Transform Your Writing: 5 Tips to Be a Better Writer

Writing a book is one thing, but writing a book people want to read is an entirely different thing. If you want to know how to be a better writer without taking a bunch of classes or stressing into the wee hours of the night, this video is for you. Hey there. I'm Julie the Book Broad, Founder of Book Launchers and four time author. I'm an author and I think I write okay, but I wouldn't say I'm full of writing talent. In fact, I've spent thousands of hours working on being a better writer. I and I still need work. The good news is though, that every writer needs editors, and editors go a long way to improving your work if you give them something decent to start with. So today I'm going to give you five tips to be a better writer. And don't stress if you're still not great because there's professional writers, writing coaches, and amazing editors to help make your work fantastic. Especially if you hire Book Launchers. We have a fantastic team of people to surround you to write and publish a great book. Just reach out@booklaunchers.com apply and we'll set up a call. Okay tip 1 consider your word choice carefully One of the reasons I don't think AI is a great writer is because of its word choices. Someday soon this will be ironed out, and some of the programs have already been created to help you write with AI that are better than just pulling up ChatGPT and asking it to write for you. But the number of manuscripts that have come to us with Odyssey and Transformative Journey, well, let's just say there's been more than I can count on my two hands. And those phrases weren't anything we ever saw before 2023. But word choice does matter because it creates your voice and it paints a picture in the minds of a reader. A good writer can bring emotions into their writing and share details that allow a reader to not just read the words, but experience the words. One tip I got early on when I was writing content for a newsletter called early to Rise was to always choose words that were specific. She didn't walk into a room. She sauntered. She plodded. She strode. Or she glided into the room. The store isn't close. It's 25 steps away, or it's a two minute bike ride, or it's just around the corner and up a set of beautiful glass stairs. A few little changes to your words make them come to life. Number two Tell stories. Stories are memorable and connect in a way that facts and Figures never do they educate. While entertaining stories can be your own story, someone else's story, or fables. Mix it up so your book has a bit of each. And stories don't need to be long drawn out things like a Lord of the Rings book. A short and simple story can be all it takes. One of my favorite stories lately that I tell other people is from a book by Price Pritchett. He describes this fly hitting the window over and over and over again trying to get out. This fly just tries harder and harder and never actually gets out of the window and ends up dying. And yet three feet to the left there was a door wide open and it could have just flown right out. This story hit me on a day where I was feeling really stuck in my business and I'd literally just resolved myself that I needed to work more hours and try harder. I was thinking I had to go back to doing something myself that I turned over to someone else and just give her and this story made me realize that often we default to trying harder and working harder, yet a better way is there. We just have to stop for hours minute and look. That story has made an impact on me and it's led me to buy four of Price Pritchett's book and well actually I bought 10 copies of one of those books because I gave one to everybody in my mastermind. One single story caused that to happen. So one single story that really resonates is all it takes sometimes. But you really do need lots of stories to keep a reader engaged and wanting to keep reading. Plus storytelling allows you to say there's a better way. You you just need to take a look around and find it in a much more elegant way. Number three, Give the reader a new lens to look at. If you haven't read my book, self publish and succeed that one, I highly recommend you grab a copy. One of the things I talk about in that book is how you want to set your book up to sell. And one of the ways you do that is through identifying what makes you unique. There are already other books written on your subject, I am sure of it. But what your perspective that makes it a little different than other people's. To really identify this you'll need to do some self reflection. But one trick I always share is that you can just look at what you think. That is a commonly held belief in your industry or space. And where do you think a little differently? It's always a delight for a reader to look at the same old topic but be given a new way to look at it. My first book was a real estate investing book called More Than Cash Flow and in that I challenged several of the commonly held beliefs in the real estate investing industry. One of them was that more properties were better. I argued in a variety of ways with a few different stories that more properties was more problems and the way to set yourself up for success was to choose the kind of problems you wanted to have as an investor. This ran counter to the Get Rich Quick books and a lot of the clubs and programs that were just bragging about how many properties their students had accumulated without acknowledging all the issues. Number four Leverage AI I was giving a talk at MIT for Blue Talks and my speech was just not feeling good. So I shot a loom video, took the transcript, uploaded it to Claude and asked Claude to critique my speech. Claude was not so kind but was very constructive and helped me rework it over and over with suggestions and reorganization. You could do the same with a chapter in your book that just isn't flowing. Claude didn't rewrite my speech, but rather Claude gave me a detailed list of suggested improvements and I made the improvements and uploaded it again and got additional feedback and and when I was stuck I would ask for analogies or stories or examples to help spice up a section. This is a great way to use AI to improve your writing. Number five Just get Human Help. We have a course called Self Publish and Succeed Live where I take you through all the things you need to know about writing and publishing a book that is set up to sell. We have writing work time together. I give you feedback. You get to work with a coach one on one a little bit. It is a great way to get your book written with support. We also have writing coaches for more one on one intensive support and just writers who can take over the project for you. Sometimes you just need a helping hand to be a better writer. Having someone to bounce ideas off of, read your work and give you suggestions and examples can be the difference between a blah book and a hashtag. NoBoringBook Speaking of AI and getting help, this video walks you through using AI to outline your book and it also shares my favorite tool for doing that. And this video over here is the latest and greatest from the channel. Both are pretty darn great viewing so after you subscribe to the channel go on, click on over to the next video and say hi when you get there. I always reply to comments.