> Why Your Writing Skills Matter in 2025
Writing well is important in today’s competitive business environment. With all the AI tools available, you may believe that you don’t need to improve your writing skills. Why would you? Every writing task can be done with a prompt inserted into ChatGPT, Gemini, or other similar AI agents.
However, it matters to improve your writing skills because of that, not despite it. When every small online business can generate content using AI, that’s when you set yourself apart. Winning brands are those with an original voice. In a world in which everybody uses AI writing tools, you can stand out with your writing. That’s why it is important to improve your writing skills.
> What You Should Look After When Trying to Improve Your Writing Skills
While there are many books and articles available on how to improve your writing skills, most of the advice found in these sources may sound repetitive. We may even say that the only book you need to read on writing well is The Elements of Style, a holy grail of good English prose.
In what follows, you can discover a couple of unconventional ways in which you can improve your writing skills. The path to success in business and life rewards those who are original. That’s why you should try to improve your writing skills with these unconventional yet performant tactics.
1. Write backwards
We have been taught to write from top to bottom, from the beginning to the end. This is the way the process works, and you probably assume that this is the way you need to write to improve your writing skills. Everything is just about doing it—about writing.
However, some tactics are less intuitive. What if I told you that starting from the end can be a great way to improve your writing skills?
Instead of the introduction, you can first come up with the conclusion of your piece. In copywriting, the lead magnet—those first sentences that grab attention—is often written first. Still, what if you started with the CTA, that segment of your copy that does the job?
Writing backwards forces you to rethink your writing strategy. It’s like changing your workout routine spontaneously. The results can be more than interesting. You will think differently, finding even more inspiration in your writing than before.
2. Micro-Storytelling—Say Everything in Fewer Words
It’s a fact: good writing is concise. The writer who manages to cut out more words from his or her prose tells more to the reader than the one who writes loosely and sloppily.
That’s why when you are trying to improve your writing skills, it is important to write concisely. Don’t describe something in three sentences when only one sentence is enough. Don’t write a twenty-word sentence to explain something when a seven-word sentence will do.
How can you write more concisely? The answer is simple: create micro-stories of what you want to write. Imagine exactly what it is that you want to write about, and then write it all in one hundred words.
By forcing yourself to communicate in fewer words, you are training your brain to become more concise. This way, you will not fall into digression, and you’ll keep your writing on the subject.
Readers are busy people. When they read your work, they often seek solutions. It’s better not to impress them with your writing abilities and just offer them what they want. That’s why conciseness matters.
After writing the entire story in just one hundred words, you can start crafting the entire article. It’s good advice to view every sentence of the one-hundred-word text as a hook for each paragraph of your article in progress.
No matter how lengthy your work needs to be, you will be clear and concise in your writing following this piece of advice.
3. Constrain Your Writing
Limiting the number of words is not the only way to improve your writing skills. While doing the one-hundred-word drill helps you become more concise, other restrictions can help you master grammar and word order better. (Every respectable writer needs to have a working knowledge of English grammar.)
Open your laptop and your writing app. For the next ten minutes, write a piece of text without using adjectives.
That is your assignment! You can write anything you want—just don’t use adjectives in your writing. Your subjects can be full clauses. Your verbs can be phrasal verbs. You can write with as many adverbs as you like—just don’t use adjectives in your writing.
This exercise helps you pick up adjectives more easily. As a consequence, you will master the English grammar. Practice ten minutes per day, and you are sure to read a piece of writing like a linguist. This comes with many advantages for you as a writer.
You will be able to
- write more concisely
- control the word count without affecting the message
- change writing style just by manipulating grammar.
You can improve your writing skills using this exercise in different ways. You may want to avoid using prepositional phrases. Maybe you can try avoiding adverbs instead of adjectives.
As a provocation, you can try and craft a whole paragraph without using the letter “a.” This way, you force your mind to think in ways that will help improve your writing skills.
4. Explain It to a Machine
Traditional advice tells you to keep the target audience in mind. It makes sense. You always write for other humans. In copywriting, you need to understand their desires and fears. In content writing, you need to understand their interests and expectations. However, you should try something different to improve your writing skills.
For your next piece of writing, consider your target audience a machine. What kind of machine? Since we are experiencing an AI revolution, think of ChatGPT when you are writing your next piece.
How would you write an article for ChatGPT? Since we are dealing with a machine, you will want to be very clear and technical with your concepts. It’s not human. It doesn’t have feelings. At best, it can mimic human emotions well, but it doesn’t possess them.
Writing for a machine will force you to be clearer. In this pursuit, you will avoid metaphors and comparisons. You will not use double meanings. You will be bold, clear, and simple in your writing.
In fact, you should try the following experiment. Write a prompt to ChatGPT in which you tell it that you will give it an article and that it should analyze it from the point of view of a machine. After that, send the article to ChatGPT, and see what it has to say. If ChatGPT doesn’t tell you, ask it to give you feedback.
5. The Three-Sentence Test
This tactic to improve your writing skills is similar to the one on micro-storytelling. You create a structure for your article, and you start with a summary for each section. The summary needs to be, of course, as the name of the tactic suggests, three sentences long.
Following this tactic will help you develop conciseness. It forces you to convey your message in as short of a span as you possibly can. After you have written the summary, it’s time to develop it. Add sentences to the summary that expand on the main ideas of that specific section. This way, you make your writing concise and with a logical flow.
Every sentence counts, and with this tactic, you show yourself and your readers how deeply you care about words.
6. Voice-Stack Your Writing
Another great tactic to improve your writing skills has to do with voice shifting. We can classify the English sentences in three large categories: formal, informal, and business.
How does this tactic work? Write a sentence in English. If it uses the passive voice and the third person for the subject, then it is writing in a formal voice. Your mission now is to write the same sentence using the other two voices.
For example:
Enhancing one’s writing ability requires consistent and deliberate practice over time.
This is clearly a sentence written using the formal voice. It is very impersonal and uses complicated words. Can you change the voice? Can you make it more personal and warmer?
Of course you can! And here is an example
Think of writing like push-ups for your business: the more reps you put in, the stronger your words—and your sales—get.
The voice is more personal, more relaxed. You shouldn’t use such a voice in a business context. However, for a voice suited for the business environment, you can write something like the following:
The more you write, the better you get—it’s really that simple.
Shorter, more concise, more to the point. You’ve just seen how the same message can be delivered in various voices, depending on the needs.
Why does this matter?
Again, doing this drill will help you become more flexible in your writing. You will become more agile, and you will be able to detect more easily if the voice is appropriate for a piece of writing.
7. Delaying Editing
You’ve worked hard on your piece, and now is the time to edit it. Do not rush to the desk. Put it aside for a while. In fact, start working on another assignment or take a stroll outside.
It’s important to set your text aside. You’ve just crafted it, and you will be biased towards it if you want to edit it on the spot.
That’s why it is best to wait for at least half an hour before you start making any changes to it. This should become your routine if you want to continuously improve your writing skills.
8. Copy the Greatest Writers (but Only in Structure)
Writing is a craft. As with any craft, you learn it by doing it. How? Through imitation. Even if you are not aware of it at this point, you are probably imitating an author. That’s okay! We all do it, but it is important to know how to imitate properly.
Make the effort to imitate your favorite author in structure, the skeleton of good writing. “Meat” and “skin” are the words you use. While the latter needs to be your own, the former can copy a great author that you admire.
Strunk Jr., in The Elements of Style, discusses the importance of having a design and holding on to it. This is exactly what this tactic to improve your writing skills is all about.
Every time you write something new, take a piece of paper with you, and churn down the skeleton of the article. You can mix this tactic with that of writing only three sentences for every part of the article. This way, you will have a concise and well-structured article for people to enjoy and for you to feel proud of crafting.
> Improve Your Writing Skills—A Life-Long Mission
Writing well may mean different things to different people, but nobody can escape some objective points about writing.
That writing needs to be concise is a must. That what you write must be clear to your target audience is a non-negotiable demand. Also, structure and organization are two important aspects that will make your writing stand out.
Of course, in the end, what matters most is to write, write, and write more. But always have a strategy in doing this, and these tactics represent unconventional ways to improve your writing skills.
If you wish to read more about writing, you can find out more about copywriting in 2025. Also, freelance writing is a domain that keeps expanding even in the age of artificial intelligence. Of course, if you are an online writer, it is important to learn as much as you can about digital marketing and search engine optimization (SEO).
We at Thumos Writing have made it our mission to help you become a better writer and learn how to navigate the online world of business. Follow us on LinkedIn, X, and Facebook if you believe our content to be valuable.
