Conversational Writing Online Your English Teacher Would Hate

So what is conversational writing, you ask. I'll give you the simple answer. Write like you're talking to a friend. Tell your friend what you want to put into a post or article. But, tell that friend via written word instead of spoken word.

Simple Conversational Writing Starts with Practice

Yes, that sounds simple. But, doing it is amazingly hard for many people. How in world will you accomplish this? Another simple answer. Practice.

• Start writing. 
• Start telling your friend something. 
• Tell her or him in your mind. 
• Write it down on your paper or computer. 
• Keep imagining your conversation. 
• Keep writing it down.

Push Your English Teacher Out of Your Mind

If you keep thinking about what is proper English and what you learned in high school, you'll have a

hard time getting to conversational writing. So stick your English teacher on a top shelf. You want to talk to a friend, not get a good grade on a term paper.

Think in shorter sentences. Impact sentences. Think in casual terms. This means things like: it's okay to end a sentence with preposition. "I don't know where it came from." instead of "It came from I know not where." Conversational instead of formal.

Notice one of the things I have done often so far. Incomplete sentences. You don't talk to your friend in full blown sentences all the time. You use short, incomplete sentences, probably more often than you realize.

The Anonymity of the Internet

The vast majority of your online readers have no idea who you are. They've never met you. Why should they trust you and what you say? They'll trust you because you sound like a friend.

While they read, if they feel like a friend is telling them something, they will trust it more. You trust your friend to be straight forward with you. Online readers will also.

Test this out for yourself. Go find a bunch of random articles and posts on the Internet. Read them and pay attention to how you feel as you do. When you hit one that sounds like a term paper for an English teacher's good grade, how do you feel? When you hit one that sounds like the writer is talking directly to you, how do you feel?

Now, start writing to your own online audience as though they were all great friends. Have a conversation with them. Just do it in writing. That is conversational writing online. By the way, don't show this to your English teacher.