How to Write Winning Articles Without a Teacher

How to Write Winning Articles without a Teacher

No matter the content of an article, its effectiveness to the reader makes it a more article than others. Despite the gravity of the content for an article, the style, language, tone and impression matter a lot in capturing the readership. An article may take a descriptive, guiding, informative, notifying or any other form, for an activity, process, story and so on.

You can now follow the procedures that will help you enhance your writing skills and techniques for a winning article.

Planning

Before you commence on any writing, it is very important to first think – think – think and come up with a clear and specific idea.

At the back of your mind, point out the objectives of your article. Think about what you want your readers to achieve from your work. This will help you take note of the key concepts to be tackled in your writing.

Plan the scope of your article depending on the type and need of your readers and what you intend to acquaint them with.

When you are conversant with what you want, then select a topic to write about.

Outlining

Outlining will help you come up with a frame for your article and the details at this stage may be to your choice. Following is a guide for the outline.

·      Title

Your title must be well described, either as a single word, phrase or sentence. It has to be short and does not necessarily need to be comprehensive as long as it is in a way that captures the readers’ attention and shows the article’s exceptionality.

·      Introduction

Orient the readers to your written work in a smooth and bridging manner from their real mind to your opinion. Let them know what you are unleashing for them and probably what they expect to achieve from the article.

·      Subtitles

Segment your work according to concepts or ideas being tackled. Ensure that they are sequential in nature. Start with those which are easily understood towards those that are harder or start with the major ones, followed by their derivatives. Make sure that an independent idea has its own subtitle; however, limit the subtitles as much as possible. Be careful with the levels of subtitles.

For example;   Title:                   The World

                     Subtitle Level 1:     Continents

                     Subtitle Level 2:          Asia

                     Subtitle Level 3:                 China

·      Conclusion

Wind up by letting your reader know the level of your opinion, keeping them stick on your idea and even believe its gravity. This does not need to be a lot of explanation, but rather a final summarized form of your work. In some story articles the writer may intentionally decide to mount pressure on the readers’ eagerness and end up mysteriously. This is also not bad especially on the fiction works which are in series.

Writing

Yes, it is now time to start the wording of your winning article. Start the dress up of your outlines, being consistent. Write as much as you can think of and at this point do not care so much about the spellings, but be careful not to mix up ideas. Emphasize the style of your work at this stage and make sure you exhibit uniqueness.

You can then have your work undergo typography. This can be done by you if you are conversant with word processing or you can use a typist. Double space your work at 12pt font on single sided A4 sheets and not spiral bound. This is the first draft of your work; try to read it over and over while correcting all the errors with ink as much as possible, each time printing a revised copy until you fill you are done. While doing this, you will be checking your style and consistence, flow, grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, facts (for non fiction articles), and so on.  

If you feel you are done and you have no more to do on your article, you can then give out about five copies of your work for critiquing. This critique should focus mostly on style, technicalities of writing, uniqueness or any other related issue.

When you get people to critic your work, it does not necessarily need to be experienced writers, although having atleast one is vital.

While studying the critique, find out how the readers understand you. Do they perceive the content in the way you wanted it to be perceived? If not, where is the problem? Get comments on your style and technical issues such as relevancy, omissions, misrepresentations, language, coherence, chronology and tone.

Get all the views, take considerations and it is you to finally decide what is best for your article. Rectify these areas, however, be patient and do not care about how many times you re-read and re-write your article, after all each time you revise it, it becomes better, although not always.

Then have a copy edited printout, but have the impression it creates in your mind – Be sure it is strong enough.

Refining your article

It is now time to final touch your article, where you get the format of your work, include whatever illustrations or photos the way they are supposed to be finally. Finally proofread your article.

Your winning article is now ready for publishing.

Tips

·      Each time an idea comes, stop what ever you are doing and not it down.

·      Never feel tired of re-reading and re-writing your article.

·      Always be patient and systematic while writing.

·      Be tolerant and decisive to reviewers’ comments.

·      You do not need to grip onto this article, but rather concentrate on the principles involved in it to guide you.

·      When you write over and over, you will gain experience and at a certain point as you hold a pen ideas will just flow through to paper.

·      Expect a time where you will need no outlines and reviewers. At this point you just directly write down your ideas in a draft which you keep on improving. You can only write one draft and the second is final.

·      Reading other writers’ works is also very important to learn from them and comparing your status.  

Conclusively, a winning article writer does not necessarily need to keep following this trend all the time; however, for beginners, by the end of the fifth article the writer should be able to freely write with the discussed ideas at finger tips and without any difficulty. A good writer will not always be rigid onto this writing trend; however, he/she will continuously keep developing skills as writing is not tied to this trend.