Hope Writes

How To Write A Meaty Article

I got a little sidetracked yesterday, but I felt that post was important in laying a foundation to this series. Today I’m going to take an example (article) from the first part of this series and develop it even further. I want to walk through the process of creating a meatier article with you, so you can see how it’s done. Hopefully we’ll all learn something from this lesson together. (It’s just as much for me, as it is for you.)

Valerie commented on the first post:

“One of my frustrations is not being about to produce articles as quickly as I want to, and it’s becuase I’m a perfectionist, and I’m always shooting for around 500 words - hopefully quality words.”

I know exactly what you mean, Valerie, because I’m the same way. I tend to watch my word count ticker in the bottom left corner when I write. The only thing that does is succeed in driving me nuts when the numbers don’t rise as quickly as I’d like them to. Although I’m a pretty quick writer, I do tend to obsess over things like word count and quality.

3-Step Article Writing Process

First, I’m going to do a quick run-through of the 3-step article writing process I use.

Start From Scratch

The first thing I recommend you do before you start an article is to think about what you’re going to say before you actually do the writing. Gather your thoughts for a few moments. Figure out what questions you want to answer with your article. Or what information you will impart with your readers.

Starting from scratch is often scary, with the empty white page and cursor blinking back at you. But you can lay a foundation in the beginning that will help you produce a quality article in the end.

Create An Outline

Once I determine what I’m going to write about, I almost always begin my writing with an outline, as I’ve already shared here. During this part of the writing stage, I like to write by hand away from the computer, preferably outside.

Outlining is simple, so don’t make a big deal of it. Just grab a pen and notebook, write your tentative article title at the top of the page, then jot ideas as they come to you. After you lay out several ideas on paper, you can quickly and easily re-organize them as necessary, then compile the first draft of the article.

Spit-Shine

After the article has been double-checked for errors and mistakes, read through it one last time to make sure there aren’t any more boo-boo’s hiding. Rewrite your final copy and you’re good to go. You should have a nice article, ready to use.

Meatballs, Anyone?

Okay, so we’ve covered the basics of writing a simple article. So now the proof is in the pudding. What if, after all that, your article is still short and just doesn’t quite cut it? What then? Then it’s time to take a closer look at it and figure out why there’s not enough substance to it.

• Is your idea fully developed?
• Is the topic clear enough?
• Did you expand on each idea within the article?
• Did you rush to finish writing it?
• Did you cut sentences and paragraphs because you felt like you were too windy?

Since I’m my own worst critic, I’m going to take one of my own short articles and beef it up to show you how it can be done. We’ll use the article I referred to earlier: Writing Articles - You Can Write Articles With Great Speed And Ease. If you click on that link it will open in a new window for you. Reduce both windows, if you like, so you can follow along with each article as I rewrite it and make it a meatier article.

Let’s go…

Write Articles At The Speed Of Light With Article Templates (I didn’t like the original title, so this is the new one)

Do you freeze up every time you sit down to write an article? I used to. I’d sit down to write an article or two and suddenly every wonderful article idea I’d had throughout the day would disappear. Then I discovered article templates. These are great little gems that help you when you feel a case of writer’s block coming on.

Article templates are fill-in-the-blank snippets. They give you a jumping point for writing when you’ve lost all inspiration. If you’ve never used templates to help you write an article, but frequently struggle when you get ready to write, you are going to love this! Here are just a few ways that article templates make your life a lot easier:

1. You don’t have to think about a layout for your ideas. With article templates, all you have to do is pull one out and use it to create a new article. You don’t have to contemplate thirty minutes over how the article will be written. You simply write. For example, a how-to article template might spark an idea like: How To Learn Bird Calls in 30 Minutes or Less Likewise, a Top 10 Lists article template could prompt you to write an article about the top ten ways to tell your mother you’re pregnant.

2. All you have to do is fill in the blanks. When you use article templates, it really is as simple as filling in the blanks. There’s no more guesswork to writing. Example: 10 Ways to ___________ Your _____________ or 4 Reasons Why You’ll Never _________________.

3. Article templates spur more article ideas. The wonderful thing about using article templates is that once you sit down and write an article or two, you can’t help but think of a few more articles. It’s the inevitable with templates. They act as a springing board for even more ideas.

For example, if you use a writing template to create an article about the tropical rainforest, you might end up with several other articles based on the same topic, but written with different templates, like:

• 3 Worst Months For Animals in the Rainforest
• How to Save the Rainforest
• Tips on Raising Money to Donate to the Rainforest
• Rainforest Quiz: Which Rainforest Animal Are You?

4. Article templates save you a ton of writing time. Who wants to sit for hours at the computer working on the same article? You’ll end up frustrated and angry and want to send the article to your recycle bin. Right? When you use article templates, you cut out all those wasted hours. Article templates can literally reduce your writing time by half, or more.

ORIGINAL WORD COUNT: 250
REWRITTEN WORD COUNT: 467

It’s still not the best article in the world, but you can see how easily I tweaked and added to the article to give it a bit more substance. For the most part, I simply added in a few examples to demonstrate the power of using article templates. By doing those simple things, I nearly doubled the word count on this article.

The next time you draft an article, stop and take a look at it. Does it look “bony?” Find the weak spots and add more meat to those bones.

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