50 Tools that can Improve your Writing Skills

via Dumb Little Man - Tips for Life by Dumb Little Man on 7/19/07

Last year we posted a large list of tips aimed at improving your writing skills. Since then, the site that we referenced changed all of the links and our post was rendered useless.

That is until today. Rory Sullivan, the creator of Clean Cut Blog displayed some remarkable generosity (that he calls nerdishness). He took the time to update all 50 of the links and he asked that Dumb Little Man republish this great list. The decision was pretty simple for me because I actually use these sites as reference for my own writing.

So with that, here is the original list with the updated URLs. Before you start firing off emails to your customers or you embark on that eBook writing project, do yourself a favor and review.

• Writing Tool #1: Branch to the Right
  
• Writing Tool #2: Use Strong Verbs
  
• Writing Tool #3: Beware of Adverbs
  
• Writing Tool #4: Period As a Stop Sign
  
• Writing Tool #5: Observe Word Territory
  
• Writing Tool #6: Play with Words
  
• Writing Tool #7: Dig for the Concrete and Specific
  
• Writing Tool #8: Seek Original Images
  
• Writing Tool #9: Prefer Simple to Technical
  
• Writing Tool #10: Recognize Your Story's Roots
  
• Writing Tool #11 Back Off or Show Off
  
• Writing Tool #12: Control the Pace
  
• Writing Tool #13: Show and Tell
  
• Writing Tool #14: Interesting Names
  
• Writing Tool #15: Reveal Character Traits
  
• Writing Tool #16: Odd and Interesting Things
  
• Writing Tool #17: The Number of Elements
  
• Writing Tool #18: Internal Cliffhangers
  
• Writing Tool #19: Tune Your Voice
  
• Writing Tool #20: Narrative Opportunities
  
• Writing Tool #21: Quotes and Dialogue
  
• Writing Tool #22: Get Ready
  
• Writing Tool #23: Place Gold Coins Along the Path
  
• Writing Tool #24: Name the Big Parts
  
• Writing Tool #25: Repeat
  
• Writing Tool #26: Fear Not the Long Sentence
  
• Writing Tool #27: Riffing for Originality
  
• Writing Tool #28: Writing Cinematically
  
• Writing Tool #29: Report for Scenes
  
• Writing Tool #30: Write Endings to Lock the Box
  
• Writing Tool #31: Parallel Lines
  
• Writing Tool #32: Let It Flow
  
• Writing Tool #33: Rehearsal
  
• Writing Tool #34: Cut Big, Then Small
  
• Writing Tool #35: Use Punctuation
  
• Writing Tool #36: Write A Mission Statement for Your Story
  
• Writing Tool #37: Long Projects
  
• Writing Tool #38: Polish Your Jewels
  
• Writing Tool #39: The Voice of Verbs
  
• Writing Tool #40: The Broken Line
  
• Writing Tool #41: X-Ray Reading
  
• Writing Tool #42: Paragraphs
  
• Writing Tool #43: Self-criticism
  
• Writing Tool #44: Save String
  
• Writing Tool #45: Foreshadow
  
• Writing Tool #46: Storytellers, Start Your Engines
  
• Writing Tool #47: Collaboration
  
• Writing Tool #48: Create An Editing Support Group
  
• Writing Tool #49: Learn from Criticism
  
• Writing Tool #50: The Writing Process

For those that missed the post from last year. All of these tools come various sections of Poynter Online which is a rich resource for journalists. If for some reason you want to see last year's post (for the comments perhaps), you can do so here.

You can also visit our previous post on Grammar and Punctuation Rules if you really want to sharpen your skills.