Do you even know what you’re doing when it comes to articles? You can’t even begin writing until you take care of multiple other steps. Read about our guide in this article.

We can learn so many things from one single article. Whether it’s an article about the best restaurants in Atlanta, popular vacation spots near me, or the most influential influencers on social media, there’s an abundance of knowledge waiting to be discovered. Writing is an outlet for so many different things, and anyone can do it.

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Before you start writing

Of course, those articles typically need more than twenty minutes to achieve greatness. There are multiple steps involved when writing an article. The first and most important is to pick out a topic. The topic must be relevant, interesting, and have a lot of information surrounding it. If it turns out there isn’t much to read about regarding said chosen topic, it might be best to turn back to the drawing board and figure something else out.

Become an expert on your topic

This brings us to the second most important aspect of article writing: research, research, research. Without conducting the proper research, there’s a chance you could spread false information, and that’s worse than simply writing a poorly written article. As long as the topic is something that people are talking about, then there are bound to be articles discussing it.

Never plagiarize

Though the information comes from the knowledge you gain from reading other articles, do not plagiarize the authors’ works. Again, plagiarizing is just about the worst thing to do from a writing standpoint, so make sure the information is presented in a new, fresh way from your perspective. Like you, that author took time and effort to cover an important topic, and they deserve to have their work be all their own. 

Make an outline

When it comes to actually writing the article, be sure to make an outline after you complete your research. An outline is a tool that organizes written ideas about a topic or thesis into a logical order. You can use this tool to separate your main ideas from your subtopics, summarize what you want to say in each paragraph, and even pose questions for yourself to answer in your article. An outline will help you in just about every aspect of your writing, so it’s imperative to construct one before proceeding with any actual writing yet.

Who’s your audience?

As you begin to gather and collect your thoughts regarding how you want to build your article, you must be aware of your desired audience. For example, when talking about the latest Google phone, you know your audience will be people interested in technology. If you want to write an article about parenting, your audience will obviously be young, new-to-the-scene parents. Having the desired audience in mind makes writing the article much easier, for you have a direction to go in and build upon.

Never stop drafting

While it might be tempting to just write the whole piece out in one go, writing drafts is the way to go. When you write first, second, and even third drafts, it gives you the opportunity to work out every kink that you missed throughout the first few times around. When you write something once through, you get the very first, usually rushed version of your article, and that’s sloppy. Always write multiple drafts before you think about publishing anything.

Revise your work

Always revise your work. When you stop revising, the piece falls apart. Even if you had the most miraculous idea and you know the article will be perfect, that doesn’t usually happen. Revising your article is the key to a thoughtful, evolved piece of work, and the people reading your article will benefit from it.

Technology is your friend

Grammar check and spell check are your best friends. Technology certainly has its perks, and those are two of them. If you have any sort of grammar or spelling related errors in your article, it automatically makes you seem less knowledgeable on the subject, which in turn means the article is less credible than people thought going into it. People notice things like that, especially the ones that tend to read articles often. We don’t use typewriters anymore, so use the tools that are available to you in this day and age. Your iPhone even has grammar check and spell check available to you, so there’s no excuse for a poorly written piece of writing.

The writing process loves you no matter what

The beauty of the writing process is that it can apply to any and all sorts of writing. Whether you want to write a nonfictional piece about digital marketing agencies in Atlanta or a fictional piece about a person’s journey on MARTA, the writing process works. Again, technology is your friend, and it can help you no matter what you wish to write.

Even if you don’t consider yourself to be a “writer,” that shouldn’t stop you from attempting to write a good, solid article. The writing process is infallible, and anyone who follows it will have a great piece of work at the end of it. This applies to your overall lifestyle, too; with a few drafts and constant revision, by the end of it, you will have produced something beautiful. Happy writing!