Here Are Five Tips To Make You A Better Writer, According to Oris Aigbokhaevbolo’s Workshop

Everybody can write but not everyone is a good writer. And in a world where words have a place in everything, it is important that writers are able to create standout sentences as they make a point or tell a story.

It is in seeing a need to help writers become better at writing and making sentences that Oris Aigbokhaevbolo started the Write With Style Workshop, a two-day session involving intense discussions and teachings covering various topics including grammar, punctuation, basic tools to write reviews, interviews, and fiction, down to how to make a living from writing in Nigeria.

Oris, a model writer and one of the most popular culture critics of our time, has appeared in the Guardian UK, Catapult and Chimurenga and is currently the West Africa Editor for a music website covering the continent. He remains the only critic invited for the major film critic academies in South Africa, Germany and the Netherlands in a single year. He has also won an AFRIMA (All Africa Music Awards) prize for his music writing.

Obviously, there’s a lot to learn from a workshop given by such a renowned resource person. However, here’s a list of five things I found to be most useful for writers:

1. Rewrite, rewrite and rewrite

Your first draft may be effortless, but you should rewrite as much as possible.

2. Keep a notebook

The importance of journaling and writing things down, be it an inspired sentence or an imagined scene, cannot be stressed enough. Keep a notebook and write in it everything and anything.

3. Pay attention

Oris puts it as ‘be merciful or be merciless’. Observe and report on your world, and, as you write that story or that pitch, pay attention to your punctuation, your spelling and your use of words.

4. Find out how sentences work

This is perhaps one of the most interesting tips I picked up at the workshop. If you see a sentence you like—a good sentence—find out why it works, and try to apply it to your writing.

5. Nobody becomes a writer by dreaming

As with a lot of other skills, you have to continue developing yourself. For writing, it involves writing a lot of terrible opening paragraphs and inconclusive essays. Reading other writers also helps with self-development.

We hope this helps a budding writer actualise his or her goal someday. For more, you can sign up for the next edition of the Write With Style Workshop when it comes around by following Oris on Twitter for updates.

There is a need for workshops like this to help writers become better at their craft.