Strengths in Writing: Weaknesses and Strengths of a Good Writer

Unlocking your innate strengths as a writer can elevate your career. While some may seem naturally gifted at writing, anyone can harness their unique talents through self-awareness and strategic development. The HIGH5 strengths assessment provides insight into your distinct abilities, empowering you to enhance creativity, work ethic, and research prowess for maximum writing success. By understanding your strengths, you can optimize your writing journey and achieve your full potential.

Everyone has their unique individualized approach to writing, but there are ways to further your writing career while also bringing out your inherent strengths. By furthering your writing strengths, you can excel in any writing style and boost your writing skills. In his article, we will discuss some writing tips that can greatly impact your success in your individual writing journey.

What are the qualities of a good writer?

Recognizing and leveraging your personal strengths is pivotal to accomplishing your writing ambitions. The HIGH5 strengths assessment illuminates your innate talents, allowing you to make informed decisions about the writing genres and subjects that align with your abilities. For instance, if creativity emerges as a dominant strength, you may thrive in fictional storytelling or descriptive writing. Conversely, if analysis is a core skill, expository or persuasive writing could be a better fit.

By taking the HIGH5 test, you unlock self-awareness, enabling you to intentionally steer your writing career towards paths that accentuate your unique brilliance. Many writers learn to utilize their strengths to contribute to their success. There are specific strengths that unite such successful authors and writers across all topics of literature and industry. A few of the benefits of having such strengths include:

1. Assists you in getting a job and advances your career [1].
2. Helps you clearly explain your points, communicate a story, and depict a narrative/persuade others.
3. Improves your focus and gets you to learn more about yourself.
4. Enhances your personal and professional brand.
5. Build connections between you, your stakeholders, and your readers.
6. Boosts knowledge, creativity, efficiency, and imagination.
7. Makes you more productive and eliminates stress.

Pro Tip From HIGH5

After taking the HIGH5 assessment, reflect deeply on the revealed strengths. Make a list of potential writing projects, topics, or styles that could tap into and stretch those abilities. Experiment with new approaches that play to your strengths to uncover writing opportunities you may have previously overlooked.

14 must-have strengths as a good writer

Some strengths are truly key to having a productive writing routine and succeeding as a writer in general. While the writing community is certainly diverse, the best writers share some key strengths.

Some strengths are key to having a productive writing routine and succeeding as a writer in general. While the writing community is certainly diverse, the best writers share some key strengths.

14 strengths of a great writer:

1. Perseverance
2. Being focused
3. Consistent ideas and flow
4. Being goal-oriented
5. Resilience
6. Diverse word choice
7. Organizational abilities
8. Creativity
9. Clear and concise writing
10. Curiosity and continuous learning
11. Confidence
12. Persuasiveness
13. Proper use of emotion
14. Networking

Perseverance

Writers are bound to be presented with challenges in their careers. Whether it be researching an unfamiliar topic or dealing with difficult clients/bosses, perseverance is key to success [2]. Being persistent involves continuing the writing process, even when you feel like giving up. While it seems easy, this can be difficult at times. Nonetheless, it can undoubtedly be the difference between achieving success and falling short of your goals.

Being focused

When do even the best writers make silly errors? Usually, this happens when they are unfocused. Avoiding errors must involve being focused. Having an automatic writing assistant could help you catch some errors, but simply rereading your work will serve the same purpose. Getting enough sleep can also ensure you can stay focused. Also, be sure to avoid distractions while working.

Consistent idea and content flow

Writers have tons of ideas floating through their heads every day. Be sure to keep track of these ideas, and write down anything you find exceptional. Explore any of these ideas, even if you do not know much about them. Keep learning and participating in writer’s block to keep your ideas fresh.

Being goal-oriented

Anyone can benefit from setting goals, and the same is true for writers. By setting goals, you can identify what you truly want in your writing career, whether that is educating the masses or pitching an important service. You will also be able to plan better and be more agile if you have clear goals.

Resilience

While it is painful to hear, you will have unpleasant moments in your career. You must be able to bounce back from any failures and realize that your career does not spoil after one misstep [2]. Many famous authors have had rough starts in their careers, but because of their resilience, they were able to achieve success.

Diverse word choice

Readers should be engaged and intrigued by your writing. Any writing teacher will tell you that the key to engagement is quality word choice and great article structure. Your writing should be reflective of your diverse vocabulary and immense knowledge of a specific topic. The right words can really leave a lasting impact on your readers.

Organizational abilities

Even though word choice is crucially important, sentence structure and paragraph organization is equally critical. Having easily readable sentences and paragraphs can make your content more engaging. Try to shorten your sentences and paragraphs and use subheadings so your readers can easily find the right information.

Creativity

Many writers believe that their work is simply a reflection of their own inner creativity and thoughts. Out-of-the-box thinking can make your writing unique and offer your readers an intriguing perspective that they cannot find anywhere else. To get your creative juices flowing, consider reading new perspectives and adding your own unique spin to them.

Clear and concise writing

Your readers must understand your content for it to be considered high quality [2]. Be minimalistic and clear with the way you write, both in your word choice and in your sentence structure. Use vocabulary that is appropriate for the target audience and utilize shorter sentences.

Curiosity and continuous learning

Good writers are excited by the topics they write about. Because of this, they do not mind seeking out new knowledge about the topic they are writing about. While there are many forms of writing, all of them require a passion for knowledge-seeking and communicating new knowledge to your audience. Writers are lifelong learners. If you want to excel as a writer, whether that be a professional writer or someone who wants to improve their writing skills, learning is key. Challenge yourself to learn new techniques by talking to other writers, taking classes, or even reading other genres. Take it one step further by asking for feedback on your writing. This will help you explore, develop, and practice new writing skills.

Confidence

Don’t rely on approval from others before you start writing. Have some faith in your work, and be sure to truly speak your mind when writing. Do not write something on someone else’s behalf, unless you feel comfortable doing so. Your confidence will be evident in your tone of writing. When the audience knows you know what you are talking about, they are more likely to listen.

Persuasive content

Some types of content require a persuasive approach. For instance, essay writing could focus on convincing the audience of the same view as the author. One of the main aspects of writing a great essay is using logic and emotion to convince the audience to see the world from your perspective. Utilizing a persuasive approach to writing can give you more power within the industry and establish a clear, professional tone in your work.

Proper use of emotion

Injecting emotion into your articles is one of the greatest strengths for writers. It can make you sound more relatable to your audience. Being more approachable and relatable as an author can make your work more engaging and entertaining to readers and can keep your readers coming back for more.

Networking skills and charisma

Getting your name out there can be essential in the writing industry. This is precisely why networking is so key to being a great writer. Being a great networker can also expose you to many great writing opportunities and you could also meet many like-minded professionals. You could learn a plethora of new skills from these other writers, which you can later use in your career. For content roles, companies often use a copywriting test to screen candidates, so it is important to build these core strengths.

5 barriers writers face

Writers should be continuously learning. As with any group of professionals, writers are not perfect, sometimes, writers fall into slumps that can hurt their careers. These common areas of opportunity can hold back writers to not achieving their full potential. Some common examples of barriers for writers include :

1. Creating unengaging content and boring your readers
2. Lacking focus
3. Lacking substance
4. Creating an odd flow/structure
5. Writing long-winded sentences

Creating unengaging content and boring your readers

Sometimes, authors forget that their work will later be read by real people, not just sent out to a voiceless, nameless crowd. Great content should resonate with their audiences. When this does not occur, readers become disinterested, leave the site, or stop reading your work altogether. To stay out of this rut, keep your audience in mind when writing.

Lacking focus

Cramming as much information as possible into your content is not the best approach when it comes to finishing writing tasks. Longer content is not always better. In fact, it can overwhelm your readers. Try to shorten up your sentences and focus your articles on one topic at a time.

Lacking substance

Often, authors will have their writing spiral into many unrelated directions. This can be confusing to your readers. Instead, choose one topic and really focus on it to make your content sound narrow and specific. You can add more substance to your articles by including a personal story, metaphors, citations, research, statistics, or graphs/other visual elements.

Creating an odd flow or structure

The smooth flow is consistent and makes logical sense from the first word to the last. It ensures readers do not get confused or lost in the text. Try to put yourself into the reader’s shoes to see what questions or comments they may have from reading your work. Then, address these questions or rewrite some of the phrasings to make your points clearer.

Writing long-winded sentences

When you have long, drawn-on sentences, it can be difficult for the reader to follow. Instead, include a mix of sentence lengths in your writing to make your text less monotonous. However, sentences should generally be on the shorter side. They create more readable content for readers. To address this common issue, try cutting your longest sentences into a few shorter ones and try to keep the average sentence length to 14 words, preferably less.

How to identify your strengths and weaknesses in writing?

Unfortunately, many writers are often blind to their own flaws. Other times, they are prone to over-focusing on the negative elements of their writing and overlook their strengths. To best identify your strengths and weaknesses, you should seek the assistance of an objective third party that you trust. One way to get quality feedback is by asking your friends, family, coworkers, customers, or bosses. If the individual is familiar with your writing style, they can give you some feedback on the engagement level of your writing.

Be sure that they align with the intended audience, though. Your boss may be able to provide more in-depth feedback, as he/she has the most consistent access to your work. Consider asking your audience directly, too. Send out a survey to your email list if you have one. Another great way to assess your skills and opportunities is by taking the HIGH5 test. It efficiently evaluates both your strengths and weaknesses by giving you a concise overview of your personal abilities. Once you get your strengths and weaknesses test results, all you must do is consider how these abilities contribute to your writing.

Pro Tip From HIGH5

After receiving your HIGH5 assessment results, schedule a consultation to discuss implementing the insights. An expert can help you map out a personalized plan to amplify your strengths and address weaker areas through targeted skill development.

How to turn weaknesses into strengths in writing?

There are many ways to turn your writing flaws into writing skills. In fact, many of the most common weaknesses can be reimagined into strengths. Start by identifying which of the previously mentioned flaws most resonate with you. From them, you can reapply your weaknesses. Sometimes, you simply need to change the audience you are writing to. Or, you may need to change the topic you are writing about. If you naturally write long, detailed sentences, consider writing more technical articles. On the other hand, if you struggle with being persuasive and formal, consider writing lighthearted articles. With this method, you will better align your writing style with the correct topic and audience. Then, you must also find ways to grow as a writer.

While improving areas of weakness is admirable, a more sustainable approach is to amplify your innate strengths as a writer. The HIGH5 assessment identifies your unique talents, allowing you to concentrate your efforts on roles and projects that naturally align with your abilities. If Brainstormer emerges as your forte, you could explore fiction writing or blogging rather than fixating on technical writing weaknesses. Conversely, if Analyst is your strength, editing or instructional writing may be a better avenue than a fictional narrative.

By optimizing your efforts around your strengths, you can achieve greater fulfillment and excellence with less strain. Also, keep your audience in mind when writing. If something you write does not make sense to your readers, rewrite it. Imagine what would resonate most with your audience. If they are technical professionals, write in a rich vocabulary with lots of citations. If your audience is reading for pleasure, consider a more relaxed, informal writing style.

Pro Tip From HIGH5

After reviewing your HIGH5 assessment results, list your top 3 strengths. Then, brainstorm potential writing projects, genres, or career paths that would allow you to immerse yourself in those strengths daily. Prioritize opportunities that lean into your natural talents over those requiring you to overcompensate for weaknesses.

How can writing help your career?

Writers are expert communicators. They know how to express their thoughts, explain things anyone can understand, and tell their story. Writing is a powerful skill set that has been utilized and leveraged for centuries, and writing is just as powerful today as ever. Whether you want to be a writer as a career, or whether you want to utilize writing to help you communicate at work, writing is a must-have for professionals. In fact, in a study by Grammarly, those with grammar mistakes in their LinkedIn profile were promoted less than those who had grammatical mistakes in their profile [1]. Being a good writer may seem innate, but authorship is developed over time, and it all starts with knowing your strengths.

Strengths in writing FAQ

What are your strengths in reading?

Strengths in reading help you understand literature better. It can help you put yourself into someone else’s shoes and better understand other perspectives. Strengths that contribute to efficient reading include imagination, creativity, empathy for other characters, quick comprehension, and so on.

What are the strengths of academic writing?

Academic writers have a unique skill set, even when compared to other similarly trained authors. In academic writing, the authors must be experts in formal tone, appropriate sentence structure, specific word choice, and use of a third person. These writers should be willing to learn, adapt quickly, be able to argue and provide high-quality evidence.

What are the weaknesses in academic writing?

While using an informal and relaxed tone is not usually inappropriate, it is not utilized in academic writing. Additionally, poor formatting, writing off-topic, badly chosen thesis statements, inadequate conclusions, weak transitions, vague writing, redundancy, awkward sentence structure, and poor grammar can also weaken an academic author’s impactfulness.

References:

1. Simonds, L. (2013, April 19). Good Writing Can Help You Succeed. Time. https://business.time.com/2013/04/19/good-writing-can-help-you-succeed/.
2. Masterclass. (2021, September 28). What Makes a Good Writer? 4 Qualities of a Good Writer. MasterClass. https://www.masterclass.com/articles/what-makes-a-good-writer-explained.