Just like with coding, improving your wordcraft is a two-fold process: read and write. If you are reading a lot of quality work from various genres (articles, b

Just like with coding, improving your wordcraft is a two-fold process: read and write. If you are reading a lot of quality work from various genres (articles, blog posts, short stories, journalism, poetry et al), you will be constantly learning new words, sentence structures, phrasings, all the tools of writing. Then, by writing a lot you will be able to put these new techniques to use and figure out what works best with your particular approach to writing. I learned to write effective fiction and poetry (I've been published in literary magazines and been invited to read at several events) by close-reading all my inspirations and then practicing writing in their style. Once I got a feel for what made Reverdy "Reverdy", I was able to approach my own work in the same manner which results in magnitudes of improvement. It is also imperative to constantly be rereading your older work, not only as a measure to see how much you've improved but also as a way to reinforce positive progress. If I can read an article from a few months ago that I wrote and not want to close the browser window immediately, then I consider that a worthy article and it boosts my confidence. That being said, I have found that flow-charting ideas is good for building up the structural integrity of a piece, especially if it is more on the analytic side. You have assertions (themes, viewpoints) and then linkages between them (facts, observations). By building a flow-chart you can see how they weave and if your implications make sense. A visual overview is very helpful in this regard. It keeps your writing tight and succinct. Again, this is just a personal opinion - the writing process is a difficult and stressful one because there really are no universal "tricks" or approaches to quality, worthwhile work.