What Marie Kondo Can Teach You About Writing Better

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Who is Marie Kondo?
• How to Tidy up your Writing: Tips by Marie Kondo
  • Reduce the adverbs
  • Shorten the word piling up
  • Exterminate the redundant words
  • Get away with the purple prose
  • Get away from the word ‘that’
  • Write in an active voice
  • Avoid repeating words
  • Break-up the sentences 
• Key Takeaways
• Final Thoughts
• FAQs 

A house with a clean and organized atmosphere always seems to be admirable. Similarly, it would help if you also decluttered an article or your book from fancy or jargon-y words. If you are a new writer and looking to improve your writing, you can look at some cool Marie Kondo tips. You might be eager to know who Marie Kondo is and what is with her writing tips. So, let’s analyze how Marie Kondo can teach you to improve your writing.

Who is Marie Kondo?

A tidying consultant, author, and a star on Netflix for her show ‘Tidying Up with Marie Kondo’, and the founder of KonMari Media.Inc, Marie Kondo is a leading Japanese entrepreneur. She was fascinated by tidying habits since her childhood and emerged as a tidying consultant at the very young age of 19 years while studying at a University in Tokyo, Japan. In addition to this, she is a leading author in which she provides organizing tips to provide a decluttered presentation for the readers. In her early days, she was inspired by her grandmother’s tidiness and was inspired to continue in this field of tidying both your house and writings.

As you learn about who Marie Kondo is and what she does, you might be curious about what Marie Kondo can teach you about improving your writing style. So, let’s understand what these writing tips by Marie Kondo are. 

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How to Tidy up Your Writing: Tips by Marie Kondo

You may not take one up on the tips for writing specified by Marie Kondo. But if you are a new beginner, you must ensure that your writing must not brag and must not include fancy words. To tidy up your writing, you must first commit yourself to this goal. Then, recognize the loopholes in your writing and what you can do to improve it. Marie Kondo is also replicating the same ideals, and the following are some of the points that can help you clean your writings. So, here are some of the simple tips that Marie Kondo shares about writing and tidying your writings.

Reduce the adverbs

To attract the audience, some writers might tend to write adverbs to exaggerate their verbs. If you are drafting your first draft for your clients, you might tend to include more such words. Therefore, the decluttering tips by Marie Kondo include the first and foremost point of reducing adverbs. You must find the exact words and learn from these Marie Kondo cleaning tips on how to strategically use the verbs in your article to increase the empathetic impression on readers. So, Marie Kondo will teach you how to replace the -ly adverbs and their associated verbs with some other words.

The first organizing tip that you can learn from Marie Kondo is how to beautifully replace adverbs with some strong words. This would also increase the beauty of your sentence, for instance:

He ran softly to the ground. So instead of writing adverbs, you can write some other words such as: He sneaked to the ground.

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Shorten the word pile up

Few writers tend to write long sentences emphasizing a single idea. There are enormous words piled up one after the other. For instance, we can find phrases like ‘in the vicinity of’ or ‘despite the fact’ all the time in articles. Such words are filled only with redundancies. You can write ‘near’ and ‘although’ instead of the above, respectively. This would reduce the prolixity of the words and sentences. 

Such Marie Kondo organizing tips can help you make wise choices of words. 

Exterminate the redundant words

A writer explaining a simple concept can sometimes fill his explanation with many redundant words that are not essentially required in a sentence. Also, relying entirely on artificial intelligence to rectify your sentence structure would not benefit you in the long run. Throwing things around in your house to keep it clean will never work and in the same way, throwing around words in your writing will also never work. Try some innovative things to organize and improve the look of your copy. 

Get away with the purple prose

One of the best Marie Kondo tips includes reducing the purple prose from your language. Purple Prose is the act of purposely making your sentence complicated and challenging to read. If something can be said simply, better do it. Declutter your sentences from purple prose and make them as simple as they must be while reading. Keep sentences straightforward for the readers and that can help you increase your audience.

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Get away from the word ‘that’

Avoid using the word ‘that’ in your sentences too often. Such sentences don’t flow well and also hinder the imagination of the reader. For instance, “He said that he thought you like the offer and are interested in the deal.” Instead, you can write, “He said that he thought you liked the offer and was interested in the deal.” 

Throw away with the glue words

Glue words are those words that do not really make sense but help you increase the word count. These include ‘of’, ‘the’, ‘by’, and more. Such glue words are also known as sticky words that help stick two or more words. For instance, ‘Lara understood what sticky words and their impact were and why they shouldn’t be used in the sentences’. Instead of these glue words-filled sentences, you can use simple language and convey the same message–’Lara understood how you should not use glue words in your sentences’.

Write in an active voice

Active voice makes sentences easy to read while passive voice tends to create confusion. In such sentences, the subject is not performing the verb; still, the verb is associated with the subject. So, this sounds lame for the reader. You can always try to use an active voice in your sentences and make them practical for the readers. This Marie Kondo best tip for writing will help you get rid of passive voice. 

Avoid repeating words

Imagine reading something that has repeated sentences in it! It is a proverbial nightmare!  Your writing must be lucid, and the words must make readers imagine what you are trying to say. 

The same rule applies to words in a sentence that might tend to repeat themselves frequently. Marie Kondo organizing tips for homes and offices can help transcend her teachings to writing as well. 

Break-up the sentences

You would not generate a long-lasting impact on readers through long sentences. Write in short sentences. Long sentences do not hold the attention of the readers since they are boring to read. Therefore, always aspire, like Marie Kondo, to have clean and short sentences that can quickly convey its messages to the readers. 

Key Takeaways

• It is not necessary to fill your sentences with fancy words or adverbs. You can easily replace those adverbs with some strong verbs. 
• Piling up your sentences with words is not effective writing. 
• Always try to reduce redundant words from your sentences. Redundancy will only increase your word count but not add value to your content. 
• Get rid of unwanted prose that makes your sentence challenging for readers to read and understand. 
• The word ‘that’ can make your sentences feel lengthy and challenging to read. Avoid using it too often.
• Glue words are unnecessary in your sentences, so get away with them.
• Active voice can make your sentences more effective to your readers. 
• Repetition of words or sentences in one page or article creates confusion. 
• Break-ups in the real world might be hurting, but you must always try to break up meaningful sentences to grab the reader’s attention. 

Conclusion

We can observe from the above points that it is of utmost importance to have lucid and straightforward writing. Many writers tend to exaggerate, but forget that exaggeration in writing will not help increase readers. If you are still struggling to grab the reader’s attention, you must try to imbibe these Marie Kondo tips for writing and observe the drastic change in your results. 

FAQs