When creating close relationships with fictional characters, their dialogue matters immensely. Their dialogue shows their true heart and reveals a lot about their character.
How to create a close correspondence with fictional characters
Not all stories must have multiple characters.
But for the stories that do you must consider how to make your characters’ correspondence make sense.
Character correspondence helps define their relationships and how they interact and deal with each other. Their correspondence will shape them in the imagination of your reader.
It will play a key role in who the character is as a person and their worldview.
Not all of your character’s correspondence will be evident at the beginning of their story. Most interactions and conversations will happen after the reader meets the character and your reader will get to go on that journey with them. Some will happen in their past and therefore will be in flashbacks.
Depending on what you choose as the writer will immediately affect how your reader perceives your character and their past and present experiences.
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If you enjoy Creating Close Correspondence with Fictional Characters and writing fiction, you might love owning a domain of your own where you can write about it? Ever want to own your own domain name (Yourname.com)?
Bluehost hosts your blog so that you can own your domain and make money blogging. Check them out only if you’re interested in making money blogging; otherwise, go for a free blog instead 🙂
If you enjoy Creating Close Correspondence with Fictional Characters and writing fiction, you might love owning a domain of your own where you can write about it? Ever want to own your own domain name (Yourname.com)?
Bluehost hosts your blog so that you can own your domain and make money blogging. Check them out only if you’re interested in making money blogging; otherwise, go for a free blog instead 🙂
If you enjoy Creating Close Correspondence with Fictional Characters and writing fiction, you might love owning a domain of your own where you can write about it? Ever want to own your own domain name (Yourname.com)?
Bluehost hosts your blog so that you can own your domain and make money blogging. Check them out only if you’re interested in making money blogging; otherwise, go for a free blog instead 🙂
If you enjoy Creating Close Correspondence with Fictional Characters and writing fiction, you might love owning a domain of your own where you can write about it? Ever want to own your own domain name (Yourname.com)?
Bluehost hosts your blog so that you can own your domain and make money blogging. Check them out only if you’re interested in making money blogging; otherwise, go for a free blog instead 🙂
When thinking about weapons for fictional characters we want to not only think of how they’ll look swinging it around. We want to understand how the reader will feel about them using their choice weapons. I hope this list helps you think through which weapon would be ideal for the fictional character you are working on.
List of 10 Weapons for Fictional Characters
We’re working on a weapons series for fictional characters right now so feel free to look around to see more ideas for weapons for your Fictional Characters.
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Intro to: 5 Tips to Reveal a Character’s Personality Smoothly
This post: 5 Tips to Reveal a Character’s Personality Smoothly, will hopefully help you with smooth characterization.
Characterization is the process by which the writer (you) reveals the personality of the character. And to do it smoothly, would be to do it in a way that is simple and easy for your reader to enjoy rather than feel like they are working to understand your characters’ personalities.
Have you ever been to a carnival or fair?
Have you ever gone and bought your $8 ticket only to get inside and end up paying $100 or more to do anything else all day?
$4 for fries
$2 for the Ferris wheel
$2 for the whirly spin
Before you know it your wallet is empty. But you had so much fun spending all that money and didn’t even think it was odd that they charged you $8 dollars at the beginning of the day just so you could get inside and pay them more money.
Now that’s what I call smooth.
But this acceptance of paying money to get in to pay more happened long ago and without you even knowing it.
The idea of “the fair” being in town was set up long ago to pull dollars out of peoples’ pockets in the set up so that the fried cheese curd man didn’t have to convince you to pay more money for his cheese curds. In fact, it was so smooth that the man at the gate didn’t have to try to convince you to get in for $8 just to pay the county more upon getting inside.
So how do we as writers become this smooth to get our readers to enjoy and digest mentally our characters’ personalities without having to use more words to convince them?
I call this trick the passive onlooker.
Tips to Reveal a Character’s Personality: #1
Make Your Reader the Passive Onlooker.
You’ve been the passive onlooker before.
You’re out in public and you see a dad holding his son’s hand to cross the street. You might not think much of it, but you might think that’s a good dad that cares about his son.
You look the other direction and see another parent dragging their screaming child across the street yanking on their arm viciously and you might think they’re a mean bad parent.
Now the point here isn’t whether either parent in this fictional (or not so fictional) scenario is a good or bad parent. The point is that you were a passive onlooker in this scenario.
You didn’t have to do any work simply looking and thinking. However, you did assume some personality traits of both of the parents you saw.
Let’s create that same scenario for our reader with our characterizations and what we want our reader to assume about our characters.
We don’t want to have to say, “She was kind and charming and caring.” We want our reader to see these traits in action as a passive onlooker.
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Just like they charge outrageous prices at fairs and carnivals and we gladly oblige, they don’t have to convince us at the gate that this is worthwhile because of the setup.
We are also going to create a smooth setup so our reader passively ingests who our character is hook, line, and sinker without much effort on their part.
To start a good setup you yourself need to know, “Who is my character?”
“What do I want my reader to assume about my character?”
Tips to Reveal a Character’s Personality: #3
Make a list of traits you want your character to have:
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This example list is a small but a good start to get an idea in your mind of how you want your character to be received by your reader.
Next, for a good setup to work, you need to convince yourself.
Tips to Reveal a Character’s Personality: #4
Convince yourself.
Convincing yourself is not just important for your character’s future; it’s also great practice for you and will help you IMMENSELY when you’re trying to find the right actions and scenes to display to your reader the complex character they are following.
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So how do we convince ourselves?
Imagine you are sitting, having coffee with a friend and your friend says “Hey, I heard you met someone new last night.” (Your potential character). “What is her/his name?”
You respond, “Johnny.”
Your friend, “Oo Johnny, tell me about him. What does he look like?”
“Well, he’s tall. Handsome, but not too handsome. He’s not like a model or anything, just a normal good-looking guy.”
That’s okay but it’s not good.
“What color are his eyes?”
“His eyes are light brown.”
“Jawline?”
“Uh, his jaw isn’t too pronounced, pretty normal I guess. Oh! But his eyebrows are thicker than most men.”
Good, good. Getting better.
“Tell me about his personality.”
“Well, he’s kind and caring. He drinks wayyyyy tooooo much though.”
“Wait, if he drinks too much then how do you know he’s kind?”
Bingo. Now we have started to create a conversation about the character. I would encourage anyone to do this in-depth exercise or similar ones to help you think through who your character really is.
One, it’s fun and two, in order to smoothly convince your reader that your character is real, you need to know this character enough to tell your friends about them.
So, now we’ve gotten to another good point.
Your friend just asked the golden question and the question we must ask ourselves. How will my reader know they are kind?
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How do you know anyone is actually who they say they are?
Simple: observe them.
If someone told me every day for a month that they love to write but never actually wrote anything whenever I inquired of them about it, one might question whether they actually don’t like writing all that much, or they enjoy doing something else more. Because in theory if someone really likes something they’ll make time for it, even it’s just one minute a day. If someone can’t spend 60 seconds a day doing something, maybe they don’t actually like it as much as they thought they did, or they just don’t find it important enough to prioritize.
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So here’s a quick scene that shows that even though Johnny drinks too much, he is kind in nature.
The scene:
Johnny left the bar late that night. He had his normal six, but after his eleventh, he couldn’t remember how many he actually had.
By the time he made it to his door he had sobered up a little from the time it took him to walk home but he thought it was 1:00 AM. It was closer to 4:00.
When he tried to quietly stumble through the door, he knocked over the plant that he had just bought last week to replace the other plant he knocked over previously.
“Crap,” popped out his mouth in a loud whisper.
He starred at it for a long moment and shook his head.
He stumbled and fumbled his way to the kitchen and took about 5 minutes to get a glass of water which he gulped down in seconds. He burped and made his way to the couch so he could enjoy passing out to some television. That would help drown out his thoughts.
He not-so-gracefully made his way back to the couch and plopped onto his favorite recliner.
Before he could find the remote he heard a noise from the steps. “Crap,” he whispered again.
“Dad?” It was Susan, his sixteen-year-old daughter.
“Hey, honeeeeey!” He was still whispering and slurred.
“Dad? Are you okay?”
“Yeah, honey. J-usts peachy.” He smiled a dumb grin that wasn’t hiding anything. “I didn’t meea-n touh wake youh. Sorry sweetieee.”
“You really shouldn’t be drinking too much, Dad.” She was cold.
“Aw, I know, honey.”
“And you need to be getting more sleep. Did you know it’s 4 am?” She kept her stern tone.
“Crap, I thought it wauhss 1:00. I’m s-so ssorry, honey.”
She let out a disappointed sigh, “Did you break something?”
“I’m s-so sorryyea.” His cracked as He began to cry a little. “I broke your new plant. I’ll get you a new one. I promissse.”
“It’s fine dad. I don’t want another one.” She kept her cold demeanor.
“I’m so sorry. s-s-sweetie.” He held back his cry but teared up more. “Do you want to go out for ice cream this-sweekends?
“I don’t think so, dad. Get some sleep. I’m going back to bed now.”
“Oh okay, honey.” His voice cracked again with shame and remorse. “Sleep tight, don’t let the bugs bite you.”
She walked back up the stairs without turning back, a little perturbed at her father.
Johhny never turned on the television. He just cried a little, ashamed of himself. He missed Lora as he passed out.”
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In this scene, we didn’t hit all of our listed traits. That’s intentional. Instead, I’d keep your list handy and create scenes trying to display at least one. But if others flow into it naturally, that’s great too.
From just observing this one scene, one could start to think that Johnny might be a habitual drinker. One might also start to think that he is kind. He could have been an angry drunk, but instead, we observe him being nice and kind in the scenario even though his daughter gives him a hard time and seems to resent his choices.
We also see that Johnny is sad, and one might start to question who Lora is who was introduced in the scene at the end. Lora might be his wife. Maybe she has left him, or passed away? (It’s good to create questions like these in your reader’s mind that you will answer later. But for this example’s purposes, we can at least start to see that Johnny might be kind, sad and a regretful drunk.
Now, of course, this is just a rough draft and it would be edited and read over several times by several or more people before hitting an audience, but the idea and practice are good, helpful and true.
5 Tips to Reveal a Character’s Personality Smoothly
So for your characters:
Try to make a quick simple list of traits
Write about them simply as if you were telling a friend
Create scenes that convince yourself and others that your character truly does possess these traits, without stating it straight out.
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5 Tips to Reveal a Character’s Personality Smoothly
Now you are on your way to being a smooth operator.
If you have done this setup well, your reader won’t be working to find out what your characters’ personalities are.
They will be enjoying your writing and storytelling abilities as they gobble it up off your pages of strategically laid out scenes that give a great mental picture of who your characters are.
Like I mentioned before characterization, well done is more like a marinated meat than a buffet. The more time it has to soak up the juices, the better.
You might not want to overload them with information about your character as if you just handed them an official brief on the character. Save that for the secret agents.
Take your time and show who your character is over much time and many scenes along the way.
This isn’t to say that your character can’t change along the way either (in fact, they should change in some way), but that change could make some of your other traits even stronger.
For example: Johnny could decide to quit drinking because he loves his daughter. This will strengthen the fact that he is kind and add that he is caring more about others (his daughter) than himself and his own desires.
Take your time to create scenes that intentionally display your character’s traits without listing them straight out. Present who your characters are through scenes and dialogue. Explain without explaining.
Put in the hard work so your readers don’t have to.
I hope this helps!
We hope you enjoyed 5 Tips to Reveal a Character’s Personality Smoothly and that it helps you to create characters and scenes that are engaging and fun for your reader.
Happy writing!
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Intro to: 10 Toxic Bad Relationship Habits That Will Leave Your Fictional Character Single
We’re working on a bad habits series for fictional characters right now so feel free to look around to see more ideas for bad habits for your Fictional Characters.
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10 Toxic Bad Relationship Habits That Will Leave Your Fictional Character Single
Bad habits make writers think about what goes on in a character’s mind.
Giving fictional characters bad habits is a good and natural way to create conflict and resolution between your characters.
Fictional Characters need to be seen as not perfect, but as primitive and mortal. Unless of course they are immortal 😉 but even then, adding some sort of weakness to them helps our reader mesh with them.
Don’t overthink bad habits. Just work on giving your fictional character a few that make sense.
Combining three or four makes sense, but don’t overdo it with 10 or more unless they are supposed to be a real slob.
Also, figure out good consequences for the habits you give.
Do some bad habits affect others? What are the consequences of certain combined bad habits?
Has your character been spying on their significant other?
Do they get caught?
Do they find out more than they ever wanted to know?
Do they get a restraining order?
Do the authorities get involved?
Where do your characters’ bad habits lead them?
Do they get jail time?
Do they lose friends and family?
In other words, feel free to think through what bad habits you want them to have and how bad habits can affect each other and have a compound effect on your fictional character. We hope you are able to use 10 Toxic Bad Relationship Habits That Will Leave Your Fictional Character Single to help you think through creative bad habits for your stories.
Happy writing 🙂
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Intro to: 10 Toxic Bad Habits For Your Fictional Character’s Relationship that Are Surprisingly Dangerous
We’re working on a bad habits series for fictional characters right now so feel free to look around to see more ideas for bad habits for your Fictional Characters. Use these toxic bad habits freely, but don’t overload any one character with all of them.
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10 Toxic Bad Habits For Your Fictional Character’s Relationship that Are Surprisingly Dangerous
Toxic bad habits like these help writers think about what goes on in a character’s mind.
Giving fictional characters toxic bad habits is a good and natural way to create conflict and resolution between your characters.
Fictional Characters need to be seen as not perfect, but as primitive and mortal. Unless of course they are immortal 😉 but even then, adding some sort of weakness to them helps our reader mesh with them.
Don’t overthink toxic bad habits. Just work on giving your fictional character a few that make sense.
Combining three or four makes sense, but don’t overdo it with 10 or more unless they are supposed to be a real slob.
Also, figure out good consequences for the habits you give.
Do some bad habits affect others? What are the consequences of certain combined toxic bad habits?
Do your characters move in with each other?
New studies are showing surprisingly that couples that move in together and even sleep together before marriage are not as happy as couples that wait for marriage. Even more of these move-in couples end up in divorce than those that wait.
How can you use these new cultural ideas to shape a story into a surprise that your readers aren’t expecting?
Do they find out more about their partner than they wanted to know?
Do they get into more fights after moving in?
Do they annoy each other in ways they didn’t expect?
Where do your character’s bad habits lead them?
Do they lose a friend?
Do they lose an apartment after a breakup?
In other words, feel free to think through what bad habits you want them to have and how bad habits can affect each other and have a compound effect on your fictional character. We hope that 10 Toxic Bad Habits For Your Fictional Character’s Relationship that Are Surprisingly Dangerous helps you think through writing ideas that will help make your fictional characters come to life.
Happy writing 🙂
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10 Great Fantasy Writing Prompts To Help Inspire your Writing Today
Write about a family that is magical but after 400 generations of magic, they birth one unmagical child.
Write a character who is a kleptomaniac (compulsive thief). One day they wake up to realize every object they’ve ever stolen has come to life.
Write about a child who has always blamed their mistakes on an imaginary person. On the child’s 30th birthday, they awake to find this imaginary person they blamed everything on has come to life.
Write about a character who picks up a book written in a language they’ve never heard of before. Strangely, they can read and understand every word.
Write about a country that hasn’t been discovered yet.
Write about a species of bugs that only come above ground once every 1,200 years. Their arrival is completely unexpected, and their intentions are truly sinister.
Your character’s sister mysteriously vanishes. The quest to find her is one that reveals many secrets about the family’s dark past.
The country is in a panic. The reason? Magic, an art lost over 600 years ago, has been discovered in the slums.
While walking in an unknown part of the forest, your character discovers a cave with a strange egg inside. When they visit the egg again, they instead find a baby beast they never knew existed. Now it’s up to them to raise it.
Write about a character that makes a wish on a star. The next day they realize their wish has come true. The bad part? They worded their wish wrong… very, very wrong.
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Great fantasy writing prompts can help you flex your creative skills and improve your writing style. By stepping out of your comfort zone, you may discover that you have found your new passion! You can expand your wheelhouse of imagination by starting with a simple idea and expanding on it. You are the captain AND the navigator and can steer your story in any way you please 🙂
Fantasy writing gives you the freedom to make the story as wild as you want. There are no rules and no limitations. You can create the perfect world, or take the opposite approach and build a world no human could ever survive.
Finding daily writing prompts like these can help overcome writer’s block and get the creative juices flowing!
As long as you can follow your imagination and let your words flow then there is no telling where you and your characters might end up. Half the fun is going on the journey with your characters and no one will help them get there without you. So grab your pencil or laptop and take that first step out their front door that ends with a world of possibilities.
Whether it’s non-fiction or fiction writing prompts, either can work to help a writer break out of the same toolbox they may be working in. Sometimes it can be helpful to find a good writing prompts generator but google and Pinterest work just as well, and Reddit writing prompts too.
Take your time, look up some fun writing prompts, and take the leap. Start writing your own fantasy story today. You can start with one of these prompts, or combine a few. Who knows? You just might be surprised with where you land.
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Common! I don’t have all day! Pick up your weapon and face me!
He hates me! I knew it!
I didn’t know what to do so I hid in the bathroom and prayed!
I had never seen anything so beautiful!
The treasure glimmered in the firelight and reflected in her eyes.
Where were you last night?
Why am I the only one that thinks this is insane?
Tell me again, were there two of you or four of you?
I told him I could only give him a ride a couple of miles down the road, but when he pulled a gun on me I said, where do you need to go? He was pretty polite after that.
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You are definitely wondering how to use affiliate marketing to make more money online.
It may sound confusing, but it is actually very very simple.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is promoting a product, service, or company with a web link and getting paid for clicks, sign-ups, and purchases from the link they give you.
It really is as simple as that. I promise.
All you have to do is find a company that has an affiliate program, and apply to their program.
They provide the link (most of the time, Amazon actually has you pick a product and then makes the link for you) and usually have a place for you to sign in and check out how your link is working.
How Do I Actually Make Money with Affiliate Marketing?
That’s a good question.
There are many ways to go about it.
You can make your own Blog and use what you write to promote affiliate products.
You can promote on your social media such as Pinterest, Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. (There are rules and restrictions to posting affiliate links on certain social channels so be sure to check with each one before posting anything they would deem against their rules.)
You can build an email list of happy subscribers and tell them about products you like to use with affiliate links.
You can write a blog post today and contact a well-known blogger and ask them to feature your blog post on their site.
Any way you can think of getting your link in front of the eyes of internet readers and users is a way to make money with affiliate links (you have to follow the affiliate program’s rules.)
Why Would a Company Want to Use me as an Affiliate Marketer?
A lot of companies love using affiliates for marketing their products these days.
Back in the day before blogging and social media they had to pay BIG ADVERTISING FEES and weren’t guaranteed any return on their investment.
Whereas with you promoting a product, they don’t have to pay out the commission fee to you unless the product actually sells or they get an actual lead from your promotion. So it’s a win-win situation for them and you 🙂
Side note: Something I personally love about affiliate marketing compared to making and selling your own products is you don’t have to deal with returns or customer service.
You get to make some extra cash while you’re sleeping and not worry about the customer complaints or returned items.
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Is Affiliate Marketing All Fun and Games?
Of course not!
There are ups and downs to all kinds of work.
Example: I had a friend that got paid by his company to go to theme parks regularly. I’m talking weekly getting paid to go to Busch Gardens and Scuba Diving in Florida.
I thought, “Dude! That’s amazing! What a sweet gig!”
He said, “Well yeah it would be except that I’m always going as the liaison or glorified tour guide for the company so I’m always there with people I don’t know or am working for.”
I can think of many worse ways to get paid, but the point is there are ups and downs to every job.
So in the same way, affiliate marketing can be tough and it is hard to get started, but once you wake up to check your account, or you get done watching netflix and see that you made a few bucks while you were doing it, and realize how many ways you can scale this, it can be a great side hustle or even make a living from.
For me, it’s being around friends and family more and working from my couch while watching a movie with my wife. Or quitting work at 12 pm because my friend invited me to a movie and in the back of my mind knowing that I’m making a living for my family while spending time with my friends.
Of course there are days where you feel ZERO motivation.
That happens to everyone.
You can either push yourself on days like that or say, “Hey, I’m gonna go outside and get some exercise throwing a ball with my dog and if I feel like making some post later this evening, great, no worries.”
It’s days like that I can’t believe I get to do what I am doing and I feel so grateful.
What Companies Offer Affiliate Marketing?
There are LOTS.
You have but to only do a google search:
“(product/service) affiliate program” and you will see many of great choices.
Make sure that you check out the programs for legitimacy.
And be sure to understand the program’s terms and rules so that you don’t lose your account with them prematurely.
What is the Best Way to Make the Most of Affiliate Links?
Choose products that you are personally interested in. It’ll be easier to write about and it’ll be more natural. Trust me, your readers will be able to tell.
Find the right products for you and your readers. Do online research. Most companies that have affiliate programs are looking for more affiliates. The cost of advertising through affiliates is low for them.
Be relevant for your readership: this seems like a no-brainer, but it’s laughable the amount of weird stuff you can find blogs trying to products that have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with what they are writing about.
Be up to date: take time every so often to edit and revise your older posts.
MOST IMPORTANT: I feel like this doesn’t need to be said, but bloggers everywhere prove me wrong all the time. Write about and promote what your readers want! For affiliate marketing, if you want to make money and get clicks, promote and write about things that your audience is interested in. Take time to figure this out and make it a regular priority for you.
Focus on quality over quantity. Products that usually end up working out badly for others will cause your readers a bad time too and they won’t trust you for other products. So pick products that are good quality and give whoever tries them a good experience and they’ll come back to you for more and be grateful for your input.
Focus on products that will be interesting to your audience, not products that just sell in general.
Don’t be afraid to find products that are similar and review, compare, and contrast.
Find affiliate networks and look at the resources they offer to affiliates to help them get more sales and clicks.
Use services like Hubspot and Google Analytics to see what’s going on in your market. Facts about what your audience is looking up and reading about are more beneficial than what you imagine they want to hear.
Research, research, research. Do your homework.
Compare commission rates and talk to your affiliate managers about upping your rates when you’re doing well.
Talk to your affiliate managers about doing sales exclusively for your readership.
Keep an eye out for discount codes to share with your followers.
Make the best use of the available affiliate networks. Through the networks, many programs and products are available to promote. Make sure you look through these and take advantage of what they have to offer. Searching through Affiliate Networks will help give you ideas you may never have thought of.
If you enjoy How to Make Money Blogging with Affiliate Marketing, Storytelling, and writing in general, you might love owning a domain of your own where you can write about it? Ever want to own your own domain name (Yourname.com)?
Bluehost hosts your blog so that you can own your domain and make money blogging. Check them out only if you’re interested in making money blogging; otherwise, go for a free blog instead 🙂
Update Bonus: 21 Shocking Writing Prompts to start writing your next book or short story optimized Quick Pinterest Pin at the bottom of the Page.
6+ Easy Practical Steps to Becoming a Better Writer in 30 Days or Less
Follow these strategies below and you will most assuredly be a better writer than when you started.
Whether you want to become a technical writer, a ghostwriter, a TV writer, a travel writer, or just learn how to write your essays better, these tips should prove helpful.
Becoming a better writer isn’t difficult, but it absolutely takes a solid discipline.
As with most things the more hardcore you go with these strategies, the more you’ll get out of it.
6+ Easy Practical Steps to Becoming a Better Writer in 30 Days or Less:
There are plenty of good sites to start blogging today for free, wordpress.org being one of them and they allow you to use free plugins as well compared to wordpress.com.
Disclaimer: You can always start a “free” blog, but the terms of use for free sites is that they can shut it down for any reason (at ANY TIME). So it’s possible to randomly lose all your hard work on a free blog. Be careful.
So just a fair warning, you can use free blogging, but I haven’t had much success with it personally. I started many free blogs and none of them stuck. This is the only one I’ve paid for and I’m glad I did. And it is the only one that I continue working with.
If you want to start a legitimate blog or if you think you might try to monetize it one day you are eventually going to need a hosting site.
I personally use Bluehost. They made getting my blog started EXTREMELY easy and their ‘one-click’ WordPress.org setup was ridiculously smooth.
Bluehost is one of the top web hosting companies in 2020. You can start your own blog with them for as low as $3.95 a month (on the page you’ll see that they say it is normally $7.99, but I’ve never seen them try to get anyone to start for that.) The $3.95 sale price only comes with their 36-month plan. I use them and that’s what I did and I’m happy about it. ( I did the 36-month plan and so far we are still happy with it 🙂 )
Sign up them and you can also get your domain free if you purchase a 12 month or longer hosting plan (that’s worth $15). As I said, we did the 36-month plan because it was the best deal but you can choose any plan. If you’re not planning on monetizing your blog it might be a good idea to start with a free blog.
I can tell you from personal experience that a free blog won’t motivate you to write as much as paying for a blog, but it’s up to you to decide what works best for your unique situation. If you really love blogging you never know when you might decide to monetize and at that moment you’ll be happy you decided to host with Bluehost and owning your domain.
Having your own site looks more professional to affiliate programs and readers. You will be able to have a better following, no one can shut you down for no reason (like on a free blog) and at any moment you will be able to monetize through ads and affiliate programs.
Some of my blogging mentors had their blogs going for years before they decided to monetize. You just never know.
At the same time, you can always start a free blog to test things out and buy a domain name and hosting later, but there is no guarantee the price will still be as good and no guarantee that the domain name you love will still be available.
Do what’s best for you and your specific situation 🙂
For me personally, I started with Bluehost and WordPress.org right from the start because I enjoy work from home and being my own boss. As far as online jobs and work, blogging is one way to pay yourself and work when you want.
If you want to reasons why it’s a good idea to start a blog, you can check out this post here:Why Start a Blog
If you are interested in more details on how to make a great blog from scratch you can see this post: How to Become a Blogger in 2019
2. Read about writing every day
Good writers all have certain traits in common. One of them is that they read A LOT.
Most of them read every day. Now I won’t say that I’m a good writer that’s up to others to decide, but I do read mostly every day.
You might be thinking “but you probably grew up reading as a kid and loved it.” Not true! I personally couldn’t stand reading and writing growing up. Hated reading with a passion actually.
It actually wasn’t until I got into college that I really started to read and then probably a couple of years into it that I started to enjoy it.
So you don’t have to be some kind of savant to get started in writing. You just have to have drive and discipline.
But this type of reading isn’t just reading at first. It is specifically looking to read about writing (I know, it sounds boring and it can be tedious but the foundational knowledge will help in the long run). During your becoming a better writer in just 30 days, you will want to be keen to read and learn about writing, especially if you want to do writing online or freelance writing.
Try to read things that help you get to where you want to go. If you want to become a blogger read about blogging tips and tricks. < (I googled it for you)
If you want to become a ghostwriter, read about how to become a ghostwriter. (Pssst! What’s a ghostwriter? A ghostwriter is a writer that gets paid to write something for someone but doesn’t own the project. For example, a person could hire you to write a novel for them, but they get to publish it as the author. They paid for it and own all the rights to it and you are just the ghostwriter.)
It’s just one way to get paid to write.
If you want to be a technical writer, read about the best practices of technical writers. As long as you are willing to read the right things you can learn to write anything 🙂 there really is nothing holding you back.
Look up blogs, articles, look at the library for books on writing. Depending on what type of writing you want to pursue will be very important to the writing that you read about.
As you get a good idea of a foundation for the type of writing you want to do, you can start to branch out studying other types of writing. You will see how understanding the why’s and what’s and styles behind them all can help you in your pursuit of becoming a better writer.
Look on Amazon for great reads on writing. I personally recommend these ones for when you need to think outside the traditional box or when you get bored of reading about writing:
These are non-traditional and will help open up your mind to more strategic possibilities for the potential of writing. Full disclosure: I didn’t read any of these yet. I took Neil Gaiman’s Masterclass, which was amazing and I highly recommend it.
In fact, I recommend Masterclass to anyone who loves learning and thinks it’s neat to learn from celebrities (such as Dan Brown, James Patterson, Samuel Jackson, Christina Agulera, and many more.
@ $15 a month, it is extremely worth it. I’ve been using it for a year and learn so much from professionals that I never would have. And the lessons always feel personal. Sometimes the teachers who are celebs even write back to your comments. Can you imagine Samuel L. Jackson responding to your comment?) about their crafts.
On Writing was recommended to me 2nd hand by a writing mentor of mine. He said that it was good if you need to get outside the traditional learning about writing books and it was interesting if you’re a fan of Stephen King novels too.
I love TED talks, I watch some when I can, so when I saw this book about public speaking from TED talks I knew it would be a winner with powerful knowledge.
If you’re wondering why I would suggest a public speaking book for learning how to be a better writer, it is simple.
When writing has been your profession for years you learn what crafts complement great writing. For instance, IF you want to be a great writer, your secret weapon is research. If you aren’t a personal professional researcher, it will be nigh impossible for you to become a great writer. Public Speaking skills go beyond just speaking and writing.
Those skills bleed into SO many professional avenues that it will not only make you a better writer. It’ll make you a better person in almost everything you do (unless you live in a hole and never interact with other humans in any way, shape, or form.)
Read some of the reviews on each one to see if they look like something you would enjoy. (And DON’T just read the 5-star reviews, read the bad reviews too. I almost always read the bad reviews, most of the time, I read the 1-star reviews first. This actually saves me time when shopping for a new product, especially tech products.)
There is a simple method over 30,000 people use to get paid for freelance writing online.
Opportunities can get started in just minutes a day, all from your home couch.
It’s easy to get started! No previous experience or degree required to start.
Exclusive job listings for writers, updated daily.
Check out Writing Paychecks to see if you can start getting paid to write today.
3. Write Every Day
Now this one is the kicker. If you do nothing else from this post, do this one thing and you’ll surely become a better writer. Write every day.
Now you can:
Write at a certain time every day
Or
Write a certain amount of words every day
Or
Write a certain amount of time every day
You can mix and match these however suits you best. You try them all out and see if one is easier and sticks better for you.
Me personally, I like writing a certain amount of time and writing at a certain time of the day. This keeps me going and I don’t feel bad if I don’t come up with a certain amount of words.
I tried writing a certain amount of words every day and I couldn’t keep up with it and instead of doing it I’d skip it because I knew it would take “too long.”
You see, you are more likely to develop a habit if you start small and take smaller bites that you can handle.
If you already write every day that’s great and you can choose to write more.
If you don’t write then start small.
Start with 1-10 minutes a day. If you find that easy, do more. If you find that hard, write less. At first, start with what seems easy to you and build on that.
The last thing you want to do is start with a habit that’s too hard to do every day. If you bite off too much you might not swallow it. If you find yourself dreading it, that’s a bad sign. If you find that you easily go a week without doing it, that’s a sign you tried to do more than you should start with.
If you want to do a certain amount of words every day I recommend starting with 100 a day. If that’s easy write more. If that’s too hard write less.
I tried 500 words a day and I couldn’t keep up with it. It just became tedious and therefore unenjoyable. I’m a professional writer, so that’s why I recommend starting with less. I mostly work in email writing, so if I’m on a job I might write more or less on those days, but if I’m not writing for a client, 500 just didn’t seem appetizing.
Blogging has definitely changed that for me, that’s why I recommend Starting a Blog.
I now try to write a certain amount of time every day and usually I find that if I get started, I end up writing longer than the first little amount that I force myself to do anyway. Thus, this strategy works very well for me. I’d start with the easy goal of 1 minute. 60 seconds, if you can’t do something for 60 seconds a day, maybe you don’t really want to do it at all.
You can also benefit from writing at a certain time every day. You will know what time works best for you.
It could be first thing in the morning. Some people find that this is their most creative and profitable time.
Me personally, I don’t do so well in the morning, I prefer to write at other times. Afternoon and evening, not late evening though. If I feel my eyes start to droop, I just know that I’m not gonna get much coherent information on the page. (It can be comical though. I’ll go back and read what I was writing the night before and it can be some of the worst writing! I’ll save myself time and energy if I just get some sleep or caffeine instead of trying to push through.)
You might like to write during your lunch at work, or first thing when you get home after eating something.
It’s always a good time to be able to put something on T.V. and write while relaxing.
So you can take time and figure out when is best for you to write.
If you write even just 10 minutes a day for 30 days you will be a better writer at the end of that short 30 days, and you might find that you have developed a habit you look forward to and fully enjoy 🙂 I know I do.
Update: Since Blogging and traveling more while blogging I find that a certain amount of time a day and a certain time of the day becomes tedious and makes blogging less enjoyable for me personally. Again this may work for you, so don’t hesitate to experiment.
Now, I enjoy writing at some point during the day. I find that it doesn’t have to be strict or a certain number of anything. I sit down to write and I find that I can easily be there for hours or an interruption might come up like a family member or friend wanting to hang and I am able to get up and go without any sort of remorse. I find this to be key to my success as a writer and blogger.
4. Research Storytelling
Storytelling will benefit you no matter what writing niche you go into, except maybe academic writing. Even then I’m sure it could be a little useful.
If you look around, you’ll start to see how stories are everywhere and people love stories. We eat them up. We can’t get enough of stories.
Stories are in the movies. Stories are on the news. On blogs, web pages, profiles, social media, history, we find stories fascinating and that is why they work so well and why we should find ways to incorporate the skill of storytelling into our writing, no matter what niche we are in.
Let me give you an example:
I once knew a guy.
He had a problem.
He was about 30 years old living in America, but he didn’t know how to read or write…
Did you notice something there?
I introduced a character and a problem he had, did you notice how you instantly went into “consuming story mode.” Did all your attention get drawn into the short story that started?
If not, that’s okay. It wasn’t super dynamic, but if you did, take time to think about why that happened. Stories are a powerful tool you need to add to your writing arsenal. Study stories and storytelling to engage your audience and grab their attention when you choose.
Stories are great at helping illustrate a point. Great as an ice breaker and a great way to regain your audience’s attention if you think you are losing them.
And stories work across all mediums. Art, writing, presentation, public speaking, with a group of friends or colleagues. Storytelling is a life skill that anyone would benefit from developing, but especially writers.
There is a simple method over 30,000 people use to get paid for freelance writing online.
Opportunities can get started in just minutes a day, all from your home couch.
It’s easy to get started! No previous experience or degree required to start.
Exclusive job listings for writers, updated daily.
Check out Writing Paychecks to see if you can start getting paid to write today.
5. Read about different types of writing
After you get a good handle for your specific niche of writing, you will really benefit from studying other styles of writing and using different tips and tricks to make your style even better by borrowing from the other types.
Different Types of Writing include but not limited to:
Copywriting
Fiction
Non-fiction
Blogging
Email Writing (cold emails, drip campaigns)
Article Writing
Academic Writing
Web Page Writing (About us, Home pages, etc)
Mailers
Landing Pages
Branding
Sales Pages
Video Scripts
Sales Funnels
There are probably more. And there used to be a time not long ago where most of these genres didn’t have precedence, but these days knowing how to do any one of these well can mean good freelancing money for you or better your own business. Either way $$$.
Even looking at this list might help you think more about what you want to do or discover for yourself. You may have not been aware that some of these opportunities existed before now, but now you know and can do something about it.
6. Read, Read, Read
It should make sense at this point. One easy way to get better at writing every day is to read every day.
Having a wide array of reading will make you well rounded and increase your understanding and vocabulary.
Writing a lot is necessary but if you don’t expose yourself to all sorts of different voices and writing styles you might find that you don’t have much to write about.
I recommend have light reading along with tough to read stuff simultaneously.
By having light reading you’ll be able to enjoy reading and move along. But having tough to read material will stretch your will power and ability as a reader and writer.
Exposing yourself to writing that is better than your own will help you improve. You will also more readily observe bad writing and notice when you yourself are writing poorly.
Humans have been writing for some time now and many tricks of the trade are out there for you to see, experience, enjoy, and make a part of your own writing repertoire. So don’t skip the reading.
Bonus: Be a Critical Consumer
Being a critical consumer doesn’t mean you make a bunch of critical comments on the stuff you read and watch like your the next reality TV show judge.
Being a critical consumer is the opposite of being a mindless consumer.
We all watch and read a lot of entertainment.
When you are reading or watching your favorite stories or documentaries take mental notes.
Think about how they use dialogue. What is the main theme of the story?
How did they seamlessly carry you through each step of the story while you consumed it?
Did something not sit right with you about the character development?
Were all the important plot questions answered satisfactorily?
Updated Bonus: 21 Shocking Writing Prompts to get you started writing your next book or short story.
Check out these FREE trial resources from Amazon for when you work from home (or are stuck at home 🙂 ) As an Amazon associate, if you do sign up or buy anything using Amazon links from our site we make a commission at no extra cost to you.
So you’re thinking about starting your own blog and you want to check out Bluehost? If that’s true read on.
If you are thinking about starting a blog I think a REALLY important question to ask yourself is why.
There are many reasons to want to start a blog, but why would you personally want to start a blog now?
Ever dream of starting a blog?
What type of person wakes up and thinks, “I want to start a blog?”
Maybe you want a place to write out all your thoughts.
Maybe you want a space where you can share and teach what you’re learning.
Maybe you just want to sip margaritas during lunchtime and play on Pinterest?
It’s a dream for some, but if you read through my posts on this site about making money blogging it could be a reality for you soon.
Read on and see if you think blogging might be your thing…
To start a blog that makes actual money and grows in time is actually quite inexpensive compared to other startups.
If you have ever thought that you may want to start a blog for fun or ESPECIALLY if you are considering making some passive money on the side blogging, I recommend Bluehost to host your site. Bluehost is still one of the top web hosting companies in 2019 and you can start a blog with them for as low as $3.95 a month ( They advertise that it’s normally $7.99 a month, but if you use the link above you will see that it is as little as $3.95 a month)!
You can choose a different site to host your blog but when you use bluehost to sign up, you can get your domain free for the first year if you purchase a 12 month or longer hosting plan (this will save you at least $15 on your initial purchase). I recommend doing at least the 12-month (I’m using the 36-month to save more $) hosting plan through Bluehost even if you’re not planning on monetizing your blog because if you really love blogging you never know when you might decide to monetize and at that moment you’ll be happy you decided to host and own your domain.
Having your own site looks more professional to affiliate programs and readers. You will be able to have a better following and at any moment you will be able to decide to monetize through ads and affiliate marketing.
Some of my blogging mentors had their blogs going for years before they decided to monetize. You just never know, so you might as well start off on a good foot.
Bluehost is affordable and you can save yourself a lot of money by signing up for at least 12 months. Plus, if you want an even better deal, your best value would be purchasing a 36-month plan (that’s what I did, I like the best deal.) With the 36 month plan, your monthly rate is WAY lower over the long run. So you have options. Do what’s best for you and your specific situation 🙂
For me personally, I started with Bluehost (36-month plan) and WordPress right from the start because I enjoy work from home and being my own boss. Online jobs are growing (and we just saw through the pandemic that having extra side hustles is especially helpful) and this is one way to pay yourself and work when you want. You’ll be glad you did. I’m glad I did.
1-Click WordPress Install (this saves a lot of complication)
24/7 Support
Get 36 months at $3.95 a month instead of $7.99 (That’s a saving of at least $145!)
Plus * Special intro offer and 30-day money-back guarantee (fyi, the 30-day guarantee does not include the domain name, so if you request a refund they will charge a fee. It wasn’t a problem for me, but I just wanted you to know and be aware)
This post on “Why start a blog” is really mean to help you decide and think about any reason why you personally would benefit from starting a blog business of your own.
Why Start a Blog?
Starting a blog can be fun
Start a blog and it can become passive income
As a freelance writer, I can tell you, blogging for yourself is WAY better than blogging for clients
Start a blog and you can serve people with your talents, research, and know-how
You can become a better writer (and content creator) by blogging daily or weekly
If you start a blog you can land jobs as a writer, content creator, and work from anywhere
There are many reasons to want to start a blog, but why WOULD YOU personally want to start a blog of your own?
“In the United States, there are over 31 million active bloggers posting at least once per month. And according to data from Ahrefs, people search Google for “How to start a blog” 121,000 times per month worldwide. That’s nearly 4,000 people who consider starting a blog every day.” – Growthbadger “How many Blogs are there?” – Jan 2, 2019
Sometimes when people think “blogging” they only think writing about a subject. This isn’t true anymore.
A blog is just a space on the internet you own where you can create anything and people can find you and you can share with the world what you have to offer.
If you don’t love writing like we do, that’s okay!
Top Secret: You don’t have to be a good writer to be a successful blogger.
It’s shocking to hear, I know. And it’s a well-kept secret amongst bloggers that they might not want to let you in on.
But today you can start a blog of your own and make videos, pictures, internet tools that help people, infographics, graphic design, and art.
Pretty much anything you can dream up.
You can do it for fun and you can learn how to monetize it. Because who doesn’t love to do what they find enjoyable and make some money while sharing it with the world?
A blogger I follow, Michelle Schroder, makes over $100,000 a month offering her expertise on finance.
If you happen to be passionate about finance why couldn’t you start a blog today and take even a small portion of that pie?
People are out there looking for what you have to offer, the only question is are you going to make the time investment it takes to put your passion out there and see what happens?
1. Starting a blog can be fun
One reason to consider starting a blog is because blogging about your passion is fun and enjoyable.
For me and many other bloggers, we will sincerely tell you that blogging is fun!
You get paid to write (or create) what you’re learning and what you know well. You don’t have to be a 10-year veteran or an expert, you just have to know more than your readers and BE HELPFUL!
If you start a blog to be helpful. Other people will enjoy it more, share it more, and you will find it to be satisfying too.
If you’re looking to help others, there is a big chance you will gather a following and you will enjoy what you write about every day more than if you JUST try to make money online.
And just in case you do like writing, I would venture to say that blogging is fun for most writers.
I know plenty of bloggers that decided they were going to start a blog that now make a decent side income from blogging. Some people even make a full time living from the notion to start a blog.
As I have mentioned before I really enjoy the idea of passive income because it allows you the freedom to do what you think is important in life with the precious time you have.
They generally require very little maintenance once they are running full steam. They require extremely little money or energy investment to start compared to other projects, but once you have it built and going it can continue generating money for you without taking up much of your time.
For instance, if you enjoy writing and getting paid to write you might enjoy being a freelance writer.
Getting paid as a freelance writer you can be paid very well for your time and make your own schedule, but at the end of the day, you still are trading your time and performance for money.
If you stop working the money flow stops too.
If you start a blog, you really can choose when you want to work on it, and when you don’t.
There are many reasons to want to start a blog, but why would you personally want to start a blog now?
3. As a freelance writer, I can tell you, blogging for yourself is WAY better than blogging for clients
If you’re not interested in freelance writing, you may want to skip this section 🙂
I hope I don’t rant here, but I’m pretty passionate about the subject. Writing for clients can be awesome and terrible. At the end of the project, what they think about what you did can outweigh how it performs in their market.
This phenomenon can work for you or against you in your freelance writing business.
Much like a chef if you just focus on SERVING them a fresh dish of what they want you can easily build up a good amount of good rapport and reviews for yourself, but then you run the risk of it not performing well and then they are left with a bad taste for you and other freelancers. This can be bad for everyone.
On the other hand, if you focus more on the performance of your copy and ignore the client and their requests than it might perform well, but they won’t like you which can leave you bad rapport and bad reviews even if you’re the best copywriter.
That’s what makes it hard. You have to find the magical place between where the client feels like they are getting excellent service from you, but at the same time, your piece performs well. This can make for a lot of pressure on yourself, especially if you are a perfectionist.
This is what leads me to say that blogging FOR YOURSELF is much more enjoyable because you have an avenue to be a paid writer (or paid creative), work on your own time, and not feel the pressure of performing for others.
You can use your talents and what you enjoy to help other people without them being disappointed for various reasons outside of your control.
But don’t let that stop you from being a freelance writer. I have been doing copywriting for years working with clients and you can’t beat the money and lifestyle as a copywriter for the time it takes.
I have been able to step away from the 9-5 for the past couple of years, travel more, and spend more time with family and friends by becoming a freelance writer. That’s just one of the specific “headaches” I noticed personally, but some people thrive in that type of environment so I recommend trying it and seeing what works best for you.
Many freelance writing “gurus” will say, “if you buy my course and become freelancer you will become your own boss!!!” This only partly true.
When you write for yourself on your own blog that you own, you REALLY DO BECOME YOUR OWN BOSS.
You are a paid writer. You do work from home. It is an online job. It can become passive in time. It is online work. If you don’t want to create the content (or don’t know how) you can hire freelancers. You get to see first hand the results of your writing and what’s working and what’s not working.
In fact, if you are thinking of becoming a freelance writer I highly recommend starting your own blog through Bluehost (I mentioned the benefits at the beginning of this post) so you can become a better online writer and give your clients real-life experience to help them with their online business. By figuring out how to make your own blog work, others will be much more likely to hire you to help with their blogs and online businesses. You can also promote that you’re a freelance writer using your blog. You can also make more money using your own blog that you own and control.
Blog writing is a big niche for ghostwriters, online freelance writers, and copywriters. So this would be a spectacular way to gain experience that will prove to be invaluable for you and your potential clients.
4. Start a blog and you can serve people with your talents, research, and know-how
Some of the best authors in the world, such as Neil Gaimon, Dan Brown, and James Patterson will all tell you how important research is to great writing.
I don’t care what type of writing you’re doing. I don’t care if you are a blog writer, a copywriter, an author or even a fiction writer. The amount of research and real-life experience you bring into every single piece will carry that piece further than those that do very little to no research.
So do yourself and your readers a favor and do your homework, do good research.
Since you’ll hopefully be researching something you enjoy, it will make sense to want to write it down somewhere, or record it somewhere. Why not a blog?
Take what you’re passionate about and learning and turn around and give to the world via a blog.
When you do your research focus on finding the facts so that you will be able to serve other people with what you learn.
What you looked up someone else will most likely look up too, so don’t be afraid to post what you learn. As you learn, take good notes and write.
Just by writing it down, you will become better at formulating your thoughts in writing and you will retain the knowledge that you learned better.
Focus on serving people with the things you are passionate about.
Find creative ways to share what you are learning about through blogging, making videos, writing, creating images.
There are so many mediums in which you can create using a blog, you just have to figure it out or hire someone to do it for you. And that’s not difficult through places like Upwork.
If you think you aren’t a talented writer and want to be, find out why your copy is failing and get better by blogging and researching more. Don’t accept what other people tell you about your talents as a writer as how good you’ll always be.
And again blogging has become so much more than writing these days. There are:
Recipe blogs
Fashion blogs
Brand blogs
Forum blogs
Freelance blogs
Tutorials
Guides
Info-graphics
Make up
Video
Finance
Design
Architecture
Music
Art
Any medium or topic you can think of can be turned into a successful blog that can help people.
With some good research and practice, I’ll bet you can become very good. Much better than you or anyone else thinks.
When I started copywriting, I didn’t know even what it was. My friend told me he was working as a “copywriter” and I said, “a copywriter? What’s that?”
He explained it to me, I loved the idea and the rest is history. I dove into the world of copywriting, marketing, and writing, and I love it.
So focus on using what you know and what you don’t know (Don’t be afraid to blog as you learn when it’s fresh, someone might find it helpful) to help others out with your Blog. You will get much better feedback and who knows, you might just love it!
If you want to learn something well, teach it. And you can definitely do that by teaching people through what you create on your blog.
5. You can become a better writer (and content creator) by blogging daily or weekly
Blogging is not only fun and beneficial for others, but it can also be beneficial to you as well.
If you think you are bad at writing but want to try it out, ask any professional writer, the best thing to do to get better at writing is to ……. You guessed it! Write!
What’s the best way to decide if a day of writing was successful???
Did you write today?
Yes: Success
No: Failure
So how do you really get better? Research yes, but as far as putting it to practice here are some strategies.
Choose a certain amount of words to write every day.
Choose a certain amount of time to write each day.
Choose a certain time of the day to write every day.
If you really want to dive deep check out our post on How To Become a Better Writer In Just 30 Days in the “search” box.
Same thing with any type of content creation.
If it’s video make and edit videos.
Images? Start creating images.
Design? Sales? Pictures? Etc. And on and on the creation wheel goes and where it stops only time will tell. But you can be a creator and use your blog to share your creation and help the world.
It doesn’t matter what type of information you want to share with your audience. A blog can help.
6. If you start a blog you can land jobs as a writer, content creator, and work from anywhere
Tis true.
I have heard many times how having a blog has led to the blogger being asked to write for a company or other blogger, both as a staff or contracted writer.
You might get a “test job” at first but if you do well and they like it they might ask you for more.
If you dream of being a professional writer, it’s not a bad route to go.
And since they found you and they see your writing already, you can lose the “what if they don’t like my writing,” fear. They ask you to write for them after they’ve seen your writing, they must like something about you’re doing.
If they ask you to write for them, you’re doing something right. I have heard of this happening too many times to think that it won’t happen for any good writer.
As you write your own blog you’ll find your voice and as you find your voice others will notice. It’s a win-win.
Starting a blog helps you create and learn many freelancing skills:
