5 Ways to Improve Your Writing 

An editing strategy that I learned from a dyslexic friend: first edit spelling and grammar from bottom to top. That is, scan your last sentence first and then move upwards from there. It forces you to read each sentence more slowly and out of context so your brain is less likely to fill in or fix missing or misspelled words. Then, read forward to edit phrasing, flow, and logic - the big picture stuff!

“The quality of your habits is the stability of your mental health.” 🙌🏽

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.” - Stephen King

I write academic papers. The temptation to use complex words is STRONG.

Before writing, I organize my thoughts by writing down a series of questions I want to answer. This also helps me overcome writer's block.

1. Read a lot. With this, you expand your vocabulary and you will feel much more comfortable. Musicians get inspired from other musicians. Artists use various reference points when they paint or draw. And writers look to other writers. I highly recommend Mark Manson's video on how to read more books. 2. Make a ritual. For example, set yourself a place to write. Write at a specific time. Get yourself some coffee/tea/bubble tea/yerba mate/whatever. Turn on your playlist. You gotta ease yourself into a hard task. 3. Write now, edit later. Yes, I know you've made a typo or a grammar error. Resist the urge to click that backspace button. You'll do it later. Just sit there and write. Polish things up after your done. 4. Read your stuff aloud. We write in higher speed than we read loudly thus we are much more prone to make mistakes. So after you have finished your writing, read it aloud. You will probably end up editing a lot and think "wait, that doesn't make sense, I should edit it." 5. Use simple, brief language. Unless it's an academic paper for professionals, complex words won't be impressive to the "common folk". Which is understandable because why the hell should I bother googling some advanced word when you can say the same thing with a more commonly-used word? And no, no one wants to read long sentences about nature. We aren't in 19th century anymore when it was highly popular because people didn't have internet. Keep it short, sweet and simple. All right, I hope I haven't messed up anything here. If anything, I'll use the 3rd point.

"we write by writing" -my highschool English teacher to a room full of terrified, exam stressed, students.

“My working habits are simple: long periods of thinking, short periods of writing." - Ernest Hemingway

Timestamps in case the description ones don't work for some weird reason: 1:36 Read Widely 3:31 Build a Writing Ritual 5:42 Write Now, Edit Later 7:25 Read Aloud 8:56 Simplify This is for people on an old version of RU-vid or RU-vid Vanced in case the description ones don't work for some weird reason (Android 4 is buggy for me) 😭

The snippet of Ali abdal reading Twilight was gold 😂

I've wanted to become a writer for all my life now and ended up as a teacher. I'm doing all I can to achieve my goals, listening to podcasts, reading books and getting online courses. All thanks to your help and inspiration Thomas. You don't even know I exist but you've been a true support and inspiration in my journey. Thanks for these videos!

My English in only on the level of B1, and I was having some problems with finishing my script for a speech, which is my assignment in a philosophy course. I find that I was so nervous because I was afraid to use my words wrongly. So I kept editing it during the whole process, which is a killer for creativity. Your tips have illuminated me, Frank. Thank you so much for making this video. Now I'm going to finish my job without pause and keep my momentum, wish me good luck😁

02:10 “Expand your reading palette” - Shows Ali reading Twilight. Love it! 😂 But seriously I cannot believe this video dropped now! I was just wondering if I should do a 30 day challenge of blogging everyday from May 1st and then this video drops! 😍

Reading out loud what you have written is the best tip for me. Not only you correct the grammar, you will also be able to hear what your sentences would sounds like.

Nothing but respect for you Thomas. You’ve been consistently creating bangers week in, week out for the past couple of years! Been a massive influence to my content and many other peoples too. Thank you for everything! 👊

Such a good point about seperating writing and editing. Gotta maintain that flow state

1:31 An interesting person is an interested person is from Austin Kleon's Show your work!

I LOVE this guy! His video are not only informational about the main topic, (writing) but he is also giving information about past writers such as Benjaminen Franklin. Not to mention his humor and the quotes he pulls up! Truly amazing.

This video was a goldmine for the creative process. I've found that even if you're not an official "writer", you're in the business of communication - whether it's in sales, creating content, relationships or elsewhere. Wherever you go, your ability to communicate will follow you, so it's paramount to be constantly improving the skills within this area. Thanks for the great resources, Thomas!

Perfect timing thank you 🙏🏾

Separating writing and editing is super challenging for me. However, I agree that editing while writing slows you down massively! Another thing I can recommend to aid your writing is learning how to type properly. Using the correct technique and practicing it can speed up your typing speed immensely. You can then put your thoughts down as they flow, and don't have to disrupt your thought process by searching for the next key the whole time.

The pressure to write a good comment just got much more intense.

As someone considering starting a blog or at least posting to platforms like medium, this came at a good time!!

As a documentary and narrative film writer, I will definitely try out a couple of these tips! The "write now, edit later" tip is super important, and always recommend :-)

A rather surprising (at least for me) amount of good writers and artists in the past very _very_ organized and exercised quite frequently

Keep going dude, you're my inspiration

Wow. This is great advice that I’ve been wanting to articulate myself. You just said what I was thinking. Great production you got here. I especially enjoyed the bit about building a “ritual” around the process of writing.

Needed this one! Thanks man.

I needed this video so much! Thank you!

this is the king of video i was locking for, so thanks man , i found another one of your videos but it was a little old , but i have just found this , was really helpful .

This came out right when I needed it, thanks, Thomas! My best writing tip is this: If you're struggling in the early stages of writing, do a "braindump" process. It's not exactly a first draft, but a zero draft-tilt your computer screen down or close your eyes or do whatever you need to do to NOT look at the words you're typing. Instead of /what/ you're writing, focus on just typing as quickly as possible to keep up with your mind. This helps mostly for personal essays or argumentative papers for me, when I'm stuck on starting because I have too many unorganized thoughts going around in my head. Write even things like, "ugh I really wish I didn't have to write this paper. I'm hungry." It doesn't matter, just facilitate the connection between your mind and fingers and just do a session of even just 10 minutes to get stuff out of your mind and down onto paper. Make it a rule to not look at your writing or screen. And keep yourself from even touching the backspace button if you can. If the timer goes off and you still have lots to get out, keep going. Get it out. Afterwards, I usually end up finding at least a few points that I can actually use in my arguments and work with to rephrase and improve for my paper. And most importantly, my brain is in a much better state to work.

"Edit later" this is the most useful tip thank you!!

This video is really timely for me. Thanks Thomas!!!!!!

Glad he writes down his scripts in Notion, loving your templates bro

A well-organized piece of writing, no matter what kind it is, helps the reader follow the thread of your idea from opening to ending. Even something as commonplace as email can benefit from some forethought toward the organization. How you organize your writing will depend some on what kind of writing it is. How you organize an email is going to be different than how you organize a novel. But the intent is the same. Get your thoughts in order so you can put them down on paper in a manner that’s clear and coherent for the reader.

I use James Clear's habit stacking to link it to an already established habit. And I keep it atomic (small) meaning I can do a few minutes and still keep the habit chain going everyday. Thanks for the great tips! I love them and will share them with our writing group that meets by zoom once a month to encourage each other.

This is super helpful! Thank you so much for sharing! :D

Wow! This is exactly the video I needed 🙌🏽

I've definitely been scared to start a blog, but seeing this makes me want to actually start.

Greatest tip here that I picked up is to stop editing while I write. Brilliant, yet so simple. Thanks!

oh wow!! This is super useful. Using these on my next videos for sure!!

Thanks for such an amazing video, Thomas! You have shown me direction how can i sharpen my Writing Skill. Lots of love from my side :)

It's been hours since I started looking for the best way to improve my writing, thinking I would find crazy apps that would help me a lot.... but you just made it easy, get a book, read it, and write about it. as simple as that. thanks for the advice, appreciated it!

Thanks for these tips; they’re a lot more helpful than some of the other writing videos I’ve watched that get extremely technical and leave me feeling discouraged and disorganized. Writing is my greatest passion, but I don’t often have a lot of time for it because I’m a caretaker for my younger sister with severe autism and mood disorders, and that’s when I’m not suffering from writer’s block. So these are very helpful :) Also, one tip that I’ve recently learned that might be helpful to other writers is if you have a general idea for a scene in your story, but get stuck on the specifics and want to keep your momentum, use brackets as if you’re writing a screenplay. For example, you could put into brackets “[our hero escapes death by doing something clever.]” Credit goes to C. Robert Cargill who suggested this tip in a tweet. I found it ridiculously helpful, because you won’t be as likely to get paralyzed at that troublesome point in your story and forget everything you were building towards, because you know you’ll have the time and opportunity to comb back over it a second time, or as many times as you like, to find the inspiration for that scene. I often put up a roadblock in my writing when I’m mitigating on descriptive words and before you know it, I’ve forgotten the rest of the scene and dialogue I had in mind.

Awesome as always!

*The video we wanted and needed* Thanks Thomas✌

I really enjoyed this video and found it useful!

This was immensely helpful

Wow, I need this video to write any story of my life for how I struggled, especially when I read any books!! Thanks for the tip

Write now, edit later is the best writing advice you can give to anyone.

Thanks for the tips! I’ve been banging my head on a mental wall trying to deal with my first story so these tips are a big help.

Great ideas 💡!! Thank you!!

Good advice !, " Write now , edit later " really enlightin!. Also the " read out loud your own writing!. Thanks !

Hi Thomas, Needed this one, thanks for information :)

This video came at the perfect time for me Thanks man

Whatever you're doing to your production process, keep going. The quality of these last few videos is amazing!

Good stuff.... What an important skill one has to develop to thrive

I love your videos. My best habit is to have a notebook on hand to help memorizing every new ideas that comes to my mind. By editing I use the Pomodoro technique 25 minutes editing and 25 doing something like washing the dishes, exercising, putting things away . LOVE, LIVE, LEARN n LAUGH MAC from Brazil.

A roll looks so dope

What, praytell might be something I put in my essays next year. Also, my best writing tip is always to write a bad first draft first. I suffer with thinking that I need to write something perfect so that helps immensely!

Thanks a lot for making this video on this relevant topic. I am trying to get started with pkm

Solid advice that I needed as a begginer blogger/writer!

Thank YOU! Really needed this!!

this helped so much

thank you 💖

I just finished writing my 150 pages project documentation, grabbed a cup of coffee and here you drop this video. I think I have to rewrite my document again.

I just came from listening to a bunch of agents giving tips for writing, and this was loads more helpful and clear.

Got this recommendation as I’m preparing for my B school essays 👏🏼

Thomas Frank you are awesome guy. Your videos are really helpfully for us. I really appreciate your work and thankful for your contributions to us. I really like entire suggestion you gave us but the one point I like is "Read aloud so that we can feel our sentances". Thank you once again ❤❤

Thank you so much

Very useful tips, the write now and edit later was something I realized along the way. I always used an editor to write my paragraphs but not anymore. It felt inefficient and unnatural when I did that. It felt like it made me forget something important or cloud my steps to the story. I gotten obsessed with the feeling of making things perfect that I've forgotten the most important thing in writing a novel. Nonetheless, it was creative writing. Something that I am a natural talent of doing, same with the rest of the authors in this world.

thanks a lot Thomas)

This video was absolutely perfect timing for me. I've enjoyed writing since middle school, but I haven't done much to continuously improve my writing skills. I'm planning to write business management related content professionally, but was needing tips just like these to help me get going. (:

thank you very much for your advices. I have found all of them usefull and, even if i'm writting in french, relevant.

if you asked about the chips or techniques in writing, I find your video ideal in the format of help. My thing when I was writing a biography of a bass guitarist (it was a handwritten draft on paper) my method, my trick is to look into my old notebooks where I wrote about other things in general, but it was my old notes, my letters that were lightning bolts to make writing brighter, more interesting and stronger.

writing now, edit later is the best tip. Thanks alot for this video

the Spotify Study Playlist is 🔥🔥🔥! Thanks

Thank you. Before I start writing what I intended in the first place, I start by putting random words on the page to loosen up my mind, my fingers, and my imagination, a primer.

My favorite tip was either the one where you said "edit after you've written everything" or the one where you said "read it out loud so you can see all your mistakes" 😁👍

*"you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again.”* *If you are reading this, never ever give up, we have potential to accomplish our Goals and will succeed. I am cheering for you.* Have a very good day!

We missed you!

The empire new groove is one of my favorite childhood movies , omgssss!!!

Practice practice practice!!! 💥

Loool! Ok so my favorite tips were building a writing ritual , which I just started, made a time table for myself to make sure to write every day for at least 30 minutes. Then the next one is reading aloud, as funny as it may sound I prefer reading aloud than reading silently. I understand more.

Nice vid!

reading out loud is awesome advice :)

Thanks, Sir, for keeping me motivated and inspiring to keep learning. You're are a role model for me, thanks alot.

Something I found that might help someone out there. It's not always practical but record your conversation with your friends. When you are at a party or simply meeting for coffee. We all have these moments that we wish we could re-hear where you and a friend hit a flow of thought. You get to a topic you did not realize you understood or were so passionate about but you just start to rant and speak with so much confidence! That is your writing! It's like when you hit a flow in your writing but there are no rules saying you can rewrite what you have said. So trust me and try this. Re-listening to a simple conversation may actually solve your writer's block.

This came just right in time! Been trying to figure out how to improve in content writing and these tips were super helpful. Thanks for helping us aspiring writers Thomas!

I really enjoy your videos and the progression your channel has made. It's interesting to put all of your advice into perspective by seeing how you have evolved yourself since your early stages in this channel

Great video and information, Thomas. Coming up with a system to put me in a flow state is the biggest area I need to work on. There are a lot of distractions around me a lot of the time and sometimes, other people don't respect the time you have designated for working. Still, I'm excited to give it a try!

Perfect ❤️👌🏼

I was prompted to your video as a means of preparation for a future endeavor. I still struggle with run on statements in my writing. I find that I use a more complex term not for the purpose of sounding important, add a tone of seriousness I hope my writing conveys. I'm relax with the statement in day to day writings in social media settings (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram...etc).

These are great reminders. What app(s) do you use for scripting? Thanks.

Color coding is also very useful for spotting errors.

Unrelated to the video, but I love that you also have the red iPhone 12 mini!

Love thr cameo by Ali!

On writing well is an absolute must-read for any writer. It has helped me a lot in my copywriting journey!

The quote I think you were getting at 1:24 is: "An interested person is an interesting person.” ― Gene Youngblood, Expanded Cinema

Idk if anyone will actually read this, but what I tend to do while writing is: write out the first draft, no matter how bad it sounds; if I can't think of a way to phrase something, I put a series of underscores to create a blank line, knowing that I'll need to come back to it later. Eventually I'll go back and fill in those blanks, even if it doesn't sound perfect then and there. Next, I like to use a text to speech (TTS) website to paste my writing in and have it read aloud to me (much easier to catch mistakes this way). While doing that I always have the original document opened and will go in and fix things or use the highlight tool in my word program to bring attention to sections that I feel could use rewriting. Usually yellow for sentences that need restructuring, red for sentences that can probably deleted all together, and blue for words I feel could benefit from being switched out in favor of a closer synonym. Then, once I'm satisfied with that draft, I'll throw it back into the TTS reader for one final read-through and go from there. 👍