At Bringing Words to Life, we love nurturing talented young writers. We work hard to help writers develop their skills, and have put together our top five tips for young people who want to work on their writing. Without further ado, here are five pieces of advice to help you take your writing to the next level.
1) Read a lot
Newspapers, magazines, blogs, novels – it doesn’t matter what. What matters is that you spend time reading what other people have written. This is one of the best ways to pick up ideas that you mightn’t have thought of and to learn more the use of style in your work.
2) Keep up to date with the news
A good writer knows what’s going on in the world. As well as giving you ideas for topics to write about, it’ll also help you to see what people are worried and excited about, and what sort of thing interests them.
3) Know your reader
Who are you writing for? What are you trying to convey? The language you use and the topics you cover will look very different if you’re trying to entertain a fellow teen than they will if you’re trying to present a factual report for an adult businessperson. What does your reader already know? What do they want to know? How can you best present your ideas in a way that will interest them?
4) Practise accuracy
Spell checking is only the first step. When you are trying to produce professional quality articles, you need to check, check and double check. What is your punctuation like? Are you being consistent with things like italicising, speech marks, and layout? Have you included links, and checked that they lead to the correct site? This all requires practice and cultivating a sense of attention to detail.
5) Check your sources
So you’ve seen a ‘fact’ somewhere online – how do you know it’s true? Learn to cross-reference any information from a range of different sources and distinguish between fact and opinion. Independent research is even better.
If you’re a young person from the North East who’s interested in journalism, then please email [email protected] to find out how we can help you!
For examples of young people’s journalistic writing, follow @NEBeep on Twitter and check the b**p site for updates.
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