Category Archives: Non-Fiction

The act of writing is almost as old as humanity itself. Throughout history, there has been a constant search for the most sustainable means of encoding human feelings and experiences. Scribbling letters on a template has proven to be a sure and sustainable way to achieve that.

Writing provides an escape route to the transient nature of oral tradition. It also serves as the conveying belt for transferring history from one generation to another. Writing breaks the distance between time and space and has found a permanent seat in all human endeavours.

But just like every other craft, some people have taken it upon themselves to explore the act of writing holistically and have conferred on themselves the revered title of PROFESSIONAL WRITERS.

To these people, writing is the brook that feeds their economic value. As such, they are deliberate about every detail of the letters they tabulate on their slate.

This article is addressed to this esteemed set of people, as well as every other person who is incubating the dream of playing in the writers’ league.

TEN WAYS TO IMPROVE YOUR WRITING SKILLS

1. UNDERSTAND YOUR BRIEF: Before you embark on any writing exercise, you must first have a full grasp of the project. Have a clear understanding of the message you intend to pass or what you want to address in your writing. Carry out detailed research on the subject matter you are writing. You can do this by asking questions, conducting interviews, doing crowdsourcing, and administering questionnaires if possible to gather relevant information and data. Having a good insight of your brief helps you avoid producing a shallow write-up.

2. KNOW AND ANALYSE YOUR AUDIENCE: One of the banes of successful entrepreneurship is production without understanding your consumers’ demographic and psychological makeup. As a writer, you should see yourself as an intellectual entrepreneur. Therefore, before you embark on the production of your intellectual property, ensure you study and analyse the demographic and psychological composition of your target audience or readers. Know who your audience is. Understand their scope of reasoning so that you can meet up with them.

Any writer who trivialises the variables of age, educational background, economic status, location, religion, etc., of his audience may succeed in writing write a bestseller, but to the wrong audience.

3. CAREFULLY SELECT YOUR CHOICE OF WORDS: Words are the brush with which a writer paints pictures on his reader’s mind. They are the drivers of a writer’s message. After having a full grasp of your brief and establishing your audience, the next step is to choose the right words that will enable your reader to decode the content of your message easily.

 Another twist to this is to avoid coming off as being saucy and apathetic in your writing. This is important, especially when the subject matter you are addressing is sensitive.

4. USE THE ACTIVE VOICE: The most potent way to make your point is by using an active voice. This voice adheres to the subject-verb-sentence structure. This makes your writing more exciting. In addition, it creates shorter and less complex sentences, making it a stronger way of presenting your information.

5. USE SHORT PARAGRAPHS: Short paragraphs infuse air into your writing. It keeps the pages from appearing cumbersome. Each paragraph should contain sentences that buttress the same idea. Lengthy paragraphs are less appealing to read and make the page layout congested.

6. BE CONVERSATIONAL AND NATURAL: Writing is the documented version of your conversations. Therefore, your writing should have your personal touch in tone and voice. It should be friendly without watering down the gravity of the subject matter. Infuse your genuine thoughts and strive to abstain from clichés.

7. BE PRECISE: Avoid sounding superflux in your writing. Instead, let your message be clear and as concise as possible. Remove unnecessary adverbs and prepositional phrases and deliver your message succinctly.

8. EDIT YOUR WORK: No matter how impeccable a write-up is, there is always room for improvement. Proofread your work to ensure that all forms of errors and misrepresentations of ideas and facts are reduced to the barest minimum. Make sure to cross-check your work. You can also take a step further by engaging the services of professional editors.

9. READ OTHER AUTHORS: It is difficult to pride yourself as a writer without reading other writers’ works. Read other writers who have proven their grit in the craft, especially those who share your writing genre. There is always a leaf or two to borrow from them. More so, readinghelps you gain new perspectives and insights and exposes you to diverse writing styles.

10. KNOW WHEN TO TAKE A BREAK: Writing is a tedious mental process. Sometimes you may get burned out. To manage the stress and the mental demand of the craft, it is advisable sometimes to take a pause and focus your energy on other activities of interest. You can watch a movie, travel, swim, etc. Taking a break will not only help you reinvigorate but will also widen your horizon and help you gain new insights.

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Dialects and accents are potent tools writers use to infuse life into characters in a story. As a writer, you may use dialects and accents in dialogues to portray a character’s origin, societal status, cultural background, educational level, and even professional affiliations. However, it is essential to use these writing tools appropriately to avoid bruising your reader’s ego, which may come off as offensive.

In our daily conversations with people, we can easily use the way a person speaks or pronounces certain words to ascertain the tribe and race he belongs to. For instance, in the Nigerian setting, when a writer wants to depict a character from any of the major ethnic groups in the country, he carefully considers the dialects and accents to attach to the character based on the selected ethnic group. This makes it easier for the reader to connect to the story by staring up primordial sentiments about the characters as he reads on.

 Before we move further, let’s establish what accents and dialects are.

WHAT IS AN ACCENT?

An accent is a distinctive or unique way of pronouncing a word that is associated with, or that can be traced to a particular country, region, tribe or social class. It is what signposts someone’s race, ethnicity, and sometimes educational background without necessarily making inquiries from the person. For example, an accent is what makes you decipher that Suleiman is from Northern Nigeria and that Wayne is British from their first sentences.

WHAT IS A DIALECT?

A Dialect is a language peculiar to people from a particular geographical location. It is the lingua franca of a particular region, tribe, race, or nationality, or simply put, it is how people speak their mother tongue. Dialect is distinguished by features like pronunciation, grammar, or vocabulary from various regional or geographical groups, which constitutes a single language. For instance, the Ibibio language (a language spoken by the Ibibio ethnic group in Akwa Ibom State, South-South, Nigeria) has some slight differences in pronunciation of words from the Annang language (a language spoken by the Annang ethnic group in Akwa Ibom State, South-South, Nigeria). However, indigenes of the two tribes understand each other vividly.

Having established what accents and dialects are, let’s go back to the meat of this article, which is five ways accents and dialects help a fiction story.

There are many ways accents and dialects help a fiction story. But in this article, we will be highlighting the five most efficient ways accents and dialects aid a fiction story.

HOW ACCENTS AND DIALECTS HELP A FICTION STORY:

1. They serve as visual stimuli in a fiction story: accent serves as visual stimuli to a reader. The core of a good book is its ability to stir emotions and create a connection between the reader and the author. By attaching accents and dialects to the characterisation of a story, a reader is able to cast a mental picture of the story’s setting. It also helps the reader appreciate the relatable content of a book in relation to its setting. For instance, a writer who is telling a story about the bustling life of Lagos – the commercial nerve of Nigeria, will do a shabby job if he does not infuse British English, Nigerian pidgin, and Yoruba language with its intonation in the characters’ dialogues and monologues. These are the typical makeups of the interactions on the streets of Lagos.

• They create stereotypes of the characters in a story: accents and dialects help reinforce a myth or perception of an idea or image associated with a particular group of people. A writer uses accents and dialects to cast a certain kind of prejudice about a particular group of people in a story based on the message he is passing across in his work. Accents and dialects create a contrast between the different classes of people prevalent in a certain society based on their demographic and psychological attributes, and these have proven to be very useful in satires or parodies.  

• They give life to characters in a story: the use of accents and dialects in a story helps infuse life into the characters. It props up emotions and the relevant sentiments that are dominant in our daily interface as humans. These help stirs empathy as well as apathy in the reader’s mind towards a character’s dispositions. It elicits the author’s intended reaction from the reader.

• Accents and dialects help bring linguistic discrepancies to the fore: the fundamental value of a literary text is its ability to introduce new ideas, concepts, paradigms, and dogmas to its reader. Through books, we are able to unravel new knowledge and information. When a writer rightly apportions accents and dialects to the characters in a book, it gives the reader insights into the linguistic variations between certain groups of persons and the languages obtainable in different geographical locations.

• Accents and dialects increase the readership of a book: attaching accents and dialects to the characters in a story is a subtle way of surging the readership of a book. People often gravitate towards things that portray their features and peculiarity; as such, they decide what materials they consume based on their hues and affiliations. For instance, A book whose story and characters’ dialects and accents depict the African lifestyle in the United States will attract a large pull of African-American readers, yielding more sales for the author and enhancing his popularity.

Conclusively, to become an author whose publication does not gather dust on someone’s shelf, it is pertinent to employ all the elements and devices that will entice your reader when he flips through the pages of your book. One veritable way of doing this is to attach accents and dialects to the characters in your book.

Editing is simply the pruning or removal of mistakes from a communication material. It is the process of reducing errors to the barest minimum in a piece of writing, video or audio clip. Editing is what adds finesse to content across all platforms. It is the final yet most detailed stage of content production. However, in this article, we will be focusing on editing written

5 TYPES OF EDITING

There are five basic types of editing, namely developmental or substantive editing, structural editing, copy editing, line editing, and mechanical editing. These five types of editing are what is performed on a written document from the first draft to the final stage of the project. And we will be discussing them in brief detail.

1. Developmental editing: this is also called substantive editing. It is usually the median stage of the editing process. Here the editor looks at how the written manuscript coheres with the idea or the subject the writer is addressing. The main point here is logical coherence. And sometimes, it may require the editor to delete, rewrite, or make recommendations on certain things to add or remove to communicate the author’s idea better. It is very common in academic articles and research works.

2. Structural editing: structural editing is a bit similar or can be done alongside developmental editing. Here, the editor looks out for the logical flow, tone, style, and overall quality of the writing. It is essential for an organised project. It is more in-depth but also geared toward the author’s main idea and the elements that are used to convey it, such as language, tone, style, etc.

3. Copy editing: the next stage of the editing process is copy editing. After affirming the logical flow of a manuscript, the editor looks at the use of accurate grammar and how accurate words are spelt, including the suitability of the author’s language to the target audience. The editor ensures the author uses active words and that sentences are not overly long. If it is in an academic project, the editor ensures that there is uniformity in citation styles and that references are made as required.

4. Line editing: this is closely related to copy editing. In line editing, the editor checks the manuscript or text line to line to see how words are used and the effect of the writing, ensuring the writing is comprehensive. The primary interest of a line editor is clarity and simplicity. Note that simplicity here ensures the author’s idea is easy to understand without being simplistic. Line editing is important for fine-tuning any writing and should never be ignored by an author, irrespective of the project he is working on.

5. Mechanical editing: this is the final stage of the editing process. In mechanical editing, the editor reads the work thoroughly to ensure spelling, grammar, formatting, and punctuations are accurate and consistent. An editor hired for mechanical editing also checks how consistent abbreviations and capitalisations are done in the project. If it is in academic writing, he ensures consistency in referencing style.

Next time you are handling a written project, ensure you carry out these editing processes or hire a professional to take care of your editing processes if you intend to have a well-written, structured and coherent project.

As a writer, meeting deadlines is the test of efficiency. It is also one yardstick for measuring a writer’s time management skills. You can chronicle amazingly sellable ideas with all the prerequisites of good writing, but if you do not deliver the project within the assigned time frame, you cannot pride yourself as an efficient writer. However, there are some thumb rules to meeting your writing deadlines.

Prioritising your writing task: In our elementary romance with economics, we were taught the basic rudiments of priority, technically referred to as ‘scale of preference’. Just like the word suggests, it entails listing your tasks in their order of significance.

As a writer working on time-bound deliverables, it is pertinent to allot the time you assign to your daily itineraries based on their order of importance. The time your client wants his project delivered is as important as how you deliver it. So appropriate the attention you give to your engagements in a way that doesn’t interfere with your writing task, especially when it is what puts food on your table.

Pragmatism: This entails dealing with things realistically. It involves handling things in a practical way, not based on theoretical considerations. The bane of many professionals is that they are good at setting and accomplishing tasks verbally, as opposed to doing so practically. Procrastination is at the core of every missed deadline. We keep scheduling and rescheduling to fit an imaginary perfect time, but ironically there is never a perfect time. You just need to start writing and keep writing.

Taking breaks: Sometimes, there is this trepidation with which a writer approaches a new project. He feels some resentment towards a certain project, especially if it is on an issue where he has shallow knowledge. When this happens, it is good to pause and engage in activities that interest you. You can see a movie, listen to music, take a walk, swim, or go on a tour to help rejuvenate your mind and gain new perspectives.

Turn down deadlines you cannot meet: Do not accept deadlines you cannot meet. What is out of reach is out of reach. Taking a project you cannot execute within the allotted time frame is shooting yourself in the leg because, at the end of the day, a disappointed client is almost a foregone client. By committing yourself to an unattainable standard, you risk damaging your self-esteem and reputation as a writer. More so, the fear of not meeting future deadlines may settle in your mind, thereby affecting your confidence to stake a claim to future projects.

Set daily benchmarks: Set daily benchmarks for word counts. You can break the total word count for a project into certain figures per day. For instance, if you are given a 7000-word book to deliver in a month, you can split your word counts into 225 words per day.

This will not only help you meet the project deadline, but will also allow you to carry out more detailed research on every idea or fact you pen down. Ensure you don’t overcommit yourself too. It is important not to set unrealistic goals; deadlines are manageable when you strive to be accountable and productive. Stay focused, and you’ll be sure to meet your deadline in time.

If you find this post helpful, comment and share. You can also tell us your worst case of meeting your writing deadline.