With Finals Week approaching, there are many different kinds of writing assignments that Lancers have to prepare for. Whether it’s an academic essay or a short story, writing takes a decent amount of effort and practice to be done well. Here’s 10 tips to improve your writing!

Academic Writing

1. Read the rubric – It is so important to use the rubric your professor gives because it serves as a guide for topics/ideas to include in the paper. It can also help with the following tip below.

2. Organize your thoughts – Whether you’re a fan of clean-cut outlines or scribbled notes, organizing the content of your paper will help you figure out the specific details of the information being written.

3. Find your professional voice – For research papers and analytical essays, a professional tone is preferred by most professors. This means doing things like writing in the third person and checking on grammar structure.

4. Make time to write – Setting specific time aside to write is important to get into the right mental space for writing as well as keeping up with deadlines. 

5. Ask for help – Writing is a collaborative effort. Getting feedback from your peers, your professor, or even the Longwood Writing Center, can help you see positive and negative aspects of your paper that you may not notice on your own.

Continue reading below for more writing tips about creative writing pieces like poetry and short stories!

Creative Writing

6. Figure out the format – With creative writing assignments, there are less restrictions for how poems and/or short stories are written. You can choose what point of view to write in as well as the kind of emotional message you want readers to take away.

7. Be descriptive – There are an infinite number of ways to just describe how the sky looks. Giving your writing sufficient detail shows the reader the full picture.

8. Find your creative voice – Creative writing is just that. Creative! Figuring out your own language and ideas is essential to the creative writing process.

9. Check on Grammar – While academic writing also needs grammar checks, creative writing needs grammar checks for things like dialogue in addition to general sentence structure.

10. Know your genre – There are as many differences between poetry writing and short fiction as there are similarities. It’s important to know the writing basics across all genres, and once you get familiar with those, you can start to understand how the formula for specific genres works.