Tips to Step up Your Writing – A Writer’s Checklist

Even though someone is a professional writer or passionately pursues the thoughts to stay on the course, they must persuade through their writing. Writers need to follow a structured checklist for effectively conveying their ideas, avoid miscommunication and achieve their goals.

Quality in writing is a continuous process, and perseverance is the key to achieving it. A writer needs to support his/her writing practice with streamlined activities to enhance the approach, thought process, and tone/subject selection. While exploring or experimenting with your writing, you can always publish your writeups in The Story Cabinet Writer’s section under your profile.

Checklist for Effective Writing

Quality and effective writing does not merely flow ideas or logic but content that communicates clearly and connects with the audience and readers. Thus, writers require a set of strategic actions to follow and implement in their writing style to get optimum results. Here is a checklist for effective writing that will support bringing value to your writing piece:

• Create an Outline for Cohesive Writing

An outline is a roadmap for your content, guiding you on how to proceed and present your thoughts. With a content outline, you create a structure to fill with details. It keeps you focused and create thought that flow together cohesively. 

You can easily identify the main components of the writing and pick relevant information and quotes from the sources. Also, writers get a steady foundation and groundwork when beginning the writing process by outlining the writing piece.

• Research and Understand Your Audience 

Knowing your audience helps decide what information to include, how to arrange that information, and supporting details that can help the reader get a precise idea and accordingly adjust the tone and structure of the content. 

Empathize with your audience and note their hopes, fear, likes, what keeps them entertained, and learning goals. It will guide the subject matter and writing style for maximum impact.

• Strong Opening Lines for an Impressive Page

The first few lines of your writing color how your audience perceives your content. There are several ways you can hook up the audience, like sharing a personal anecdote or story, creating a sense of need in the reader, establishing a personal connection, etc.

A strong opening with the right tone is significant for connecting with the audience and developing their interest in the subject.

• Write Specific Without Fillers

Specific writing helps the readers understand the idea of the writer clearly. Specificity is crucial to avoid readers interpreting your writing intent according to them and getting misunderstood.

For example, in an essay arguing that magnet schools in cities improve the education of minorities, the writer needs to provide statistics, evidence, and other evidence to prove it. So, writers should be specific n their writing to be effective, informing, and influencing. 

• Use Sensory Verbs and Adjectives for an Appealing Content

Mixing your content with sensory verbs and descriptive adjectives supports bringing the readers to your story world. There is an old saying, “Show, do not tell,” and by adding sensory verbs like sizzle, hiss, snap, glow, scream, etc., writers impact the readers’ five senses. 

Including descriptive adjectives improves flat and boring content, giving it power and making it more appealing.

• Proof Read and Avoid Grammatical Errors

Proofreading analyses the paper for clarity, efficiency, and grammar. Avoiding grammatical errors makes the writing piece more organized and effectively communicates with the readers. Learn to avoid any spelling mistakes, stylistic errors, word repetition, fluff words, etc., to make the content readable.

Follow Writer’s Checklist to Make Your Writing Productive and Engaging

The writer’s checklist discussed above will help professional and budding writers form new habits and make their writing practice easier and more productive. The Story Cabinet (TSC), a digital platform for readers and writers, extends its support to writers by providing them space to create and maintain their writer profiles. On TSC, writers can publish their write-ups and share them to reach a larger audience group of TSC.