100 Ways to Improve Your Writing
So if you have a writing job, write in your head. Clear up the inconsistencies while you're brushing your teeth. Get your thoughts organized while you're driving to work. Think of a slant during lunch. And most important, come up with a beginning, a lead, so that you won't end up staring at your typewriter as if it had just arrived from another galaxy.
Give the reader something to care about.
Cross out every sentence until you come to one you cannot do without. That is your beginning.
When you rewrite your early drafts, ask how each sentence in a paragraph supports the topic sentence of the paragraph. If the answer is "It doesn't," then ask what other work the sentence is doing in the paragraph. If the answer is "None," get rid of the sentence.
A bridge word is a word that is used in one paragraph and then repeated in the following transition.
A dense word is a word that crowds a lot of meaning into a small space. The fewer words you use to express an idea, the more impact that idea will have. When you revise, look for opportunities to cross out several words and insert one. Once a month is monthly; something new is novel; people they didn't know are strangers; and something impossible to imagine is inconceivable.
Turn look into stare, gaze, peer, peek, or gawk, Turn throw into toss, flip, or hurl.
Before you write a noun that is modified by one or two adjectives, ask yourself if there is a noun that can convey the same information. Instead of writing about a black dog, maybe you want to write about a Doberman.
When you take out a general word and put in a specific one, you usually improve your writing.
Because he is telling the reader his conclusions instead of providing the facts from which the reader can draw his own conclusions, the writing will not have impact.