Make Writing Easy with Prewriting

Make Writing Easy with Prewriting

Be Prepared to Pack Value in Your Articles Successful articles are a combination of your expertise and creativity. Many Expert Authors attempt to save time by skipping creativity altogether. The effect can be likened to packing for a trip to Antarctica at the last minute. Without the necessary equipment and supplies to withstand the South Pole's temperatures, you may just end up blindly packing anything and missing critical items. Creating checklists (e.g. what to pack to stay warm) or brainstorming potential scenarios you may encounter (e.g. penguin photography) will help ensure not only your survival, but a good experience too! Checklists, outlines, brainstorming, etc. all connect to an often overlooked practice known as prewriting. Prewriting occurs before writing, proofreading, and editing. When done effectively, prewriting makes writing so easy - all you have to do is add a little polish here and a transition there and voila! Your article is ready for submission. Here's a great prewriting exercise to build your article writing momentum and infuse your creativity into your next set of quality original articles. 1. TARGET Always consider your audience. Write down the answers to the following questions and post it near your writing space where you can easily refer to it: Who's your target audience? What are the demographics of your audience? What do they do? What are their needs and their wants? What do they already know about your niche? What about your niche is their perception skewed in? What characteristics or goals do you have in common with your audience? Tip: Identifying your target will go a long way in ensuring you meet your audience's needs and write for their benefit, which means more traffic to your blog or website. 2. FOCUS What's your next idea? Narrow the topic you would like to tackle next. If it's a fairly broad topic, attempt to break it into a series of topics and save those for later. A good measure to determine if your topic is too broad is whether you can describe it in one or two words. For instance, a topic such as "quitting smoking" is way too broad. However, "determining age as factor in selecting a smoking cessation method" is much more focused. Tip: Narrow broad topics or brainstorm ideas by considering the angle with which you approach the topic (click here for 10 angles), as well as with keyword research. 3. GATHERING and RESEARCH Begin jotting down what you already know about your focused topic and then research any fuzzy areas. Use relevance to your article topic as your guide to ensure you don't include superfluous information. Tip: During the gathering phase, consider posing simple who, what, where, when, why, and how questions against your focused topic to help unlock information. 4. OUTLINE Create an outline including all of the core details or logic of your article topic. From your outline you can easily add transitions and polish, and voila - an article! Tip: Outlines are amazingly simple using article templates (try our article templates by clickinghere).