Here’s the answer to that question…
Take a voice recorder and then transcribe it word for word for your next article.
Now if you do that I assure you that it will be 100% that if you talk like a normal human being that you will have achieved your goal.
But… that’s probably not what you are looking for.
What you are probably looking for is something along the lines of…
Writing conversationally so that it is clear and sounds interesting with your own voice that your readers would enjoy.
A lot of famous bloggers and writers actually do this because…
- It’s easy to read (Usually you talk in short sentences…)
- It’s a lot more interesting than slogging through an academic research paper…
- And it feels like you are in the head of the person.
But don’t worry as this captain here will show you the ways in how to write conversationally whether you are writing copy for a landing page or you want to add a little oomph to the dialogue of your story’s characters.
Let’s get started…
Readout loud while you are typing your sentences
Now, this can get annoying if you have to write something like a 5,000-word article but this is pretty important if you want to have that conversational tone. The reason why you want to do this is that your body has a sort of natural corrector when you read it out loud.
For example, if you try to read out something like “And then John had to somehow grab the rope…” and you stutter on the word “somehow…” then that shows that you need to fix that.
It also trains you to recognize how you would say it in your read cause let’s be real… when someone reads an article 99% of us are going to read it out loud in our heads.
That means that if you read it out loud smoothly then it is going to sound smoothly in your reader’s head.
At the very least you should read your work out loud to check it along with using your grammar checks like Grammarly.
Your sentences don’t have to be grammatically correct
I remember when I asked my English Teacher how to write better for my academic teacher and his response was “write more.”
Now I was a bit pissed off because I was looking for an answer on how to improve my writing like a math question but looking back at it he could’ve guided me a little better but he wasn’t wrong.
However, he would probably get upset if I started writing more sentences that were grammatically incorrect but that’s what I’m telling you to do if you want to write conversationally.
You see, everybody has their own way of talking and their own little nuances.
As you can see with the sentences above I started with the words “You see…” and sometimes I even start sentences with the words “And” and “But” and the reason why I do this is because…
It flows a looooot smoother.
Now is this grammatically correct? Nope. Not at all.
But…
Look at the difference below:
- John ate an apple and then he went for a walk.
- John ate an apple. And then he went for a walk.
If you read the two sentences above there is a slight nuance between the two. What you are going to notice now that I’m going to point it out to you is that we pause a lot when we tell stories to other people. You are going to notice that you pause a lot and that you use the words “And” and “But” a lot when you start the next sentence.
And we want to incorporate this in our writing because it just sounds natural to us. And when it sounds natural to us then it is going to sound natural to the readers and ultimately…
It’s going to be a lot clearer and easier to read the sentence.
So start noticing how I write the beginning of my sentences and start incorporating it into your writing.
Use the … instead of the comma for a pause
Now there really isn’t a difference between the pause with a comma and the ellipses. But what I noticed from using both is that the comma is like a period where it stops the reader while the ellipses is a lot easier on the eyes and you “read” through it.
For example:
- I saw John sitting on the tree, thinking about the apple.
- I saw John sitting on the tree…. Thinking about the apple.
Is it grammatically correct? Nope. But it makes it easier to read and that’s my ultimate goal whenever I write these blog posts.
You want to make it easy to read for your readers so that it is much more likely for them to read even more of your articles.
Make your headline also sound like you are talking
Now it really depends on what type of voice you are going for. But what happens is that you should starting thinking about your headline as the next sentence as well as breaking up the sections.
Now, this is more of a subjective matter but there’s a distinct difference between the sentences of…
- How To Make Your Headlines Sound Conversationally
- Make Your Headlines Also Sound Like You Are Talking
The first one gives the feeling of “Woah, this is a much more formal headline” and the second feels like a continuation of the last sentence.
If it makes no sense whatsoever then think of it like this…
Your headline is just a sentence that comes after the last sentence.
And to make it sound like a sentence what you want to do is…
- Make it sound normal
- Don’t capitalize every single letter
And that’s it.
If you can, have a friend read it out loud for you
This is if you have that one friend who is amazing and is willing to proofread for you out loud (buy him a drink afterward) and the reason for this is simple…
You get to hear firsthand how another person reads your writing.
You can notice the nuances of how his tone rises when he reads a paragraph.
When his voice stumbles on a certain word.
When he gets bored with it.
You know the normal stuff which is super important when you’re trying to make your writing as clear and crisp as possible.
Now it’s not always possible so you can always hire someone on Upwork for like $5 to read it out loud. Or you can do it yourself after not seeing it for 24 hours. It’s your choice.
Conclusion
Hopefully, I helped you to write conversationally, and yeah…
If you found it helpful let me know in the comments below.