session with the same prompt.
The Most Dangerous Random Prompt Generator also has hardcore mode, where the text is blurred so you’re unable to see what you’re typing. Definitely not for the faint of heart.
If you have 15 minutes: text synthesis
This one is incredibly straightforward: take a Wikipedia paragraph or section and cut it down to a third of its original length.
Wikipedia’s first two content guidelines are “Be clear” and “Be concise”. The platform requires writer to be “plain, direct, unambiguous, and specific” and to “omit needless words”.
In short: cut the fluff and writing what you mean. Which is what makes text synthesis so helpful for content writing.
You’re forced to root out exactly which information drives the story forward and which is superfluous to your point. Plus, word choice and sentence structure become extremely important.
Below is a passage I synthesised from the introductory paragraphs on the Anglo-Zanzibar War page. The original was 410 words and my summary is 137 words:
Fought between the United Kingdom and the Zanzibar Sultanate on 27 August 1896 and lasting only 38 minutes, the Anglo-Zanzibar War is the shortest recorded military conflict in history. It marked the end of the Zanzibar Sultanate’s sovereignty and the start of a period of heavy British influence.
The war was triggered by Sultan Khalid bin Barghash succeeding Sultan Hamad bin Thwuaini after the pro-British ruler’s death on 25 August – contrary to an 1886 treaty with the British. The British demanded that Khalid vacate the palace or face war; he instead called up his guard and barricaded himself inside the building.
The ultimatum expired and the British swiftly began their attack two minutes later. The battle continued until 9:40, resulting in around 500 casualties for the Zanzibari defence but only one for the British.
Practise this a few times a week for a month and you’ll see a marked improvement in your writing. Practise it a few times a week for a year and you’ll be writing tighter copy than anyone else out there.
If you have an hour (or more): write and review
One of the best ways to improve your writing is to get feedback from other writers and editors.
Set yourself a task (with a good topic) and a deadline, and get writing. Then, find another writer who’s willing to give you some feedback.
There are loads of writing and editing groups that you can join on various social media platforms (I find LinkedIn and Facebook the most useful). Ask if there are any group members who would take a look at your work and provide feedback, then send them your text or provide a link to your portfolio website.
When posting your content or copy, it’s important to provide a brief summary of the requirements. For example, if there are any keywords you were targeting, the audience you were writing for and anything else.
And when it comes to feedback, remember to assess the objective value of the commentary you might receive.
Constructive notes on technical elements that can be backed up with reasoning (e.g. “This sentence is long and the comma usage creates ambiguity. Rather break it up into two sentences.”) are valuable. Subjective opinions that don’t have anything to support them (e.g. “I don’t like how this sounds.”) are less so.
As with any other community that you join, remember to add your own value. That may mean creating a quick post that highlights what you learned from the feedback your received, or providing feedback of your own on other writers’ work.
Final thoughts
When it comes to writing, the well-known adage about practise making perfect is always true.
Free writing, synthesising text and asking for feedback from more experienced writers are three great ways to practise and improve your writing skills. All you need is a little bit of time and determination.
