Writing Arena

If you struggle to stay on track with your essay writing and often get punished because you tend to say a lot without really making the valid point, then consider the ‘grain of sand’ approach.

The ‘grain of sand’ approach is where you spend time constructing the one sentence that perfectly explains the central point of your essay. From here, you build out with the evidence, references and other elements, safe in the knowledge that your essay has that focus. This one sentence is known as the ‘grain of sand’.

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I was thinking to myself the other day how Facebook (and social networking in general) shows the level of creativity some people have within them when it comes to writing and actually, without these sites you probably wouldn’t ever get to see it.

There are many people who, despite being very quirky and word savvy, will never actually sit down and write something. This is mainly because they don’t have the time or inclination to do so and also, in my opinion, because they don’t believe anyone will really care what they have to say. Added to this, blogging is still somewhat of a dark art to many people outside of any immediate writing circle.

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If you always struggle to effectively check your work and just skim over everything without really looking at it, try this technique.

Reading your work backwards means you have to look at every word individually (unless you have some kind of special gift) and your brain won’t allow you to scan over words in big blocks.

This method is particularly useful when you’re checking essays and letters for spelling mistakes. Sometimes it can just be the case that you’ve used the wrong word and under normal circumstances you wouldn’t pick it up. This method trains your brain to be more perceptive to close detail and avoid the lazy writing errors that can creep in from time to time.