The Easiest Ways to Make Your Writing Better

As you've probably figured out, writing is no science.

There's not a specific, "You must follow this guideline on how to write a book or else," handbook. Even though there are many things to learn about it, there's no end all be all.

This is especially true since everyone writes differently.

We all have our own writing styles.

But there are several simple mistakes that I often see in people's writing. They're so small, and yet they have such a big impact on your writing.

They're also specific, easy things to fix. And fixing them will 100% make your writing sound more professional and help it flow better.

If you've ever wanted straight forward, fool-proof advice on how to make your writing better, this is the blog post for you.

Use dialogue tags sparingly.

Dialogue tags are supposed to be beneficial. They're supposed to help your reader know who's talking.

But often times, these things that are supposed to help your writing, tend to hurt your writing.

Why?

Because people don't know how to use them.

Dialogue tags are used to show who's talking, but they're often not necessary and can bog down your writing if used too much.

Instead, put actions before sections of dialogue to show who's talking.

Let me give you an example:

"Why don't you just leave it alone?" Jeremy asked.

Kate scoffed. "Because that'd be impossible to do," she said.

What if we change this to:

"Why don't you just leave it alone?" Jeremy asked.

Kate scoffed. "Because that'd be impossible to do."

We don't need a dialogue tag in the last part, and it reads much better without one.

If a dialogue tag is not necessary for either showing who's talking, showing a specific way someone's talking, or because it sounds right, you don't need it.

(For more about this topic, check out "A He Said, She Said Situation".)

Sometimes a dialogue tag will be beneficial to the flow of words. There are times when I'm writing and I just think, "Oh, I really like the sound of a dialogue tag there. It breaks up the dialogue well and helps the flow."

There will definitely be times like that in your writing.

The challange is figuring out whether or not it's beneficial.

A great trick to doing that is to read your writing out loud. If it doesn't sound right when you're reading it, you might want to change up the dialogue tags you've used, or change something else in your writing.

This brings us to our next tip.

Read your book out loud.

This isn't just good for analyzing your use of dialogue tags.

With any aspect of your writing (sentence types, the language you use, descriptions—literally anything, guys) reading it aloud, even in a whispered tone, will help you. I promise.

For some reason, reading things out loud reveals all these flaws in the flow of your sentences and writing that you might not catch while editing normally.

If you've never done this, I beg you to try it. It's so useful. And you don't even have to do it all the time with all of your writing. Just with certain sections that are a bit more complex or super descriptive parts or maybe just a spot you've had trouble writing.

Trust me, reading out loud is an easy way to spot errors in your writing and anything you could tweak to help it flow better and sound more professional.

Don't overuse a character's name.

This is something I've already mentioned in the blog post, "Name Name Name"—which you should definitely check out for a more in depth look at this topic—and is something so minor and yet it affects your writing tremendously.

Obviously, you need to use a character's name to show the readers who's talking, who's thinking, or committing that action. But after you use the name once, you can begin to use the character's pronouns instead. You can do this until the character's name needs to be spoken again so the reader will know who's doing what.

Many writers end up using a character's name too many times, and even though it's a small mistake, it surprisingly impacts how your writing sounds a lot.

Try to use the name at the beginning so the readers will know who's talking and then sprinkle it throughout when it's needed.

Avoid using it over and over again when the character's pronouns would work fine for it.

This is especially important if you're writing a scene with only one character in it and you're in third person perspective. Make sure you're not overusing that character's name.

Reading it aloud really helps find spots where you need to trade out the character's name for their pronouns.

Let me give you an example:

Mayliah stepped into the room, spinning around as Mayliah realized she didn't even remember what she had come in for. Slapping Mayliah's palm to her forehead in a dramatic gesture her movie star aunt would be proud of, Mayliah walked out the door and right back into the room.

I know, that was a bit of an exaggerated example, but couldn't you see how the major overuse of Mayliah's name bogged down that paragraph?

Let's try it this way:

Mayliah stepped into the room, spinning around as she realized she didn't even remember what she had come in for. Slapping her palm to her forehead in a dramatic gesture her movie star aunt would be proud of, she walked out the door and right back into the room.

Didn't that sound better?

See how overusing a character's name can make a paragraph sound stiff and not as well-written?

Avoid using words multiple times on the same paragraph or page.

This is something so easy to fix, and yet so many people make this mistake.

Do not overuse any word.

Not just character names, any word at all.

This is probably something you learned in school, and if it isn't, it's something you should definitely start putting into practice.

It's easy to overuse words. Things your characters interact with a lot or anything that's a big part of a scene are probably going to end up mentioned more than once in the same page—and there's nothing wrong with that.

What we want to avoid is using the same word over and over and over again in the same paragraph or even just the same page.

Let me give you an example:

Chris snatched a double cocoa cookie from the plate on the counter.

Regina flipped around, brandishing her spatula like a sword. "I saw that!"

Taking a bite of the cookie, Chris shook his head, waving his hand to mimic a jedi. "You saw nothing."

"That doesn't work on me you dork."

He grinned, taking another bite of the cookie. Walking to his school lunch bag, he pulled out the other cookie he'd grabbed from the plate, unbeknownst to his mother, and slipped the cookie into the bag.

Finishing the cookie in his hand, he grabbed his lunch and walked towards the door. "Bye, Ma!"

Can you see how many times "the cookie" was used?

It wasn't majorly bad, but couldn't we cut that down a little? Or a lot?

If we replaced some of the spots that said "the cookie" with "it", would it read better? What about if we found another word to put in place of "cookie"?

Chris snatched a double cocoa cookie from the plate on the counter.

Regina flipped around, brandishing her spatula like a sword. "I saw that!"

Taking a bite of the cookie, Chris shook his head, waving his hand to mimic a jedi. "You saw nothing."

"That doesn't work on me you dork."

He grinned, taking another bite of the chocolaty goodness. Walking to his school lunch bag, he pulled out the other cookie he'd grabbed from the plate, unbeknownst to his mother, and slipped it into the bag.

Finishing the one in his hand, he grabbed his lunch and walked towards the door. "Bye, Ma!"

That sounded a bit better, didn't it?

Now let me give you a more obvious example:

Darcy pulled a granola bar from her bag. Biting into the granola bar, she realized the granola bar was stale, her teeth not going all the way through the granola bar.

She pulled the granola bar away from her, wondering how long it'd been in her house for it to get that hard?

It was a granola bar for Pete's sake! They had a life of like a billion years, didn't they?

How was that?

Do you think I used "granola bar" too many times...?

Maybe...?

Yeah, I did.

So let's see how we can make it better:

Darcy pulled a granola bar from her bag. Biting into it, she realized it was stale, her teeth not going all the way through the crunchy stick.

She pulled it away from her, wondering how long it'd been in her house for it to get that hard?

It was a granola bar for Pete's sake! They had a life of like a billion years, didn't they?

Wow! That sounded a ton better, didn't it?

See how I replaced a lot of the uses of "granola bar" with "it" because the reader already knew what I was talking about. And "crunchy stick", a replacement I came up with for granola bar, was used once as well.

Even though this was an extreme example, and you're probably not going to use a word that many times in the span of three paragraphs, it still got the point across and showed you what to do to help fix the problem.

Use "it" and creative replacements or synonyms for whatever word you're overusing.

And this is just another instance when reading out loud will help you spot these sections.

I will probably have to do a part two of this post because there are so many easy ways to make your writing better, but I hope this was helpful.

Make sure to stay tuned.

Happy writing!

-Jocelyn