The short answer
What are the seven steps to better writing?
Writing better takes seven steps. You do not need talent for any of them, and you can do each one on a normal day.
Step one: know what you want to say.
Before you start, say your point in one plain sentence, the way you would tell a friend. If you cannot, you are not ready to write yet. The United States government’s guide to plain writing says that long, complicated sentences often mean the writer is not sure what they want to say (the federal plain language guide).
Step two: pick one reader.
Choose one real person who does not know what you know, and write the whole thing to them. Ask yourself what they already know, and what they want from you. The same guide calls this its first rule: write for your audience (the federal plain language guide).
Step three: write a fast first draft.
Write the whole thing down, in the order the thoughts come. Do not fix anything yet. A first draft does not have to be good. It only has to be on the page.
Step four: use plain words.
Pick the word you would say out loud. Write “use”, not “utilize”. Write “help”, not “assistance”. Write “if”, not “in the event of”. Those three swaps come from a list in the government guide (the federal guide’s list of familiar terms).
Step five: rewrite it.
Go through your draft three times. First fix what you are saying: is the point near the top, and is anything missing? Then fix the sentences. Fix single words last, because there is no use fixing a word in a sentence you may cut.
Step six: read it out loud.
Wait a while, then read your draft out loud. You will hear the missing word, and the sentence that is too long to say in one breath.
Step seven: write often.
Write for a short time, at a regular time, like the fifteen minutes before work. Then count the days you wrote. The page on why writing is important shows what a week like that adds up to.
An example
What does rewriting look like? One note, rewritten twice.
Rewriting looks like this. The note below is made up for this page. It asks someone at work to help move a meeting. It was written in five minutes on a Monday, and rewritten twice the next morning.
The first draft
Monday, to
It has come to my attention that, in the event of a delay in the delivery of the report, there is a possibility that the meeting which was scheduled for Thursday may have to be moved. Owing to the fact that several members of the team are in need of additional time, I would like to utilize this opportunity to request your assistance in finding a new date.
Written fast, in the order the thoughts came.
First rewrite: the point comes first
Tuesday, to
The report may be late. If it is, we will have to move Thursday’s meeting, because several people on the team need more time. Can you help me find a new date?
What happened, what it means, and what the reader is asked to do, in that order.
Second rewrite: shorter and plainer
Tuesday, to
The report may be late, and several of us need more time. Can you help me move Thursday’s meeting?
Every word the reader does not need is gone.
The note went from 68 words to 19. That is 72% shorter, and nothing the reader needed was lost. Look at the order of the work. The first rewrite moved the point to the front. Only the second rewrite worked on single words.
What studies found
How do you improve your writing skills? What studies found.
Writing skills improve with practice that has a method. Here are four things researchers have found.
A method, a goal and feedback all help.
A review looked at hundreds of studies of how writing is taught to school students. Students wrote better when they were taught how to plan, rewrite and fix a piece. A clear goal for each piece helped too, and so did feedback (Graham and colleagues, 2023). The seven steps above are one such method.
Hard words push readers away.
In one experiment, people read about science. Some got a text full of special terms. They found it harder to read, even when each term was explained, and they said they were less interested in the subject (Shulman and colleagues, 2020).
Reading out loud finds more mistakes.
In two experiments, people looked for mistakes in short texts. They found more of them when they read the texts out loud than when they read silently. They did not expect that (Cushing and Bodner, 2022).
You do not have to write every day.
You will hear this rule in many places. But a study of successful university writers found that they work in many different ways (Sword, 2016). So pick a rhythm you can keep.
The test
How do you know it is working?
The test
You wrote on at least 5 days of the week, and you rewrote every important piece once before anyone saw it
for 4 weeks in a row.
You get better at writing by writing and rewriting for many hours, over many weeks. And when you go by memory, it is easy to think you spent more hours than you did.
A good way to do this test is to count the time from what you already write or say about your day. If you say “rewrote the proposal from nine to half past eleven”, that counts as two and a half hours. You do not have to start a timer and then forget it. Most journaling apps only ask how your day felt. They do not show you when in the week you really wrote, or how little time the writing got.
One app built for this is Think in Numbers, a smart journaling app with time tracking built in.
You write or say your day in your own words, as it happens or all at once. The app reads what you wrote and counts the hours that went to each part of it: work, study, reading, your phone, and the time you never mentioned (shown as unaccounted). Then it shows those hours over days and weeks. And writing your day down in your own words is a little writing practice too, every day. Put the rewrite of each important piece on your to-do list. When your day says you rewrote it, the app ticks it off.
1. You write your day
2. It counts the hours
- Writing0m
- Work0m
- Sleep0m
- Unaccounted24h
3. It shows your week
Writing this week: 0m
On 6 of 7 days. The gap is the day without it.
An example day and week.
For iPhone and Android. Try it on your own day before you pay.
Sources
Where the steps and findings come from.
Every finding on this page links to one of the sources below. We read each one for this page, the whole text or its summary.
- Digital.gov, U.S. General Services Administration (read ). Plain language guide series: Clear and short.
- Digital.gov, U.S. General Services Administration (read ). Plain language guide series: Principles of plain language.
- Digital.gov, U.S. General Services Administration (read ). Plain language guide series: Familiar terms.
- Graham, S., Kim, Y.-S. G., Cao, Y., Lee, J. W., Tate, T., Collins, P., Cho, M., Moon, Y., Chung, H. Q. and Olson, C. B. (2023). A meta-analysis of writing treatments for students in grades 6–12. Journal of Educational Psychology, 115(7), 1004 to 1027.
- Shulman, H. C., Dixon, G. N., Bullock, O. M. and Colón Amill, D. (2020). The Effects of Jargon on Processing Fluency, Self-Perceptions, and Scientific Engagement. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 39(5-6), 579 to 597.
- Cushing, C. and Bodner, G. E. (2022). Reading aloud improves proofreading (but using Sans Forgetica font does not). Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 11(3), 427 to 436.
- Sword, H. (2016). ‘Write every day!’: a mantra dismantled. International Journal for Academic Development, 21(4), 312 to 322.
Keep reading.
- LearnAnswers about sleep, habits, study, people and work, in hours.
- Why writing is importantFour plain reasons writing helps you, simple ways to use it each day, and what studies found about memory, handwriting and chatbots.
- Morning pagesWrite three pages by hand every morning. How to do it, how long it takes, and what studies say.
- Deep workDemanding work without distraction, and how to count it.
- Where did my week go? calculatorEnter a typical day and see your week accounted and unaccounted.
- Time journalingThe method: write or say your day in your own words, then see it as hours.
Questions
Questions people ask.
How do I write better?
To write better, first know what you want to say. Write for one reader. Get a quick rough draft down. Then rewrite it: fix what you are saying first, then the sentences, then single words. Use short plain words, read it out loud, and do all of this often.
How can I improve my writing skills quickly?
Rewrite something you already wrote. Put your point in the first two sentences. Cut the words you do not need, and swap long words for short ones. Then read it out loud.
How do I start writing when I do not know what to say?
Start by writing badly on purpose. Give yourself ten or fifteen minutes. Write to one person, like a letter, and do not fix anything as you go. A rough draft gives you something to rewrite.
How do I write more clearly?
To write clearly, you have to know your point. So say it in one plain sentence before you start. Then put one idea in each sentence, and pick the word everyone knows.
Do I have to write every day to get better?
No. A study of successful university writers found that they work in many different ways. What you need is a regular time that you can keep. A short time on most days is one good way to do that.
Try it on my day.
Write today down in your own words, and see where the hours went.
For iPhone and Android. Try it on your own day before you pay.