Grab your readers by the throat and drag them into your article
Any good writer will tell you that if you don’t capture your readers attention in the first sentence, or at least within the first paragraph, you’ve lost your audience.
It doesn’t matter what you’re writing. Be it a magazine article, short story or ad copy. It’s extremely important to get your readers attention quickly, and then keep it.
Being able to write well is not something you’re born with. Even “Natural Talent” has to be nurtured and developed over time. All great authors had to learn about grammar, spelling and punctuation at some point.
In fact, I would like to show you exactly what I’m talking about…in a real world situation. There is a website I’m aware of that posts short stories from both armatures and professionals. The amateurs think their stories are well done, but, the truth is, they need plenty of work. They look and read like amateur writers wrote them. There are plenty of grammatical and punctuation errors. In fact, some of the stories themselves just don’t flow well.
On the other hand, the short stories written by published authors, look like they have actually learned their trade. Yes, I did say, “learned their trade”, and yes, you can do the same.
After looking at the examples from the links in this article, you find yourself in the category of “amateur writer”, there are a few things you can do right off the bat to improve your writing skills, especially your grammar and punctuation skills.
The first is, research published authors. Pick up any professional publication or go back to one of the links in this article and study their work. Look closely at their punctuation skills. See where they put their comma’s, their quotation marks. Look at how they set up their paragraphs and the sentences within those paragraphs. This stuff isn’t natural talent it’s learned talent. And like I said earlier, you can learn how to write like a pro just as well. So look closely at what professional authors do and learn from their experience.
My second suggestion would be to get yourself a good writing program. You may have to pay a few bucks for one, but it will be well worth it. Find one that will help you with both grammar and punctuation.
If you think you can get by without a good writing program, well, maybe you can. But if good help is available, and it’s only your pride or ego holding you back. Why not put those things on the back burner for now and save yourself some time and effort. Writing programs do work.
The third and final thing I would tell you is to, as the old Nike slogan goes, “Just Do It”. Start writing. This is something that is done by both professionals and armatures, and it’s vitally important. It doesn’t have to be a magazine article or anything in particular. Use your imagination. Make something up. Just start writing. And then check it for grammar and punctuation errors. It’s a guarantee you will improve.
What’s the added bonus to all of this? If you get good enough, you might actually be able to make a few bucks with your new talent.
There are plenty of ways to get web traffic – read more about it here.
