I’m not too bad at casual writing but when it comes to sales, especially to sell my skills, I keep feeling like I lack a certain grace or flair with words.
Chat gpt can help with suggestions but I always find anything I write with its assistance feels, well, robotic in a way. Awkward.
So I’m reaching out to you for your inspirational word material out there. English isn’t my native language so I’m hoping to improve it further with your suggestions. Authors? Websites? Perhaps eloquent YT creators I can learn from transcribing what they say?
Thanks
Native English speaker here - my English teacher at school always used to say that in order to write well, you need to read well.
That probably doesn’t help you in the short term, however! But, yes - finding “good” authors you enjoy is a good way to go.
As someone with the opposite problem, too formal and not very good at casual writing. Truth is, formal writing is robotic and in today’s context it is regarded as awkward except in a few places. Most of the samples online that the bots are trained with are overly formal examples. 99% of cover letters are never published online, so that’s an area they’re lacking. What they have access to is the awfully generic slop that’s impersonal and meant to sell online workshops about writing cover letters.
There’s a very difficult task in making formal writing feel natural and warm. I would advice instead to aim for transparency. A cover letter is supposed to highlight a match between your skills and personality, with the company role’s needs and work culture. It’s not a cold sales pitch, you must show that you did your due diligence about getting to know the place before applying for the job. As long as it sounds like the genuine you talking, not a façade, it doesn’t has to be too formal, just keep the content and vocabulary professional. How you would talk in the workspace with a coworker that you don’t know too well yet. A cover letter is more like corporate flirting than lawyer speak.
As for material, read the basic common sense guides online, but, and it is a big but. Also read a lot in general, specially in English as it isn’t your first language. Unlike LLMs humans are actually intelligent and we can use experiences from other contexts, and good writing in general shares common principles across all genres. Even if every genre has specificities, they’re usually an addendum or exception of general good writing. Variety is the spice of life.
I don’t think anyone will be able to give you general tips that actually help. You should find someone willing to edit you. That’s the best way to improve at writing.
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While everything above and reading in particular is good advice, being a good reader doesn’t make you a good writer.
You must read to learn and then apply those concepts in your own writing. Better yet, have your writing critiqued by a varied audience that includes at least one person with some training in English writing. Universities and libraries often have editors to help with writing or hold writer’s workshops where you can find these people and get help for free.
To get good at writing, you must write consistently with pointed effort at improvement. This doesn’t start at writing many pieces, but at repeatedly revising a single piece. Even the writing of the most experienced author begins to shine only after polishing. The revision steps are some of the best opportunities to learn and to reach out for advice on how to improve a piece of writing.
I like your thinking. I know you are suggesting an audience of feedback, I’ll see how I can work on that but I wonder if you know of any good authors or books specifically for editing or writing this way?
I’ve been given some books on writing through the years, but never thought much of them. I didn’t read these full articles, but what I saw looked good: Article 1, Article 2 (mostly contains links to other articles on the topic).
There’s a lot to consume there in terms of writing theory, but one of my favorite exercises is taking a certain writer’s style, identifying some of what is interesting about their style, and applying it to your own writing. The writing needs to be something connected to you and it helps if you can pick a topic that evokes emotion in you, even if it’s otherwise not something you consider to be a notable story. The important part is being able to tap into your own vulnerability because it can help what you put on paper to be genuine. This doesn’t mean everything you ever write needs to be this way, it’s just helpful and a good place to start and learn. It’s the whole idea of “putting your heart and soul or a part of yourself in your writing” but that people sometimes talk about. Once you learn to tap into that and break down the barriers, you can channel yourself into other writing much easier. Writing like you naturally talk can help, but it’s probably bad grammar for writing (except when writing conversations).
Again, it’s not always easy and I have no clue how much harder this is if you live somewhere without native speakers in the language you are writing, but you need others to read your work. That’s what most writing is for!
If you end up doing technical writing for science or similar, my best advice is keep the layman in mind. Most science writing is overly clunky and full of jargon and buzzwords that not only drive off the layman, but drive off scientists not in that particular field. It’s stupid and bad writing all to stroke the ego of the writer to get a false sense that they sound smarter. To many, it just makes the writing hard to consume. Technical writing should go into sufficient technical detail while aiming to be as easy to consume as possible, even if you make assumptions that the audience understands a topic. Here is an example of good technical writing.
Thanks for the reply! I’ll look those up. Also appreciate the vulnerability tip. I remember in the cover letter I did for my breakthrough job I added something which at the moment I considered to be a bit stupid, but it did show vulnerability. Perhaps it wasn’t as dumb as I thought.
Thank you!
I’m not asking how to broaden my vocabulary, rather how to incorporate the flair associated with this type of writing. I’m not entirely opposed to AI as help, and in fact this works well for me to get plebe jobs if I want - but I want to step up. And yes, I one hundred percent think good human writing beats AI. I believe AI is too easily spotted nowadays, and using my own voice would give me an edge.
I was hoping for specific authors recommended or similar but instead most replies are to pick just anyone and a thesaurus.
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I don’t know if there’s a source specifically for this but when I often get stuck and start repeating myself I look up Merriam Webster’s thesaurus and start replacing boring words with better ones.
So rather than say something like awesome I’d say a word like marvelous, lovely, etc.
Career fairs and some colleges may have writing centers or people that assist with cover letters, resumes, etc.
If you dont have that opportunity, I would search some up. Find ones that resonate with you and copy it but make it your own. Thats what I have done and ive been fairly successful. You can tie personal stories in them and still make them sound professional.
Okay I didn’t even think about career fairs and writing centers. Might look what’s available for me, thanks
FWIW I think you write well. I would’ve assumed you were a native speaker.
Oh, OP is way beyond ‘native speaker’; and really impressive.
Remember, today’s average writer pluralizes ‘e-mail’ with an s - probably with an apostrophe - and also uses ‘the ask’ and ‘the spend’, for example. This is so much better.
Thanks. Like I said I write well but informally. It’s the “professional” style associated with cover letters or product sales that I have a problem with. I’ve noticed some people can even speak fluently in a similar manner without problems.
Was hoping to see specific authors good at this style of writing but instead most answers are “just pick someone good”.
Read lots of literature. Find fiction that you enjoy and read it every day.
