How to Write a Good Triond Article

We’ve all done it. Sat at the keyboard with a blank expression on our face, wondering what to write. Well, hopefully, I can alleviate some of the difficulty through this article. I’ll list some key tips to help you write effective Triond articles.

1. Regiment your time: Make sure to set yourself a clear “working schedule”, if you plan to use Triond to make any vaguely serious profit. Write for a few hours, and set yourself a clear goal. Maybe, for the first week, you want to publish an article everyday. Then, maybe you want to increase that to 2 articles, then 3, then 4, etc. This helps you remain focused and driven. Make sure you fulfill your “daily quota” of writing, and stick to your time plan (maybe half an hour per article?).
2. Focus: Interestingly, just about any given task can seem more interesting to writing, once you’ve been at it for an hour or so. Try and focus. Shut yourself off from all distractions, and promise yourself the coveted reward of free time once you’ve finished your daily quota.
3. List potential ideas: Undoubtedly in your day, you have time when you’re doing nothing. Put this time to good use! Keep a notebook with you, to jot ideas down as they come to you. That way, you don’t waste any time trying to decide what you want to write about.
4. Write about what you enjoy: This is obvious enough. If your short of ideas, consider your hobbies. Do you play an instrument? Do you garden? Do you have any skills that you could impart to other people? “How to…” articles are surprisingly popular, and if you write a clear, helpful article, it will be appreciated.
5. Write about current affairs: Politics, current issues, world affairs: all of these make for some of the most accessible, generalised topics. It’s easy to write an opinion-based article about such issues, or if you’re prepared to put the time in, you could write an informative article too. However, these both require you to maintain a “journalist” mindset. Continuously be on the look out for material. Read the newspaper, listen to the radio, watch the news. You’ll expand your own knowledge, and give yourself an almost unnending list of topics to write about. Yes, this is another use for that notebook I mentioned earlier. Seriously, get one!
6. Use good English: This can be a daunting prospect for many writers, me included. Grammar can be such a terrifyingly complicated and demanding master, leading to many Triond authors refusing to submit to his iron rule. Please, take the time to learn your grammar. There’s a handy webpage called dailywritingtips that can provide a massive amount of help with grammar, along with answering any other queries on the topic of writing. If you use good grammar in your articles, and try to improve your vocabulary via a thesaurus, you will be taken much more seriously.
7. Include factual evidence: When writing a non-fiction article, be it about types of dog or dinosaur, about politics or finance, it is vital to include factual evidence to back up your claims. Don’t just copy this from wikipedia: that’s plagiarising. If you have no experience in your chosen field, gather knowledge from a wide range of sources and when writing, write your accumulated knowledge in your own words.
8. Consider the structure of your article: Remember, if you want your article to be a success, it has to bring something new, something useful. If this need cannot be sated by information, fulfill it through your format and structure. Present your article in a clear, easy-to-read format, include pictures (sourced from creative commons) and videos and make good use of paragraphs. If you’ve ever read an article with no paragraphs, you’ll know how easy it is to lose your place, and subsequently lose interest.
9. Write in the style of your audience: Try and get into the mind of your target audience. If you’re writing a game review, then the article can be a little more informal (but not too chatty, or you won’t be taken seriously) and humorous, as your target audience is likely to be young men (purely statistically, of course. I fully understand that there are plenty of women gamers, and older male gamers). However, if you decide to write an article on finance, you need to be a little more formal, provide more factual evidence, and generally attempt to come across as “sophisticated”. If it helps you enter this mindset, wear a top hat and grow a moustache. If you’re a women: apologies, this may be quite a challenge.
10. Read often: I cannot stress this enough, it is is truly essential. Read anything: horror, romance, media (magazine, newspaper etc.), fantasy, science-fiction, it doesn’t matter. As a writer, you are what you read. You start to develop a style akin to that of the authors of your reading material, this being a very advantageous thing. If you gradually improve the complexity of your reading material, so too shall the complexity of your work increase. You will use more sophisticated language, develop good grammatical practice and gradually get a feel for your own style.

And I’ll tell you something. Developing your own unique style is by far the most important step to improving your articles.