I’ve been working as a journalist for 11 years, always as a copywriter, and over that time I’ve had many opportunities to develop my skills as a writer. Be it at work, with the help of mentors, or on blogs and personal notes that I’ve always enjoyed doing. As I believe that good knowledge is shared knowledge, I decided to list here some tips for writing better!
This text is not about “learning to write”. I think everyone knows, more or less, that practice and repertoire are the keys to becoming a good copywriter. That is, writing constantly and reading a lot, reading good authors. Nothing can train and inspire you more.
But when we’ve gone through this stage, it’s already easy to express yourself with words… How to find your voice? This goes far beyond text style but also covers themes, approaches, creativity and authenticity.
We learn to write and identify styles we like based on contact with other writers. This is a fact. Most bloggers I know, for example, have a soft spot for chroniclers – who, of course, have a lighter, more unpretentious writing style.
In all creative areas, such as text, photography and design, studying references is one of the biggest exercises to identify what we like the most and learn how we can achieve close results – usually in a mix of references.
I have reading as a priority in my routine. It’s leisure, but it’s also work, a way to unblock my text and get in touch with different forms of expression. With the exception of self-help and business books which, I’m sorry to say, won’t add much to you in terms of writing quality.
Which doesn’t mean, on the other hand, that it’s not worth it to read more technical books. Especially if they are related to your area of ??expertise, about the themes present in your daily life and the content you intend to create. Because the way you approach a subject also has a lot to do with voice.
Voice is expression, positioning. When I read a book on entrepreneurship, the way the author approaches topics such as productivity, planning and business is not 100% objective and opinionless. That doesn’t exist, not even in journalism. That’s why to express yourself authentically, you need to think authentically . Do not try to reproduce the speech of others.
This is not easy, ok? Anyone who writes on different topics knows the challenge of mastering and delving into areas that are sometimes very different. That’s why they say the writer leaves a piece of himself when he writes. It is this unique bias, sometimes almost imperceptible in a more direct text, that gives authenticity and life to an article. Which makes you realize that it couldn’t have been written the same way by someone else.
You can already see that writing authentically has a lot to do with passion, with diving headfirst into each subject and translating ideas, perceptions and sometimes even feelings on paper . It’s hard work. For this reason, what you see most on the internet today are soulless texts, almost templates , with those one-sentence paragraphs that follow any copywriting rule . These are not necessarily bad texts, but they are texts that do not captivate.
You don’t have to be a passionate and engaging writer to create content or sell something online. But if you really like to write (you don’t just do it out of obligation) and you want to develop your voice better, I leave here my recommendations.
You may read these suggestions and get lazy, or think it will take you 15 years to master your voice like that. Haha ha! But believe me: writing has a lot to do with inspiration, and often it just needs a little push to flow. I’m sure if you put these challenges into practice, or at least some of them, you’ll notice a big evolution in the quality of your texts. If that’s the case, come back here to tell me, I’ll love to hear from you – and give my insights into your production!
