Exercises to Maximize Your Technical Writing Skills

In the beginning was the Word… The technical writer’s job was to describe products and generate printed outputs. Later, it got all complicated with online help emersion and the job got complex and evolving daily. So to outdistance these conditions a tech writer should constantly level up the skills. The main groups of skills comprise:

• writing skills,
• communication skills,
• research skills,
• and technical skills.

Today I’d like to enlarge upon writing skills per se. And if all goes well and you like the article, I’ll proceed with other skills enhancement tactics.

Writing Exercises

Working out can help not only your physical health but can keep your brain in shape too! Training your mind and body to respond faster and in more effective ways is an essential part of building any skill, whether that’s bodybuilding or publishing a novel or a document. Flexing your creative muscles is an important part of sharpening your craft and finding new ways to get everything in your head down on paper.

1. Writing Exercises for Beginners.

When you’re still trying to find your voice as a writer, it can be a challenge knowing where to start when it comes to writing prompts. To help you with your choice paralysis, here are a few exercises for new writers:

• Write the alphabet. No, not simply write out the alphabet. Instead, start a 26-sentence story using the next letter in the alphabet as the opening letter until you reach the end.
• Pick a word from the dictionary. Like the alphabet exercise, this is where you randomly flip open a dictionary and choose a word. From there, write a single sentence. Then see what ideas that spark and where you could go from there.
• Write a letter to past you. We all have experiences that we’d love to show our younger selves, so pick an age and write to you! What would you choose to share with yourself? What hopes and dreams did you have at that age that you could comment on now?

2. Creative Writing Exercises.

Don’t be repelled by the idea of creative writing if you are a tech writer. Non-fiction can be just as creative as working on a novel or short story. The purpose of creative writing exercises is to expand your imagination and to spark new ideas or thoughts, encouraging you to practice writing these before you start on your next project. Themed writing prompts can be helpful here, breaking down your prompts into different buckets like:

• Travel
• Food
• Nature
• etc.

Pick any category you like and write about it. You could choose to write about your favorite place for vacation or expand on a place where you had your last picnic, about what you ate that day or your pet. When I first started doing this exercise I wrote everything that I saw around me. And if your head is blank there’s an endless number of options for creative writing exercises online.

3. Daily Writing Exercises.

Just like morning dozen every day (or at least it should be :) helps build your physical muscles, taking 10 or 15 minutes out of your morning or evening to write will help to quickly improve your writing. If your overall goal is to become a better writer, working on your craft should be an essential part of your day. The idea here is to spend less than 30 minutes each day writing with no agenda or thoughts in mind, with no stops or editing along the way. Aim to keep writing until your time is up, letting your stream of consciousness guide you and dictate what you want to say. With this exercise, you fully embrace whatever your mental guide is leading you to. No specific time is needed to complete the exercise. And try not to distract on your phone to scroll through social media instead!

4. Copywriting Exercises

• Write a fake ad for your favorite product. Study the type of ad that you’d like to recreate and put together a few examples of your own.
• Write a letter to a friend trying to sell them something. Copywriting is all about the art of persuasion, and who better to talk into something than one of your friends? Write a text or letter as if you were trying to get a friend to buy a product that you’ve recently fallen in love with, focusing on what makes it useful and unique.
• Write the opposite viewpoint to your argument. Try writing a short draft of your essay from the opposite perspective to the one that you’ll be arguing. This helps you to see things from a different angle. It also gives you more ideas for how to counter those thoughts.
• Dictate what you see in your head and then write. This is a great exercise for writers with overactive imaginations! Pull up the voice recorder on your phone and close your eyes, then speak out loud about what you’re seeing in your head. Is it a person, an object, or a place? Whatever it is, keep describing what you’re seeing until you’ve run out of ideas. Then use that audio to help you write a short story all about what you saw.
• Edit someone else’s work. Reading and reviewing other people’s writing is one of the best ways to improve your own. You’ll notice flaws that may skip right by the writer, and you’ll likely have positive feedback for other areas that they would never notice themselves. Take the advice that you’re giving to one writer. Remember to follow that in your own work.

There are hundreds of possible writing exercises out there for you to try. These will give you some inspiration the next time you want to start a new writing project.

Stay well!

Amrit.

“Follow the river and you will get to the sea.”