Article writing advice needed

[DayOne]

Hi everyone,

I have been offered some work at a local magazine where I will be asked to research and write articles, proof-read and edit. I have only done this in a very informal way when making contributions to the student newspaper at my university.

I would appreciate any advice that you can offer about how to research and structure an article, stick to a word count, etc, as well as anything else that you think I should do to prepare for my first day at work one week from now!

Thanks

[Livgivare]

I am no expert. But start writing as much as you can, call the newspaper up and ask them for the word-limitation they would like and start taking away the words that are too much by shorting the lenghts of the sentences and taking away the least important, since an article is mostly like an Ice-cream with a berry on it (the berry being the topic-title) the top you see as actuall ice-cream being the preamble and the cornet being the actual text in the article, write the most important stuff on top of the article and get the least important last. If the newspaper need to cut your article you know that they don't cut out the most important part of the text according to you...

This I learned from a corse in Senior High School...

Love Leelene

[DayOne]

Thanks for the advice if anyone else has anything to add that would be great.

Also I'm quite nervous about this whole job. I've never really done much like this before, a few articles for a student newspaper and now I have a job on a magazine! I'm well and truly outside my "comfort zone" which I think is a good thing because it means I'm pushing myself to master new things....but it also makes me quite scared!!!

[Tuumble]

Make sure you read your magazine thoroughly and get a good sense of the style of writing. You may need to adapt to fit because a readership does not always take kindly to different types of writing if they are used to particular type.

As for words you need to get a guide from the publication. Keep that in mind but write more which you can edit later to make the piece tighter.

The basics I learned for writing articles is that any title should be written in a way that encourages the reader to read more rather than tell the whole story in a single line. However, don't start with this - the title should be the last thing you do.

Your first paragraph is important. The same rule as above applies but with one major difference. If you read it back and you say to yourself: 'So what?' it's a questionable whether it's newsworthy or interesting at all.

It's the who, what, when, where, how thing. If it's a news report you need to include all these. If it's an opinion piece you just need to review the news stories and speak to people and find out what are the real issues in the community. That way you will more likely get readership.

All in all you need to make sure well in advance what exactly is expected of you. Have those guidelines and you should find it a lot easier.

Good luck - let us know how it goes!

[FreelanceWanderer]

DayOne, I've been writing articles full time for ten years, I'm a columnist for Writer's Digest, and I also wrote a couple books on the topic. Here's my advice:

* Do your research. You'll need to study up on your topic, which you can do by doing some reading online and looking at other articles on the topic. There is probably an organization that deals with your topic -- for example, if you're writing about nutrition it's the American Dietetic Association -- and this is a good place to start your reading. To find other articles on your topic, go to findarticles.com or see if you can access the Lexis-Nexis database through your local library.

* Interview. If the magazine you're writing for typically includes expert quotes in articles, you'll need to do the same. You can find experts by contacting the media relations or PR departments of organizations associated with your topic, or by doing a Google search. You can also go to Amazon.com, search on your topic (such as "nutrition"), and use the pulldown menu to sort by date. Authors with books that recently came out or that are about to come out make for great, timely interviewees. Another tip is to use ProfNet.com; it's free, but you have to prove you're a working journalist to register.

* Be stylish. Get familiar with the magazine you're writing for and try to write in their style. For example, do they have an edgy style, or are they more earnest? Do they like humor, or is the style dead serious?

* Follow their lead. Your editor will love you if you follow their style guide, which tells you how to style and format your articles. If they don't have a style guide, check out the magazine to determine how they handle things like state names, serial commas, expert credentials, etc.

* Go for three. In general, your article needs to have a lede (yes, that's spelled right!) that draws the reader in, a body that answers their questions, and a conclusion that sums things up.

* Be chunky. These days, readers like to get info fast, which means that it's good to chunk up your articles with easy-to-digest bullet points, subheads, and sidebars. Of course, this depends on the magazine you're writing for; there are still a few out there that run long blocks of text!

Good luck!

FW

[Livgivare]

Don't be scared, it is ok to feel abit nervous when trying out things. But scared sounds so hard. Try to just take in all those ideas and then write as much as you can. A welknown author (Fantasy-writer) told me that he wrote 1000 words per day, even if that meant 3 pages full of rubbish with three magical good sentences in the text. Then after a few days he picked up the good stuff and re-wrote the other and in that way got a good story out of like thens of thousands of pages. I guess that that large amount is not a good idea to write when writing an article. But try not to feel bad about yourself if your first draft is about 3 pages long if it shall be one at the end. If you see what I mean...

Love Leelene