The Freelance Writers Den and great tips on how to write better.

These past weeks  I have been quite busy with two writing projects as well as with reading blog posts of successful freelancers and trying to figure out how I can one day become one of them. While I was hanging out over at linked-in groups, someone suggested me to join the Freelance Writer's Den. I visited the website, but it did not accept more members at the time. It seemed like some sort of private coaching club and promised to help writers get out of content mills and into real -well payed- writing.

Not being a native speaker and not having a literature background, I knew that for me just chatting with native writers would be beneficial, so I decided to register and wait until there would be a spot for new members. I had nothing to lose anyway.

So today I received a mail that there was a free spot for me and I got quite excited about it. I also had a bit of beginner's luck, because just four hours after my registration a live writing improvement lab with English professor Ben Yagoda started. I did not know who he is before this virtual writing lab, but I sure am happy that I tuned in. 

Ben and Carol gave quite a few useful tips on how to improve your writing both on- and off- line and I have to say that there are quite a few things that I have been doing wrong (and am still doing wrong in this post, because they did not have time to sink it, but I observe them as I write). I will list a few of these tips here, but I do encourage new freelancers to try and join the Den.

Tips from the Ben-Carol lab

-Watch out for word repetition. The more common a word it, the more you can get away with repeating it. But if you are repeating "velociraptor" in a sentence, people are going to notice. And are not going to like it.

-Do not use too many parenthesis. Or double dashes (God, I love double dashes! Oh, and I just used a parenthesis...).

-Be yourself but not too much. A personal style is good, but if your personal style is all about parenthesis, semicolons and dashes, well, restrict your self for the sake of your readers.

-And since I mentioned semicolons, Ben says that very few people know how to use them right, so unless you are sure why you use them, don't. That did hurt my feelings, I have to confess. 

-If you are aware that you abuse a word, then visit wordcounter.com, copy your text in it and let it inform you how far your abuse has gone.

-Read your text out loud, in order to figure out if your sentences are too long. If you need to stop to take a breath before the end of the sentence, it is way too long. Cut it.

-Cut "that" out. We tend to use it as a filler word way too much.

-Prepositions are the weakest part of speech, so if you want to create a strong sentence, keep prepositions to a minimum and do not end the sentence with a preposition.

-It is better to reserve "whom" for very formal texts and use who/ to who in other types of writing. 

-If you are trying to have your own recognizable writing style, avoid cliches as much as possible

-Do not abuse abbreviations and quotation marks

-When the gender is unknown, you can use “they/their” instead of “he/she” or “his/hers”

-Don't use underlining online, because it comes across as a link. Use italics or bold instead.

-When writing online, keep it short. Short phrases, short paragraphs, short texts. The eyes get tired when reading on the screen much faster than when reading on paper.

-Do not punctuate based on sound. This will only lead to commas being totally misplaced.

-Read edited prose in order to absorb some of the above mentioned rules. Keep in mind that most of the times bogs are unedited, so do not have them as your only source of input and inspiration.

-“There are” can usually be omitted, leading to a shorter and more elegant phrase.

-Here you can find britishisms :)

Now, let's see how long it will take me until I started implementing those precious little tips.