I’m not too bad at casual writing but when it comes to sales, especially to sell my skills, I keep feeling like I lack a certain grace or flair with words.

Chat gpt can help with suggestions but I always find anything I write with its assistance feels, well, robotic in a way. Awkward.

So I’m reaching out to you for your inspirational word material out there. English isn’t my native language so I’m hoping to improve it further with your suggestions. Authors? Websites? Perhaps eloquent YT creators I can learn from transcribing what they say?

Thanks

    • MeowZedong@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
      2·
      2 months ago

      While everything above and reading in particular is good advice, being a good reader doesn’t make you a good writer.

      You must read to learn and then apply those concepts in your own writing. Better yet, have your writing critiqued by a varied audience that includes at least one person with some training in English writing. Universities and libraries often have editors to help with writing or hold writer’s workshops where you can find these people and get help for free.

      To get good at writing, you must write consistently with pointed effort at improvement. This doesn’t start at writing many pieces, but at repeatedly revising a single piece. Even the writing of the most experienced author begins to shine only after polishing. The revision steps are some of the best opportunities to learn and to reach out for advice on how to improve a piece of writing.

      • MothraOP
        2·
        2 months ago

        I like your thinking. I know you are suggesting an audience of feedback, I’ll see how I can work on that but I wonder if you know of any good authors or books specifically for editing or writing this way?

        • MeowZedong@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
          2·
          2 months ago

          I’ve been given some books on writing through the years, but never thought much of them. I didn’t read these full articles, but what I saw looked good: Article 1, Article 2 (mostly contains links to other articles on the topic).

          There’s a lot to consume there in terms of writing theory, but one of my favorite exercises is taking a certain writer’s style, identifying some of what is interesting about their style, and applying it to your own writing. The writing needs to be something connected to you and it helps if you can pick a topic that evokes emotion in you, even if it’s otherwise not something you consider to be a notable story. The important part is being able to tap into your own vulnerability because it can help what you put on paper to be genuine. This doesn’t mean everything you ever write needs to be this way, it’s just helpful and a good place to start and learn. It’s the whole idea of “putting your heart and soul or a part of yourself in your writing” but that people sometimes talk about. Once you learn to tap into that and break down the barriers, you can channel yourself into other writing much easier. Writing like you naturally talk can help, but it’s probably bad grammar for writing (except when writing conversations).

          Again, it’s not always easy and I have no clue how much harder this is if you live somewhere without native speakers in the language you are writing, but you need others to read your work. That’s what most writing is for!

          If you end up doing technical writing for science or similar, my best advice is keep the layman in mind. Most science writing is overly clunky and full of jargon and buzzwords that not only drive off the layman, but drive off scientists not in that particular field. It’s stupid and bad writing all to stroke the ego of the writer to get a false sense that they sound smarter. To many, it just makes the writing hard to consume. Technical writing should go into sufficient technical detail while aiming to be as easy to consume as possible, even if you make assumptions that the audience understands a topic. Here is an example of good technical writing.

          • MothraOP
            2·
            1 month ago

            Thanks for the reply! I’ll look those up. Also appreciate the vulnerability tip. I remember in the cover letter I did for my breakthrough job I added something which at the moment I considered to be a bit stupid, but it did show vulnerability. Perhaps it wasn’t as dumb as I thought.

            Thank you!

    • MothraOP
      1·
      2 months ago

      I’m not asking how to broaden my vocabulary, rather how to incorporate the flair associated with this type of writing. I’m not entirely opposed to AI as help, and in fact this works well for me to get plebe jobs if I want - but I want to step up. And yes, I one hundred percent think good human writing beats AI. I believe AI is too easily spotted nowadays, and using my own voice would give me an edge.

      I was hoping for specific authors recommended or similar but instead most replies are to pick just anyone and a thesaurus.