5 Spooktacular Tips to Bring Your Writing Back from the Dead

Trick or treat! Good content is relatively easy to create. But, taking your writing from dreadful to boo-tiful requires a level of technique.

Before you gulp down that handful of candy corn, embrace the spookiest season of the year with these tips for creating more interesting and engaging content.

1. It’s no trick – the best and most successful content starts with a prewriting checklist. Carve out time before getting started to ask: Who is the audience for this piece? How much do they already know about your subject matter? How should the tone come across? What do you want the reader to think, feel or do after reading it?
2. Don’t be a scaredy-cat – use active voice v. passive voice to convey a strong, clear message. Using active voice means that the subject comes first and often results in more impactful and concise sentences that are easier to follow. For example, use the active voice to say, “Zombies attacked the city.” This is much clearer than the passive voice, “The city was attacked by zombies.”
3. Caution! Your writing will improve by installing Grammarly as an extension for your web browser and plug-in for MS Office. Eliminate grammar, spelling and punctuation errors with the free grammar checker. Further elevate your writing with Grammarly Premium (paid subscription), which provides more detailed recommendations about why you made writing errors.
4. Create a killer headline – 80 percent of people will read your headline, but only 20 percent will read your content. Invest time to develop better headlines by using simple, but powerful and accurate language on what the individual will learn after reading the content.
5. It’s not a bunch of hocus pocus – the hardest part of writing isn’t over when the first draft is complete. Give your readers thrills and chills by taking your content to the next level and edit like crazy. Consider the following: cut long sentences into two, replace fluffy words with simple ones, remove redundancies, and make your verbs stronger. Setting the work aside for a few hours or a day also can help so you can return to it with a fresh perspective.

With anything, your writing skills and content will improve the more you practice and focus on technique. What are your favorite tips for getting more eyeballs on your content?