I deal with writing issues. Sometimes I feel ashamed of asking for help. I found robots that are helping me improve. After a first clean up from the robots, I feel better asking for human support.
Writing with purpose
In order to improve writing skills, having a clear purpose is key. That means addressing these two questions:
What can I do to make the first two rows so engaging to my readers that they stay interested?
If they only have two seconds to read two rows, what do I want them to remember?
People often mention powerful writing, but the key for me was discovering why the writing has to be powerful. So I came up with an analogy of food, since reading is akin to eating for me. While we all desire to eat, our stomachs can only hold a limited amount of food. The same goes for reading. Because of this, we choose the best options at a buffet and skip the rest. As for reading materials, we pick the best ones. For the chef, the challenge is to present the food appealingly. Writers face the same challenge.
Powerful writing as non-native.
It is hard to write properly. It was difficult to master in Spanish, my mother tongue, and it is difficult in English. In my previous company I created a slack channel was to help people like me who struggle to write and who seek reviews. It turns out that not only non-native speakers have difficulty writing.
I receive feedback about issues with my writing. I used to be too vague, now I'm too verbose. Receiving contradictory feedback has made it difficult for me to know how to improve.
Finding the robots
I discovered what I consider to be the best use case for artificial intelligence. There are several apps that assist with writing. They provide feedback, suggestions, and even keep track of your progress. I now have four new friends helping me at home, 24 hours a day. They all have a free and a paid version.
- Hemingway App: A basic app that gives an excellent overview of readability. In a pretty graphic UI, you can see how many sentences are hard to read. It recommends eliminating passive voice and adverbs as well. The goal is to get the lowest grade, meaning anyone can read and follow.
This is an example of what Hemingway would say about my writing.
- Wordtune: My favorite. It gives several suggestions on how to rewrite your sentences. It can change the tone, shorten or lengthen the sentences.
- Outwrite: Provides stats as well, but the significant part is the underlining of mistakes, typos, and missing punctuation. The paid version gives three suggestions to improve the sentence and works in English, French and Spanish.
- ProWritingAid: This app provides correct suggestions to replace passive voice (the other ones do not). And contains a great thesaurus of synonyms to help enhance your writing. It also provides some nice statistics about the text.
Here is what my text will look like after robots help. Most probably a regular user won’t need all of them. But I appreciated all the possible available help and I took them all.
Getting human love
Improved writing made human correction easier. It was also a great boost for my self-esteem. It made me feel better to show someone what my robot friends could already approve. By working with a writing mentor, I identified a few steps to improve even more.
- Finding the order: I'm discovering that I’m pretty much a rollercoaster writer. I write with twists and turns. It should be straightforward.
- Identify the why: If the user only has a limited amount of time to read, what is the one thing I’m hoping they will pay attention to? What is the goal of my post?
- Remove unnecessary wording: Closely related to the previous one. Once I have a clear idea of what I am trying to achieve, it's easier to remove all the excess.
Even though a human touch cannot be replaced, I can now request support more easily. Here’s that same message above after getting a proper review. And Hemingway agrees :)
コメント