To add personality to your writing, tell short stories, get to know your audience, break a few rules on purpose, and read your text aloud to hear whether it sounds like you. A distinct voice makes it easier for readers to tell you apart from the crowd.
You may be tired of being told to add personality to your writing, but there is a good reason why so many blogging experts give this advice. Readers remember a voice, not a list of facts.
If the thought of putting personality into your work intimidates you, it should not. After all, you do not need a totally unique personality to write a good article. Even if you are one in a million, on a planet of billions there are thousands of people out there just like you.
So what can you do to give your writing a personality? Here are some easy ways to do just that.
Tell a story
Telling your audience a story is a great way to connect with them, because it gives them a glimpse of your human side. You do not need to put a novel into your blog posts. Just slip in a short story once in a while to break the monotony.
Always check that the stories you tell fit the overall theme of what you are writing about. Do not add anything that draws your readers' attention away from the important points.
Get to know your audience
Get to know your audience first, so you understand which personality traits they find appealing. If you skip this step, your writing may send the wrong signals.
This is especially true when you write for businesses. One industry may value a certain character trait and frown on others. Jargon that sounds sophisticated in one industry may be a laughing stock in another.
Break the rules
Some rules are meant to be broken. If you have the freedom to do so, take it. People who write strictly by the rules risk losing themselves in the process. In a sense, breaking the rules helps you keep your individuality and personality.
The rules can be about anything, but take spelling and grammar as an example. If you write for a younger audience, you may want to use some slang, sparingly, to sound relaxed and relatable.
The same goes for grammar. Most English teachers frown on sentence fragments, and on starting a sentence with a conjunction. But in creative writing, you can go wild with your grammar. For anything else, keep it on a shorter leash. The Spell Checker explains every mark it makes and lets you ignore a suggestion that is wrong for your text, so you decide which unusual spellings to keep.
Read it aloud
When your article is ready, read it aloud to yourself. Does it sound as if a human being wrote it, and does it sound like you? Add or remove parts until you can answer yes to both questions.
When you are done with the edits, read it aloud once more, this time to someone else, and ask them the same two questions. This step is optional, but a second opinion helps a lot. It lets you spot things you cannot catch with your own eyes and ears.
Those are the basics of adding personality to your writing. You probably will not write the smoothest article on your first try. Do not worry, though: your voice grows with every text you write. For more ways to keep readers interested, see how to make your writing more interesting.