Make Your Writing Incredibly Appealing With 10 Unexpected Secret
Finding Your Appealing Writing Voice
It is suggested that writers write about what they know. We can think all day about our experiences, but putting them down on paper is harder that it sounds. It is hard because as writers we forget that in order to become a paid writer, we don’t write for ourselves, we have to do it for our audience.
When we were kids, those of us that love to write, were usually somewhere off to ourselves writing poems or short stories, and we only had to listen to our own thoughts and just jot things down. Our parents praised out efforts whether they understood what we wrote or not. That is not the way we should be writing today. In order to find our voice, we need to have an audience to listen to it, to validate it, to make us some money. Don’t get me wrong, there are still times that writing is just for writings sake, but when we have to pay the bills and we have graduated college and need that extra cash, we need to be writing to get it. How do you find your voice to write for others’, how do you begin to engage your audience?
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Get to know your Audience
This means doing extensive research. When you are surfing the Internet interacting with social media, begin to keep a record of the demographics that are going on at the sites that you visit. What are the people in your groups saying, what are they asking about? Their ages? Locations? The people that you have chosen to spend time with are your homework, they are who your audience is. Google Plus has a communities’ page that gives you access to hundreds of groups. Which of these are you drawn too? That is your audience. People that can make you open your mind and write in your voice are the people that will buy your writing skills. These are the people that your writing will be incredibly appealing too.
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Survey Your Friends and Neighbors
There are plenty of ways to utilize surveys. One way in particular is the “what do you need” type of survey. Finding out what people need is a great way to find your voice. When you know what someone needs, you can reach into the wealth of information that you have gathered through research and life, and see if it is something that you can service.
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Your Voice Not Someone Else’s’
Look in the mirror. See that face? It is totally individual from anyone’s on the planet. You are not going to write like anyone but you. If you try to , you will fail miserably, and you will stunt your own writer's creativity. Stop comparing yourself to the other who is making good. You time will come. You have to work on it, each and every day. Keep your thoughts on finding what you can write about that will come naturally from your soul instead of how so-and-so had a release party for their new book.
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Find your voice in an essay
Can you think of a time in your life that things were making you feel trapped? How did you grow up, was it in a bad neighborhood, were you adopted, an orphan? Possibly you may have had a golden life. Did you grow up rich and then find yourself penniless after the recession? Are you feeling me on these topics? Write about details of your life and release it in essay form. Oh? You thought your essay writing days were over? No, you are a writer and you will be developing essays for various reasons all your life, well serious writers will. Blog the essay onto social media and wait for the comments. What are people saying about it, is there any response at all? If not, try something new, but if you get a plethora of comments that start off with, I wish I had…or, If I could have done…. or This is what I have been looking for, then you have found your audience.
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Appeal to The Humanness in Humans
When you begin to get those creative juices flowing onto that blank page, what are going for? Tears, laughter, anger? Engaging your audience begins with being able to drive right through the heart of the individual that is reading your copy and being able to keep them interested in what you are saying. If your characterizations are boring, so will the outcome of your story. If your topic doesn’t grab their attention with the opening paragraph, some may read two or three but seriously, how many books/articles/ etc. have you read past the first couple of paragraphs that sounded like Charlie Brown’s parents, uninteresting and un-intelligible. When explaining a book, you have read, doesn’t it feel good to say how much you loved it and how engaging it was? Feelings are what every type of writing is going after. Pets cannot read, although there are some pet owners that think that theirs can. That is a whole different article.
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Leave Your Arrogance for Your Diary
Focusing on using your voice for your audience’s sake, comes with examining your style of writing. To choose a style begin by exploring the level of understanding that the reader has of your topic.
- Experts: When writing for those that already know what they are talking about you run into those that have very strong opinions about what you are writing, and sometimes those opinions don’t flex. You can work around this as long as you do your research and you know your stuff. Writing for experts gives you the opportunity to write about the topic without having to take baby-steps around the subject to get to its meaning. You can mention the things that they already recognize and allude to people that they have been exposed to. Engaging your audience on this level is challenging but also beneficial because you are learning something that you may not have tried before. Stretch your voice beyond what you think you hear inside your head. It is profitable.
- General Audiences: This style of writing needs more explaining, clarifying and background information. The audience reading general information are open to learning about the topic and not question too much about what you are trying to convey.
- The Novice: This audience member is the one you write manuals, how to books, and essays for. It is the most detailed oriented style of writing. Make sure the audience that is new to the subject is walked through what you are saying step by step. Many product reviewers use this style of writing for consumers who do not know anything about the products they may be purchasing.
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Learn a New Language
You may ask, “what does this have to do with engaging my audience or finding my voice”? Think about it. It comes next to impossible to underestimate the importance of improving language skills. Today there are many gadgets that can be used to transcribe your work into different languages, wouldn’t it be beneficial for you to expand your language knowledge base so that you can reach people in other countries with your content? But to do that you need to have at least a basic command of the target nationalities language that you want to expose your writing too. You don’t have to spend a lot of money on language software. The link above has many sites that will teach you a new language for free.
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Staring at the Screen Too Long
The creativity you need to start writing comes in many forms other than your writing. Get up from your desk and do other things besides stare at the screen. That white space is not going to fill up with your creative genius just because you are sitting there. If you are going to find your voice, you have to explore beyond your own back yard. Travel if necessary or possible for a day or two, take photos of your surroundings. If your writing is boring, it is because your life is boring. Spice up everything around you. Sleep in a different place tonight, and write about it tomorrow.
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Contrast and Compare
If you are trying to get a good response from your audience, give them an article that will present two different arguments. This form of writing takes a certain amount of research because you want the statistics about the subject to be correct. At the end of the article or blog post, welcome comments or opposing views. You are bound to get readers that come back to this style of writing, everyone has an opinion.
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Read
The best writers read continuously. Not just their preferred genre but everything that is accessible. When you are an assignment writer, a Kindle or a good e-reader is your best friend. You can begin a library of hundreds of books, that you can carry around with you while doing that research you need to meet that deadline and come up with engaging copy for your audience.
So, you want to be a writer? Well this won’t be the last list of tips for writing that you will read. Start a file with them, copy/paste all that you come across and study them. There is a mindset that you as a writer must establish, writing is first and foremost a love affair with words, and in order to keep the relationship fresh you must find your voice in your audience to make your writing incredibly appealing.