Experienced writers will tell you that you must write in
order to improve your writing. Experienced marketers will tell you that you
need to get your brand in front of the public as often as possible. And
experienced editors will tell you that you need to attract readers with great
topics and catchy headlines. What no one will tell you is what to write about
in order to keep those words coming.
Sure once in a while you’ll luck into a freelance-assignment
deal where an editor will tell you specifically what topic to write an article
about, but if you really only on the assignments chances are that you are not
going to be producing much copy and certainly not making your name a household
name. If you limit your writing to only a few, or one, venue you will also be
limiting your exposure to the masses — your work will be seen only by one or
two channels (such as only the people who will be reading a certain magazine.
Limited audience and sparse writing equals low-income obscurity.
Are you blogging regularly, even frequently? Drawing readers
to your blog can be difficult at times. Using catchy headlines, popular meta-tags
or labels, and using Twitter, Google-plus, FaceBook, and other social
networking sites will help to promote your blog. Blog for a variety of venues (there
are always sites that are looking for fresh material to post), find
multi-author blog sites (many of these are themed), and if you are able open up
a second themed blog for yourself. Each avenue you are featured on will likely
reach a different audience — interest, age, status, financial standing, etc. —
and your name and product (your writing) will get seen by many. Promote your
own blog(s) under your name and people will begin to follow you from other
sites where they have read your work.
With all of this writing to produce you don’t want to waste
your time thinking of topics to write about; if your topics are boring and
overdone it won’t help to attract new readers. How do you find fresh ideas to
write about? Watch for trending topics, look at newspapers, trending Twitter
topics, popular, and top FaceBook posts. Notice what stories are coming up on
daily talk shows. Listen to conversations heard in public like the supermarket or
at parties. Whatever people are talking about are prime topics for articles, of
course trends can change hour by hour so go with the most recent topics you
can. Watch the calendar for upcoming holidays, national day of ?, historical
anniversaries, and even the phases of the moon or astrological signs for even
more ideas to spin words around.
Eventually you will want to focus your writing topics around
your specialty, but not too tightly, s that you will attract readers who will
want your specific product. Romance writers can look for relationship issues,
wedding themes, travel and destination (honeymoon) sites, etc. Science Fiction
writers might find great fodder in technology subjects, space travel, medicine
and gaming. Imagine that the main type of writing you do is a tree trunk and
all the related subjects are branches and all of those branches lead right back
to the core. You’ll build a bigger and stronger audience by reaching out and
grabbing readers who might have a related interest.
Writing Exercise:
Pick up a book, if you have multiple choices pick up the 7th
book, turn to page 7 and scroll down 7 lines. Begin a (short) story with that 7th
line. It doesn’t have anything to do with the topic of the book you selected,
just write.
Writing Prompt: What
is your favorite genre to write about? It doesn’t matter if it is fiction or
non-fiction. Draw a picture of a big tree with branches; write that genre on
the trunk of the tree. Label as many branches as you can with “off-shoot”
topics; branches that fork can be labeled with semi-related topics as well.
This “tree” will show you all of the topics you need to write about.
Challenge Assignment:
Find a recent newspaper article, it has to be newsy, it could be about a
crime, an accident, a run for political office, or anything at all. Write a
(made-up) human interest piece about a subject in the article. Tell your
readers about the subject, his/her upbringing, specialty, family, education…
Finish the piece off with an interview of the subject and ask questions that
will tell us how/why the subject was at that location at that time, what was going
through his mind, his emotional reaction to the events, and what his plans are
for the future.
