Giving It An Angle

An idea is only as good as the filter you put it through.  It needs an angle, a way of looking at it that may be different than anything that’s been done before.

Every subject has numerous aspects, multiple approaches that you can use to treat it.  Note every possible position that you can employ and narrow them down, cutting ones that may prove neither interesting nor vital to your intentions.

Test The Idea

Once you’ve found potential slants that you can employ, it’s time to test the idea for its soundness.  Is the reasoning sound?  Does it make sense at face value?  Is it relevant to your potential readers?  Basically, you want to find out if the idea can stand on its own.

Writing Preparation

After deciding that you will push through with the planned piece, you need to gather the necessary resources to facilitate the writing phase.  List down all the research sources that you need to look up, including books, papers and actual persons.  You want to gauge whether the piece entails a reasonable amount of digging though (i.e. you will likely not want to pursue a 300-word piece that requires two months of research).

Finally, you want to make a rough outline of the idea, the way you want it to look like in the actual feature.  List down major sections, the sequence of events and the general plan for the presentation.  If you can, plan out the different stages of writing you will embark in, from putting together the first draft to using a proofing software to the final editing, so that things can go smoothly when you do begin the actual job.

1. Use the dictionary – Anyone knows this already but this is always taken for granted. Most people are afraid of taking a dictionary at school or at work because of being made fun of by colleagues and friends. The dictionary can be your most powerful tool in your search for English language enlightenment for it contains thousands of words that you can study and memorize for you to use in writing. If you don’t like the idea of bringing that big Webster dictionary, then you can always settle for the small ones.
2. Check for online help – One of the sound advices that I give is to check out some online help with the English language like the Meriam Webster website. The Internet is a very reliable source of information and everyone has access to it. If you don’t own a laptop or a personal computer, then you can go to the nearest Internet Café and then start on an online course to improve your English proficiency.
3. Practice makes perfect – This should be one rule that everyone must certainly follow. If you want to write perfect English, then you need to practice hard. Check your spelling, verb agreements, tenses and sentence construction. Write down your mistakes and research the difficult words that you may have encountered in the course of your practice. An ideal practice would be to write down an essay about an interesting topic and then keep on writing until you have perfected it. If you want, you can have someone good in English check it for you.

Writing English effectively is a long way to go, most especially if you are not born with a gift for this language but constant practice can indeed help you out. Be prepared to study hard and remember that dedication and complete interest with this activity are the key to perfecting this skill. If you are still not having any luck, then you can try getting professional help or an English writing software in order to help you within a short amount of time but there are costs as well. But if you do not want to incur extra expenses, then these three simple tips can do wonders.