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By Mike Gunderloy I'm going to focus a bit more attention on writing articles. In this installment, let me give you my ideas on how to structure your articles. In school, you might have learned the formula "tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you told them." In the computer industry, this pattern still has some validity in writing traning material. Don't use it for articles, either for print or online. The editor is going to cut out two of the three renditions of your theme, and probably mentally file you as someone who's trying to pad the word count for extra pay. This is not the way you want your editor to think of you. Why is this? Well, for print publication, the reality is simple: slapping ink on dead trees is fiendishly expensive. Articles need to be concise to fit the space available (which, incidentally, is dictated by how many ads are sold in most cases; if the marketing arm of the magazine lands a full-page ad at the last possible minute, you can be almost certain that some article is going to have another page edited out of it). Online articles don't have that problem, but because large chunks of text are difficult to read in a scrolling window, most editors still frown on repetition. Now that we're stuck in Internet time, make your point and move on. So how should you structure an article? Well, here's a pattern that works for me:
I'll discuss each of these in turn. First, the point of the positioning section is to hook the reader. (If you're very lucky, a hooked reader will write to tell the editor what a great article you wrote. This vastly increases your chance of future work, because most readers never bother to write at all). There are a few ways to go about this. Here's a small selection:
There are many other ways to get the reader's attention, of course. What you want to do here is provide a reason for them to read the rest of the article. If you're having trouble writing a good positioning section, two thoughts. First, what got you interested in the subject in the first place? If you can spell that out, it's likely others will be interested as well. Second, if you're not even interested, don't write the darned article. It'll show. I usually aim for about two paragraphs for the introduction. In most magazines this will be above the first subhead. The technical content is both the easiest and hardest section to write. Easiest because it's the part you probably know the best; hardest because it's the bulk of the article. One tip here: if your article is code-based, the easiest thing to do is to write the code first. Then it usually works to just explain the code, starting at the top and continuing until you reach the bottom, introducing new concepts as you go. When you're writing the technical content, it's important to have a sense of the magazine's audience. This helps you judge which concepts you need to explain, and which ones you can assume. For example, in some places it might make sense to throw in a little note about StringBuilder being preferable to String for many uses; in others, all the readers already know this. The best way to get this sense is to read a few issues before writing. Then there's the wrap-up. Please do not use the final subhead "Conclusion"; this is not a school essay. Most of the time, I try to leave the reader with some action item here, so they know why they wasted time reading the article. For example:
Again, a paragraph or two is plenty for this section. Most publications will allow you to run a short (2-4 sentences) bio at the end of the article. You want to pay some attention to what you write here as well. The best bios manage to cram in several pieces of information:
Here's how I might put together such a bio for a fictional author: Joe Bloggs is the CTO for HangingOnByOurFingernals LLC, one of the last of the dot-com survivors. He's also the author of LEARN NOTEPAD IN 21 DAYS (Foo Publishing, 2002). When he's not experimenting with Web technologies, Joe enjoys rebuilding the decommissioned Minuteman silo that he purchased during the Y2K scare. Contact Joe at JoeBloggs@example.org. And a final note: with any luck at all, you will get some e-mail from readers. I'll probably do another installment just on handling e-mail, but my guiding principle is that you need to answer every such e-mail. Making a living as a writer is largely a matter of relentless self-promotion, and the more people you can get out there saying "Joe Bloggs is a great guy", the better. Bear in mind that some of the advice I'm giving you here comes from my own experiences as an editor on particular magazines and as a writer for others. You need to keep in mind that every magazine has different needs and rules, and every editor has different prejudices. While your ultimate audience is the reader, you need to sell to the editor first. Be attentive in e-mail and other exchanges with your editors, and you can learn what they're looking to purchase and what they like to see in an article. The closer you can match their needs and prejudices, the better your chance of selling articles. Mike Gunderloy is the lead developer for Larkware and author of numerous books and articles on programming topics. |