Planning. Writing. Editing.
Why a story whose pieces fit together too neatly can fail to captivate a reader?
The best kinds of arguments are the imperfect ones because the perfect argument is too obvious.
Writing an article is an essay to a puzzle jigsaw.
You search for a theme and see there’s a way you can deconstruct it. It’s like finding a sheet of paper with the perfect text and tear it to pieces. Then, you put the pieces in a black bag, shuffle them, and reconstruct the pieces of paper that are no longer perfect- becoming a mishmash of loose ideas.
Now you, the good writer, take these loose ideas and play with them. You reconstruct the words with your well-marked DNA. You investigate deeply and even find wounds from the past that have not yet been healed.
You take them and start gluing the puzzle pieces together. But now you stick your way because you are unique, and your thinking goes on paths where no one has ever walked.
Perfect pieces of art are made of flows. And in that imperfection lies the opportunity to deep dive into the dark world of the unknown.
You imagine the future. But in the past, you’ve searched for those black holes. Those flaws, those unknown records of imperfections, are the solid ground for you to dig in.
Diversions and problems that can’t be solved frequently come up. And sometimes, their attractive qualities override the original idea. -Malcolm Gladwell.
In the writing process, you must have a planning, writing, and editing routine. But if you miss the artistic lens’s imperfections, your drafts seem mechanic, dull, and colorless.
Bring the spatula and the brush, and we will both paint the writer’s canvas.
A goal without a plan is just a wish.
When I have one idea about a subject to write about, I start writing the intro. No planning, no deep thinking, just the soul of the piece I’m intended to write about.
Usually, by writing the introduction, I can feel where the main idea wants to take me. I read it one or two times, and then, I already know what I need to search for.
My title comes next. So, with my introduction written, more easily I make the headline matrix. I copy it and past it to Google search to see what kind of articles are available about those keywords.
I copy some of the article links and pass them to my text page to read them. Then, I try to find flaws or different perspectives about that subject.
This is my personal strategy. Each writer has their own. Some prefer to start writing on a piece of paper. Others like to draw schematic structures to easily reorganize their thoughts.
I don’t believe there’s a magical formula. Yet, we can see some principles that are always important to know about how to plan an article.
Planning your writing includes:
- Purpose, Audience, and Tone.
Purpose
The writer composes the article as the primary trigger. That trigger feeds the energy with which writers start the first paragraph of a piece.
The purpose may come from an idea that was born in a conversation with a friend. But it can also come from something that we read.
Audience
When you’re a new writer, you’re finding your voice in writing. So, it’s somehow difficult to know what kind of audience are you writing for. Yet, writing every day is the correct answer. You can’t know your audience before you have a portfolio of ideas/articles that built a unique voice- your voice.
Soon, with your readers sending you messages, you’ll feel what kind of content they appreciate the most. And then, you naturally start feeding them with pieces of your brain.
Tone
Tone, in a written composition, is an attitude of a writer toward a specific subject. How a writer approaches a theme or topic is the tone.
By reading a particular writer, you start knowing if they like to use irony, humor, or even sarcasm. It’s like you are hearing the writer and feel the way she or he addresses you.
Tone is the pure authenticism of the writer.
If writing is easy, you’re doing it wrong.
Write quickly so fear can’t catch you.
If you have planned your entire article, you just have to start writing. Don’t worry about editing, because you’ll do that later. Don’t worry about planning, because you have already done it.
When I started my full-time job as a writer, it was hard to have the discipline to write every day. Top writers tell us that we have to write 1,000 words a day. Every. Single. Day.
At first, it was a matter of pace. Like new athletes that start running. In the first days of practice, it seems that they have unlearned how to run. With writing, it’s the same feeling.
After you get your own pace, you need another more complicated skill: persistence.
If you’re a quick quitter, forget the pace.
You shouldn’t write if you can’t write. — Ernest Hemingway
Writing abuses of persistence. If you don’t believe that you have to write at least 1,000 words a day, you can’t be a writer. And that’s ok. Not everyone has to be a writer.
But if you want to fight for that dream, you have to be persistent.
I’m writing non-stop for 10 months. I write every day, Saturdays and Sundays included. And 10 months after I started, I don’t write just 1,000 words. Usually, I write 2,000 or more. I write one entire article and create the other one, all on the same day.
With the right pace and strong persistence, you can start finding your own style.
For you to find your own style, you have to be capable of understanding your audience. But also empowering the structure of your format. Meaning, you know when it’s better to write a listicle, a “How to,” a guide, a case study, a true story, or a trending topic.
These article types are not static, and you can combine two or three at once.
For example, you can write a listicle about a trending topic such as “5 Powerful Tools to Overcome the Loneliness of the Pandemic.” Or add “How To” style into a personal story such as “How Did I Earn My First $100”.
It only comes with experience.
Write without fear, edit without mercy.
As my writing goes forward, as a non-native writer, I always struggled with editing.
One of the first things I invested in was in an online course about grammar and structure. It helped me a lot. I didn’t write in English for more than 15 years. So, many details couldn’t be avoided in my first articles.
A lot of good ideas with horrible grammar make your article sucks.
Many of my followers gently corrected my grammar. They realized early on that there was not much experience with the practice of writing.
Soon I was improving, and now sometimes, I get an article on top publications.
The second step was to hire the services of a professional editor. Fortunately, in an interview that Sinem Günel gave to coach Colleen Welsch, Colleen talked about her editor, Bayley Sprowl, whom I recently started working with. She edits 2 articles a month, and we have a 1-hour coaching conference per month where we reflect on my writing.
To get to another level, you have to invest in your business. There’s no other way to do it, or you’ll stagnate. And your business turns no longer exciting, and your writing loses power.
Remember, a top writer has to be a good editor. But if you can do it with an external person, a professional editor, you’ll see your writing style improving like never before.
Final Thought
Writing a personal story is one of the most engaging strategies for any writer.
You can try to write about the last celebrity gossip, but are you the right person to do it?
As you write 1,000 words a day, you’ll feel something inside telling you what are the main subjects. But you’ll also listen to your audience. And between those two perceptions, yours and the audience, lies your balance.
Ideas come frequently. You can write them down in a notebook or use another digital tool. Some writers have more than 200 headlines waiting to be scrutinized to a future possible article. I usually have at least 20 headlines waiting for the perfect timing to boost into another piece.
You can search for trending topics and analyze Google if you can get solid keywords. Then, you can fight for a good authority position in the search engine.
Don’t make the naive mistake of writing an article on how to write better. Especially if you don’t even know what you’re talking about yet. That's the perfect article to lose the authority of your readers. It’s easy to see that you don’t know enough about the subject. Believe me, I know.
Read a lot. Feed your imagination with new ideas or different perspectives about a diversified basket of subjects. I read a book and two magazines per month. All of them in English, so I can learn new words or phrases I can use for future articles.
Last but not least, feel something to write something.
If readers feel your emotion and your feelings in your writing, most of them stay until the end. People love to read about people. So, get out of the house, be with friends, meet new ones.
A good writer’s power resides in the astuteness of seeing in others what no one else can see. A good writer is a kind of social Sherlock Holmes.
To perceive the unusual, the different, the peculiar is our goal. And only this way will we be able to stand out and make a difference.
Our difference.
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