When talking about writing nonfiction articles, we want to talk about where you can have these articles placed, the length of the articles, the research required, the structure, and the best places to put your articles.
Jill, heard the phone rang. She ran and answered it. She heard from an editor of a magazine that she had been hoping to write for. Then she woke up.
Wouldn’t it be good if you were to have a magazine editor call you and offer you an opportunity to write an article? Not only to write one article, but to write many short nonfiction articles, on any topics that you are passionate about, as many articles as you wish, with no chance of rejection! Well, that would be an even greater dream for Jill, and for us.
Where Can I Publish My Articles?
Let’s talk about where we can put articles. It can be in magazines, on websites, and they can some sections of newspapers.
How Long Should I Make My Articles?
What about the length of your articles? If you do some research on this, you will find one site says anywhere from 800 to 1000 words, while another site says 500 to 1500 words, and another one says 300 to 1000 plus So let’s just take the outside parameters of that and say 300 to 2000 words.
Considerations for Research
We also need to think about the research that’s involved. What kind of information do you need, and then how much information do you need? That will depend on how many words you’re shooting for. Where is the best possible place to get it?
Well, think about what you’ve ever read on this topic. Think about what you’ve ever thought about this topic – you have your own research. Think about what you have written. Then turn to outside sources.
Now, the internet has provided us a wonderful thing in being able to do a search on many different topics. So you can go do some online research. But whenever you do this, need to be a little more careful maybe then in the past on checking some of the sources for online articles or information. You may find three different places that say about the same thing, and you discover that they got all their information from the same place. So just be careful in checking out where you get your information when you’re verifying it.
Then you can talk to interesting people. If you know somebody who is an expert in the field or somebody that has experience in the area, you can interview them. Now you can even do that from a distance. You could do it over the phone or Skype or Zoom or some other online platform. Of course you could meet with them in person too.
Next, you’ll want to add some interest factors. These could be interesting facts that are related to your topic; maybe not directly related to what you’re writing about but you can throw in an interesting fact or two. You can start throw in some humorous items, that are related to your topic in general. Also, as I mentioned in the last post, you could add some stories that would illustrate your point.
So, we talked about where, and the length, and the research. Then you want to structure your article. It would have a beginning, a middle and an end.
The beginning you want to try to hook your reader, tell them why they need to read your article, and state the main point your article. In the middle, you will have more paragraphs that give more detail. Then at the end you tie it all together.
Where is the best place to put your articles? I mentioned magazines at the beginning. Those are still good, maybe harder, may not be as good as it used to be. Also newspaper. You could pitch an article to newspapers. Or, you could place them on a website. Probably the best website would be your own website, where you would have your own website and your own articles.
By placing these articles on your own website, you will be building a platform. Then when you get ready to write your book, you can pitch the idea to an agent who would contact a traditional publisher for you. One of the things they will be interested in is your platform. Do you have a platform and a following? One of the best places to build that is on your own website or own blog.
One of the reasons for having your own site or blog, building a platform of course. But think about it: You are in complete control of your writing; you own all of that content. You get to write on topics of your choice. You have no boss to answer to except yourself, you set your own hours, you can take off whenever you want, and you can write from anywhere.
I hope that you will consider writing nonfiction articles.I hope this has been helpful to you. If it has, and you’re reading this on my blog, and if you’d like more tips like these, then just go to the top of the page and click on the word “writing”, and you will find many articles about writing there. You can find the blog at www.randysblogs.com Please also check out my YouTube channel and subscribe for more great content.