Essential Skills You Need To Become A Writer

Expertise in a specific subject might give you a focus but that could just as easily be a hindrance as a benefit - demand for content in your area of expertise might be limited, so what will you write about then?

And what about the different mediums that writers need to adapt to these days? Every social media channel has a different demographic and you may well be required to write to each of them. Writer skills and qualities are expanding all the time and the challenge for the modern writer is to keep pace. Of course, there are some other skills that stay the same. Let’s have a look at what a writer needs to do these days to make a living.

Before anything else can happen, writers need to write

There is no substitute for writing and honing your skill as a writer. You could apply the same principle to a golfer hitting golf balls and a lawyer practicing the law. Don’t wait for your teacher’s approval or to run something by your partner before you get back to the task of writing. If you are waiting on approval to write then you are missing the point. Writers write every single day regardless of accolades, approval or any other form of external validation. More than anything, writers need consistency.

In the service of your audience

Whether it’s a blog or a novel; a short story or a newsletter for the local netball team. One of the toughest things for a writer is to dispense with work that does not have the relevance to maintain the interest of the reader. It can be a beautifully constructed sentence, paragraph or scene but if it doesn’t act in the interests of your audience then it has to go … until you can use it elsewhere. Learning how to write creatively requires adherence to this principle as tough is it is to carry out. A great tutor at a writing course, an editor or a mentor will tell you that they have all had to do this at one time or another.

Be adaptable

The art of writing in the digital age means that audiences have lots of choices about how and where they consume their information. Remember that writers write for an audience so the tone and the voice of the writer is what attracts a reader. Most people assume that what interests them about a subject or their product or service will also interest their audience. That’s a mistake and why writers are writers and other people aren’t. Writers need to understand an audience and write to serve them and only them. You might ask: Can anyone be a good writer? Well yes they can, but you need objectivity about your work and the subject matter otherwise you serve yourself and not your audience.