7 Editing Tricks to Speed Up Your Writing Activities

One of the major pain points for every content marketer is the inability to create more content. Everything is moving fast online, and we often wish we could write faster and crank out ideas and concepts as fast as we can develop them inside our heads. The thing is, we sort of can. The problem is that we get slowed down by various things.

For instance, although it may sometimes seem as if you are at the peak of your productivity, you are still getting partially distracted. Also, you may find yourself weighing words and trying to find the right ones, or using big and complicated ones, because you want your article to come off as professional and literate.

And then there is the constant need for perfection, which involves going over the finished article multiple times, hunting for grammar, punctuation, and stylistic mistakes. That is all nice and well, but it won’t make you a faster writer. If you are not able to churn out a 2,000 word article in two hours or so, you may want to streamline your writing process. And if you are saying that a quality 2,000-word article can’t be written in 2 hours, read our 7 editing tricks that will prove you wrong.

1. Focus on Creating Irresistible Content

There are two things that are extremely important when creating high-quality posts. First of all, it needs to be grammatically sound. If an article is grammatically sound, people won’t think much about the grammar, as they will just keep on reading. But, if they come across a glaring mistake, they will get hung up on it, and it will disrupt their reading flow at best, and cause them to stop reading at worst.

Second of all, if the content itself is interesting, informative, and presented in a clever way, they won’t be able to get enough of it. But, here is where it gets interesting. If it’s also grammatically sound, you have a winner. However, if it is less than perfect, but if the content itself is able to capture their attention, then they will likely keep on reading.

The point we’re trying to make is that delicious content will always trump that which is grammatically perfect, but robbed of any flair and personality. Plus, you can always run your writing through an app like Grammarly and speed up your writing process tremendously, or hire a professional editor from reliable service, such as Top British Essays.

2. Try Using Smaller, Simpler Words

In an attempt to come off as an authority on the subject, most content marketers tend to use big words that they would rarely use in their everyday speech. That is also the reason why they spend so much time on getting the grammar just right. They want to come off as extremely professional.

That is admirable, but it will also slow down your writing progress. You need to start thinking about writing economics. There will be lots of big words inside a pillar post, for instance, and when you add them up and consider the fact that you’ve taken a second or two to think of them, it adds up to a lot. In addition to that, they are also longer, requiring you to enter more characters.

Our advice would be to flip things around and use simple, short words, just as you would in real life. Regardless of your target audience, they will always prefer content that goes down smoothly. So, not only will you be able to speed up your writing, but your readers will love it, as well.

3. Use Simpler Sentences and Phrases

Using long, convoluted sentences to get your point across is one of the most common pitfalls of writing. Since the purpose of this article is to speed up your writing activities, writing complex sentences will only slow down your writing. Not only will it take you longer to put them together inside your head and actually write them, but you will have to go back and check if they are grammatically correct, and that will take extra time.

Plus, you will only confuse your audience at times, because they will also have to go back and check the sentence twice to make sure that they’ve gotten it right the first time around. As we’ve pointed out in the previous paragraph, it is all about making sure that the reading experience is as smooth as possible.

And on the subject of phrases, you should go even further, not just by simplifying them, but throwing them out altogether and replacing them with words that have a similar meaning. Of course, phrases do add some necessary charm to your writing, but if you are constantly using constructions such as “in order to”, instead of just “to”, or “due to the fact that”, instead of just “because”, you are saying the same thing, but using more words, which is unnecessary.

Check out Hemingway, which is an app designed to help you trim some of the fat off your writing, to speed your writing process.

4. Do All Your Research before You Start Writing

Writing compelling and informative articles will often require you to do some extensive research and back up your claims with data and numbers, and there is no going around that. Research takes time and that’s it. But, it is also the way you do your research that determines your writing speed. If your article has multiple sections, get all of the facts and data straight for each and every one of them before you start writing, instead of going back and forth between multiple windows. It will save you a ton of time.

Also, having done all your research, you will have all the information you need. It’s only a matter of putting that information together into sentences and paragraphs. The point is, now you know what to write about, and have all the facts checked, so it shouldn’t take you hours to complete an extensive and in-depth article.

5. Be Personal

If you have ever tried writing using passive voice, or putting together a technical document, you would know how difficult and unnatural it is for a writer to write that way. So why do it as content marketer? You need to address people personally, because they are looking up to you for advice, and you are providing it for them. Focus on communicating with them in their own language, using a tone you would use when talking to them in person.

In person, you would use words like “I” or “you” or “your”. You should do the same online, as well. Instead of trying to gain their trust by using big words, try and write using a conversational tone. After all, they will feel more comfortable knowing that there is an actual human being behind those words.

6. Divide Your Text into Shorter Paragraphs

It might seem as if there are no obvious benefits to this approach, because you are actually adding more words by writing the titles for each section. However, it will not only help your readers find their way around the article, but make it easier on yourself when editing your work.

Just imagine having to read huge blocks of text. Boring, right? Not only that, but you will often get lost in it, and the same thing happens when you are editing it. More often than not, you will skip a line unintentionally, and mistakes will start to creep in.

But, when you are going over paragraphs, they are much easier to read and check, plus you will have the option of changing their order to make your post more effective.

7. Write What You Know

This is a continuation of the paragraph dedicated to doing your research first, and then writing your article. But, an even better option would be for you to immerse yourself in matter you are interested in, and dedicate yourself to studying it in depth. All that information will become a part of your total knowledge and your skill set, and there is nothing easier and faster than writing about what you know. There is no research needed, because the words will simply pour out of you.

When you are in a situation like that, you will have no trouble cranking a high-quality, in-depth pillar post in a couple of hours. Of course, you cannot know absolutely everything, but it helps to focus on learning new things, study the matter, and then write about it somewhere down the line.

Conclusion

Writing faster doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice quality for the sake of quality, because those two aren’t mutually exclusive. All you have to do is make some important adjustments to your writing process. That’s all it takes. After a while, writing using this new approach will become second nature to you. But, more importantly, your audience will like your writing better, because they will have no trouble immersing themselves in it, and that’s what you want.