Better And Faster Article Writing

Want to write articles faster while maintaining high quality?

Of course you do! Who’d choose to write slowly if they could choose to write quickly and well?

You’re about to read some important writing tips. These tips will help you produce better articles faster, meaning you’ll be able to free up time to do other things.

Relaxing on the beach perhaps or perhaps even writing more articles to help you make even more money.

These are not concepts; they’re tried-and-true methods used by newspaper reporters and journalists the world over. Indeed, these methods are used under excruciating deadline pressure.

Marketers can benefit by learning a few “tricks” from journalists. Reporters frequently are called upon to perform minor miracles of writing — miracles performed while phones are ringing, people nearby are chatting and editors are pacing the room with severe looks on their faces.

With some practice, you’ll be able to incorporate these tricks into your own writing. In a few weeks you’ll notice a marked improvement in your speed with no difference in quality.

In fact, when you commit yourself to these methods your quality likely will improve because your mind will not be cluttered with unimportant details — details that slow you down.

Some marketers will need to unlearn a couple of bad habits and accept the notion that this can be done. Comfort yourself with the thought that it’s done every day in thousands of publishing companies across the globe — by writers who are no more talented than you.

Writing Tips for the Writer

This is the easiest tip to incorporate into your writing, yet marketers often choose to ignore it.

Basically there are two types of writers — writers who “build” their articles for the benefit of busy readers and writers who build their articles as monuments to themselves.

If you commit to becoming a writer who writes for the benefit of busy readers, your speed will improve. Why? Because you’ve acknowledged that readers are busy and you don’t want to waste their time. When you’re not wasting their time, you’re not wasting your time.

Writers who put their readers first do not bury ledes (an old-fashioned newspaper term that means “leads”). In other words, they’re being courteous to readers by not making them wait to get important information. They put the most important information at the top of the article.

On the other hand, writers who build monuments to themselves frequently shield readers from the most important information, burying it lower in the article while thinking they’re being crafty and clever.

Writing is not about gamesmanship; busy readers don’t like to play “Hide and Seek” with the writer, meaning they don’t want to have to hunt for something meaningful.
It’s time to ask yourself a hard question: What type of writer am I? If your honest answer is that you’re the type who builds monuments to yourself, commit yourself today to writing for your readers’ benefit. Your speed will improve because you’ve taken gamesmanship out of the equation.

Gamesmanship is a huge waste of time — for both the writer and the reader.

Article-writing is about economy, delivering critical information quickly to a busy audience hungry for the information.
Commit yourself to serving the needs of your audience and your speed will improve.

Along those lines, recognize that newspaper articles typically are written so the average ninth-grader will understand them. If you use “big words” and hide information, you’re being neither clever nor crafty.

Write for the reader. Don’t build a monument to yourself and your marvelous vocabulary. Grab readers in the first paragraph and don’t let them go. Don’t make them wade through extraneous details to find important information.

Stop building monuments to yourself.