60 Tips to Improve Your Nonfiction Writing

Improving your nonfiction writing can help you whether you’re writing a memo to your boss, preparing a business proposal for potential investors, writing a blog post, asking for a grant, or even if you’re writing a love letter. Below you’ll find 60 tips to improve your nonfiction writing.

1. Read great writers. Almost every article you’ll ever read on how to improve your writing will begin with this tip. The best way to improve your writing is to read great writing. Read as much as you can. Pay close attention not only to the content, but also to the style and the mechanics.

“[The writer] is careful of what he reads, for that is what he will write. He is careful of what he learns, because that is what he will know.” — Annie Dillard

2. Develop your own voice in writing.

3.  Be a critical reader.  When you’re reading, always be alert to what works, and what doesn’t.

4. Look up a new word in the dictionary every day.  Having an ample vocabulary is one of the best ways to improve your writing.

5.  You learn to write by writing.  Make it a habit to produce a certain number of words on a regular basis. Establish a schedule for writing and stick to it.

“Quantity produces quality. If you only write a few things, you’re doomed.” – Ray Bradbury

6. In The Art of Nonfiction: A Guide for Writers and Readers, Ayn Rand recommends that you approach your writing with the mindset that, although not everything you write will automatically be perfect, you have the capacity to make your work what you want to make it. She adds that when you write you must leave all your self-doubts behind and have total self-esteem.

7. Write with confidence and with authority.

8. Decide on your purpose, goal, or aim for writing. What are you hoping to achieve with this letter, essay, or blog post?

• Are you trying to persuade your readers to take a particular course of action?
• Is your purpose to entertain or amuse your readers?
• Is your purpose to inform or explain an idea?

9.  Choose your tone.  Your choice of words and the way in which you construct your sentences will determine the tone of the piece you’re writing.  Your tone and purpose are very much related: your tone will be defined by the reason for which you’re writing.

10. Determine your thesis. You want your writing to have a clear and concise main idea which is made clear to the reader early on.

11. Ask yourself what is the one point that you want to make. Here’s some advice proffered by William Zinsser, author of “On Writing Well”: “Every successful piece of nonfiction should leave the reader with one provocative thought that he or she didn’t have before. Not two thoughts, or five—just one.”

12. Ask yourself if you’ve done enough research, or if you already know enough about the subject, to be able to write intelligently about it.

13. Ayn Rand also recommends that you always begin by writing an outline. An outline is a plan of mental action, and all human endeavors require a plan. She indicates that the basic pattern of an outline is to state what you’re going to demonstrate, demonstrate it, and then announce a conclusion.

14. As a final tip from Rand, she recommends that you write directly from your subconscious, as the words come to you. The outline you prepared before you started writing will guide your subconscious. Therefore, there’s no need to use your conscious mind as you write; simply allow the words to flow automatically. Later, once the first draft is done, you can use your conscious mind to edit your writing.

15. Have an introduction, body, and conclusion.

16.  Don’t be dismayed if your first draft looks nothing like the polished articles you see in magazines, or the blog posts written by your favorite bloggers.  As Ernest Hemingway once said, “The first draft of everything is shit.”

17.  Grab your reader by the throat in the introduction.  If you catch their interest at the start, they’ll want to read on.

18. Have a unity of pronoun (first person, second person, etc.) and a unity of tense (past, present, or future).

19. In Keys to Great Writing, Stephen Wilbers recommends that you understand the power of a well-chosen word, and trust the word to do its work.

20. Delete unnecessary modifiers. As an example, instead of “free gift”, write “gift”. Also, avoid the following qualifiers and intensifiers: unique, quite, rather, pretty, really, very, kind of, actually, basically, practically, virtually. As Mark Twain once said, “Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very’; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.”

21. Stephen King says the following in his book, On Writing: “The road to hell is paved with adverbs”.  However, adverbs are not always evil.  You can use an adverb when it changes the meaning of the verb.

Roy Peter Clark, author of Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer, has a podcast in which he explains that, at their best, adverbs spice up verbs or adjectives. At their worst, they express meaning already contained in the verb.

Here’s an example:

• The accident totally severed the boy’s arm. “Severed” means “totally severed”, so the adverb is redundant.  Take it out.
• If the boy’s arm had been partially severed, that would be a different case.

Now consider these two sentences:

• She smiled happily. “Smiled” contains the meaning of “happily”, so it’s a bad use of an adverb.
• She smiled sadly. In this case, “sadly” changes the meaning of the verb. This is a good use of an adverb.

22. Keep sentences short. Paula LaRocque recommends that you vary sentence length to avoid tedium, but, in general, your sentences should be around 20 words long. (The Book on Writing: The Ultimate Guide to Writing Well)

“There’s not much to be said about the period except that most writers don’t reach it soon enough.” — Zinsser

23. If it’s possible to cut a word out, do so.

24. When you feel the urge to use long or obscure words, remember that one hallmark of great intellect is the ability to make the complex easy to understand. Also, keep in the mind that the front page of The Wall Street Journal and all of USA Today are written for the eighth grade reading level.

“Rich, ornate prose is hard to digest, generally unwholesome, and sometimes nauseating.” — Strunk and White

“Do not be tempted by a twenty-dollar word when there is a ten-center handy, ready and able.” — Strunk and White

25. Zinsser points out that readers want the person who is talking to them to sound genuine.  Therefore, a fundamental rule is to be yourself.

26.  Another tip Zinsser provides is the following: “develop a respect for words and a curiosity about their shades of meaning that is almost obsessive.”

27. Your writing should flow well: each paragraph should develop logically from the previous one.  In addition, each paragraph should be related to the main idea of the essay (or whatever it is that you’re writing).

28. Each paragraph should have a topic sentence supported by details.

29.  There should be clear transitions from one paragraph to the next.

30. Brandon Royal offers this handy guideline in The Little Red Writing Book for the perennial question of whether to use “who” or “whom”: if he, she, or they can be substituted for the pronoun in context, the correct form is who. If him, her, or them can be substituted, the correct form is whom.

• Example: “I want to know [who/whom] did this.” In this case, “He did this,” clearly sounds better than “Him did this”—so the answer is “I want to know who did this.”

• Example: “[Who/whom] should I ask about this?” You would “ask him,” not “ask he”—so the answer is “Whom should I ask about this?”

31. Learn when to write “You and I”, and when to write “You and me”. You can do so here.

32. Use active verbs. Claire Kehrwald Cook admonishes her readers to pay attention to the verbs that they use, and when they find a weak one, to substitute it for something more vigorous.

33. Be careful with the passive voice. The passive voice forces the reader to search for the intended meaning.  In an active sentence, the subject is doing the action. Replace passive sentences with active ones and watch the real subject emerge from the shadows. (Source). Here’s an example:

• Passive: In summer, many fresh vegetables are offered by the open-air farmers market.

• Active: In summer, the open-air farmers market offers many fresh vegetables.

You can read more about the active and the passive voice in this article by “Grammar Girl”: Active Voice v. Passive Voice.

34. Style is no substitute for substance. But if you write quality content, editing can vastly increase its value.

35. Aim for the right-branching sentence. Begin sentences with subjects and verbs, make your meaning early, and let your weaker elements branch to the right. Here’s an example from a New York Times article which Roy Peter Clark uses in his book “Writing Tools”:

“Rebels seized control of Cap-Haitien, Haiti’s second-largest city, on Sunday, meeting little resistance as hundreds of residents cheered, burned the police station, plundered food from port warehouses and looted the airport, which was quickly closed.”

The sentence is 37 words long, but the meaning is captured in the first three words: Rebels seized control.

36. Once in a while, for dramatic variation, write a sentence with subject and verb near the end.

37. Beware of run-on sentences. A run-on sentence joins at least two independent clauses–a group of words that contain a subject and a verb which could be a sentence by itself– without a conjunction or adequate punctuation.

For example: “These are my favorite jeans I wear them whenever I can.” You could rewrite this as two separate sentences, use a semicolon to separate the two independent clauses, or use a conjunction. (These are my favorite jeans; I wear them whenever I can.)

38. A comma splice is a type of run-on sentence. It’s when you use a comma to separate two independent clauses. Here’s an example: “It’s sunny out, wear a hat.” Again, the way to fix it is to use two sentences, use a semicolon, or use a conjunction. (It’s sunny out, so wear a hat.)

39. Revise dangling modifiers. A dangling modifier is a word or phrase that modifies a noun that does not appear in the sentence, or a noun that is positioned unclearly.

Here are two examples published in the Guardian:

• Hopping briskly through the vegetable garden, John saw a toad. (John was hopping through the vegetable garden?)
• Gently warmed in the oven and smothered in cream cheese, my friends loved the bagels. (Were the friends warmed in the oven and smothered in cream cheese?)

40. Avoid redundancy and repetition.

41. Check your use of capitals.  Here’s a handout which reviews the basic rules when it comes to capitalizing: A Little Help With Capitals.

42. When we speak we can pause, stop, or change our tone of voice.  When we write we have to rely on punctuation to clarify what we mean.  Four of the most misunderstood punctuation marks are the following four:

• Semicolon
• Colon
• Dash
• Comma

43. Learn to use apostrophes correctly.

44. Use verbs when possible instead of the noun forms of verbs, known as “nominalizations.”

• An unclear use of nominalization: “The implementation of the plan was successful.”
• Clearer sentence: “The plan was implemented successfully.”

45. You’ve probably heard that you shouldn’t end a sentence with a preposition. Jack Lynch explains in his “Guide to Grammar and Style” that there’s a substantial body of opinion against end-of-sentence prepositions (such as to, with, from, at, and in).

• No: “The topics we want to write on.”
• Yes: “The topics on which we want to write.”

However, don’t let this rule make your writing clumsy or obscure; if a sentence is more graceful with a final preposition, so be it. (Source)

46. Be careful with words that sound alike (homonyms):

• Your and you’re
• Whose and who’s
• Its and it’s
• Compliment and complement
• Brake and break
• They’re, there, and their

47. Among or Amongst? Both are correct and mean the same thing, but among is more common.

48. At the Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism–which gathers hundreds of storytellers to Harvard each fall–Morgan Entrekin, CEO of Grove/Atlantic Press, was asked whether talent or hard work counted more among authors. He answered that talent matters, but the writers who can manage their time and energy well show the best results in the long run. (A Writer’s Coach: The Complete Guide to Writing Strategies That Work)

49. Use the words you have to attract the words you want.

50. Ask yourself George Orwell’s six questions:

• What am I trying to say?
• What words will express it?
• What image or idiom will make it clearer?
• Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?
• Could I put it more shortly?
• Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

51. Create a small reference library for yourself. You can start with these:

• The Elements of Style
• The Chicago Manual of Style
• Roget’s Thesaurus
• On Writing Well
• The New Oxford American Dictionary

52. When you’re writing and there’s something that you’re not sure about, look it up.

53. Don’t wait for an idea to be fully formed in your head before you begin writing: think on paper. Howard and Baton, the authors of “Thinking on Paper”, concluded that writing is “the father to thought itself . . . We do not so much send our thought in pursuit of words as use words to pursue our thoughts.”

54. Avoid clichés like the plague. (See what I did there. ) If you’re going to use a cliché, try to give it an unexpected twist: “Never go to bed angry . . .  stay up and plot your revenge.” Thomas Pinney, author of “A Short Handbook and Style Sheet”, has the following to say about clichés:

“[Clichés] offer prefabricated phrasing that may be used without effort on your part. They are thus used at the expense of both individuality and precision, since you can’t say just what you mean in the mechanical response of a cliché.”

55. Remove unnecessary euphemisms. As an illustration, a “depressed socioeconomic area” is a “slum.”

56. Make sure that your writing has an effective conclusion.

57. When you’re done writing, put it aside. Go do something else. Then come back and read it, pretending that you’ve never read it before.

58. Check for grammar and spelling mistakes.

59. At the editing stage, read your writing out loud.  This will allow you to hear problems that you aren’t able to see. Also, listen to how your words sound – rhythm and alliteration are important.

60. Create an editing checklist for yourself.  Are there certain words that you’re constantly having trouble with? For example, you may confuse advice and advise, or affect and effect.  Make a list of your problem areas–we all have them–and make sure that you always double check for these in your writing.

If you have any tips you’d like to share, please do so in the comments section.

(NaNoWriMo the home front is courtesy of mpclemens.)

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