3 Exceptional Ways to Improve Your Writing

Improvement in writing comes from developing your skills. But if you don't set up exercises and time to practice you will not improve. Baseball players improve their hitting by taking batting practice at least two to three times a week. Writers are the same they need practice and instruction.

Improve Your Vocabulary

If you have ever signed up for The-Word-of-the-Day you know what a waste of time that is trying to remember some obscure word. Build your vocabulary using everyday words.

When you are writing a piece stop and see how many words come to mind to replace some word you just used. For instance the word "improvement" could have been revision, amendment, or correction. Think about them and use them in sentences keeping them at the forefront of your everyday vocabulary.

As you work and see interesting words write them down so later you can practice your vocabulary and increase your word knowledge.

Purchase Basic Reference Books

Writing tools are essential to accomplish goals and improve your writing. Baseball players use different bats, gloves and shoes. All picked because they help them accomplish their goals.

Every author can begin by purchasing three basic reference books, the tools of their trade.

The first is a dictionary. You may need to know how to spell "prepubescence" and without a dictionary you are sure to get it wrong. Nothing embarrasses a writer more then mis-spelled words. I assure you that spell check will not always catch your mistakes. I also find it smart to look up meanings of words to make sure they are correctly applied. A dictionary is the most basic of all writing tools and will help you with both word spelling and correct usage.

The second basic tool is an encyclopedia, even if all you can afford is a single volume set. Most writers think that if they have access to the internet they can look up anything, while that might be true its easier to just thumb through an encyclopedia to cross reference or check what you are writing about. Don't always trust everything you read on the internet.

A thesaurus is the third basic tool and is the most widely used. It helps an author find just the right word to express an opinion or tell an exciting story. Words are what we writers use as building blocks to make an idea or concept come to life. Synonyms are complex and a thesaurus helps us as we search for meaning by making sure we have just the right word.

Buying reference books is an investment in your occupation.

Read, Read, Read

Tools are important but so is studying other writers. We need to study how other writers describe places, people and ideas. How they create feelings and visions about a story or articles.

As an author you should read a lot. See how others use words to stir emotions, create excitement, or describe a place. See how they build facts to support opinions or how memoirs stir common memories among a certain class of people.

Make sure you read some classic novels by famous authors. See how they use words to create visions in your mind. You can learn a lot from others who have gathered words to record history or describe great conflicts of emotions. See how a word can make you cry at one moment while making you laugh at another. Learn the techniques that all authors use then stretch them and bend them so they fit in your novel or article.

Read out loud and feel the cadence of the authors words. Sense what works and what doesn't work. Be critical in how words are used or how you could improve upon them.

This is the essence of being a good writer by learning from others.

That is the three exceptional ways to improve your writing. They take time but be sure to use them and you will see your well crafted words in print or online soon.