by S Morris

Created on: July 09, 2009   Last Updated: July 11, 2009

Writing quickly is a skill many people aspire to have. Through effective practicing and using techniques that improve your speed, you can learn to write well and rapidly. There are several tricks and techniques that can help you improve your speed, but you should first learn how to practice effectively. Techniques that help include learning to select good topics, learning to brainstorm on the fly, and having a good grasp on grammar.

Practicing effectively.

You should practice by writing concise articles that need little research. Articles that need research are going to be far more times consuming than ones that don't. Researching quickly is a different skill, though one that should be learned, and will need practice on its own. The skill of writing fast can be best learned through practicing, once you have all the needed information, putting your article to paper in a legible manner.

A good exercise for this is selecting a topic you are fairly knowledgeable about, or requires little knowledge, and giving yourself a timed 30 minutes to put 400 words down. At the end of the 30 minutes you should proofread it carefully and analyze parts that flow poorly or illogically and take note of typos and grammatical errors. Do you always seem to lose pace halfway through? Do you make so many typos there's a chance some would slip through to publishing? Try again with your weaknesses on your mind and work on improving on them.

Now that you have your method of practice, here are some tips to help you improve.

Select good topics.

Some topics are going to flow from your fingertips better than others. Namely they are ones that you are fairly knowledgeable about, either because you've researched them thoroughly or you had previous knowledge; ones that need little knowledge past personal experience, such as opinion or common sense advice articles; and ones that you are personally interested in. If you know a subject thoroughly it will make rambling about it much easier as you will have a lot of information to draw from. Topics that don't need much knowledge can be easier to write for because you can draw from your opinions and beliefs, which many people find easy, though some can find hard. And lastly, if you are personally interested in the subject, you will probably find writing about it enjoyable and greatly improve your speed quality.

Brainstorm on the fly.

One way to make the time spent on the article shorter is, instead of brainstorming up all your ideas for writing beforehand, to do it while actually writing the article. This will not save time for everyone, as some will find themselves able to write a lot quicker if they already have everything planned, but many of you will find this a good skill to develop. Since you're coming up with ideas as you write them, you're more likely to come up with ideas relevant to the specific article you're writing and save the time spent brainstorming useless ideas.

Have a good grasp on grammar.

If you have to spend most of your time arguing with the spelling and grammar checker, you're not going to have much time left to write. Also, it does not matter how fast you can write an essay if no one can read it when you're done.

There are many good grammar resources online and in book form if you feel rusty in your knowledge of grammar. Reading books and well written articles are other good ways to improve your grammar. As with all things about writing, practice will be important, so keep on writing. But remember that the better your grammar gets, the better, and quicker, your writing will be.

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