100 Ways to Improve Your Writing (Updated): Proven Professional Techniques for Writing with Style and Power

Do not try to write everything about your subject. All subjects are inexhaustible.

One common mistake you should be aware of is the writing of two or three leads in the same story. Often a writer creates a good lead and then repeats all the information in the second paragraph, and again in the third. This is from an unpublished article on dog parks:

take a few deep breaths, put your pulse rate into second gear, and deliver a supply of oxygen to the brain.

Do not create in your head some witty, erudite, unmistakably exciting persona and try to capture him or her on paper. Also,

Readers will like you if you show that you are human. In a how-to piece, for example, you might write, “This third step is a little hard to master. I ruined six good slides before I got it right. So be smarter than I was; practice on blanks.”

I love writing. It’s getting started that I abhor. I tell you this so that you won’t feel alone. You probably go through similar hell before you write. Almost everybody does. The way to eliminate most of these traumas is to write in large blocks of time rather than to try to write for ten minutes here and there.

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 keyboard as if it had just arrived from another galaxy. If you have spent time writ

A lead should be provocative. It should have energy, excitement, an implicit promise that something is going to happen or that some interesting information will be revealed. It should create curiosity, get the reader asking questions.

So write with a combination of short, medium, and long sentences.