The art of writing articles has changed a bit due to the internet explosion. Yes, it still works the same way in many of the traditional venues. But, articles have changed mainly because of article submission sites and blogs.

Many people in the internet world consider blogs to be articles and in some ways they are. Blogs started as bits of information a writer intended to get across in an informal setting. Now, they are actually relied upon by many readers. If you Google a topic, you will find a hundred blogs compared to one authoritative site. And blogs have become very authoritative of themselves.

But, article submission sites such as EzineArticles and AssociatedContent have made it easy for anyone to write an article and get it published. I honestly love the internet and many of its venues for giving everyone the same leverage. There are things that need to be said and it’s critical that they get said at the right time. The internet offers everyone an instant voice for anyone who is willing to listen and I love that.

But, some art gets lost in the process. The years of college a journalist goes through and all the discipline that a writer suffers is thrown out of the window when just anyone can step up to the plate. People forget or were never taught the basics of article writing.

Who

Taking notes is the first step in article writing and the first thing that needs noted is who is involved. Now, not all articles are the same. But, “Who” is always a question that needs an answer. If you are reporting on an incident, who was involved? But if you are writing an article about the benefits of a new medical practice, who will it benefit? There is always a way to answer the “Who” part of any article.

What

The next question to answer is “what,” which can get pretty dynamic. What happened? What is the article about? What is the new medical practice you are talking about? “What” can get rather extensive, so you have to cover your bases to write a good article. Make sure you know every aspect about “What.”

Why

Some articles that are about an accident that took place or some incident in the news, people want to know the motivation. That’s the “Why” part of most articles. Why was the guy yelling in the Chinese parliament? Why is the lady biking across the country? But, “Why” for the new article writing direction is a bit different. Why would people want to read your article? You have to make it interesting and give them a reason, so that’s how you answer the “Why” question in most of these new article venues.

When

The “When” question should be rather obvious. But, there are several ways to answer this question. When did the incident occur? When should you start considering the new medical practice? The answer to both of these questions would be quite different even though the question is still the same. One might be at 11:00 pm on Wednesday while the other answer might be 3 months after you’ve had surgery. Either way, there’s an answer that is informative to the reader. They’ll want to know.

Where

Location, location, location. You’d be surprised how important the “Where” answer is in an article. When something happens, people want to know where it happened. If something is going to happen, your readers want to know where. It doesn’t do you any good to write an entire article and forget to tell people “Where.”

How

Just like the “What” part of an article, “How” can be the meaty part too. How did the car get up the telephone pole? Yes, it actually happened. A car up a telephone pole was in the news just as I was writing this and I thought it made a perfect example. And it does make a great example. People will want to know how it happened.

Those are the six questions that make an article completely informative. Now, you can simply cover the answers and wrap up your article or you can make it interesting. Getting the deep information and being really inquisitive is what makes a great article writer. Otherwise, you’re just telling people what they already know.

Oh by the way, in San Diego, California an un-named lady lost control of her car and actually drove up the telephone pole’s guidelines. I can see it happening…now that I know “How.”

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When you are talking to someone about what you want, what do you want to hear? You most likely want to hear that they know what you’re saying and they know how to get it accomplished. Doesn’t it make you feel better when someone can communicate those things to you?

When you have asked for a very technical process or you think it’s a very technical process, what do you want to hear?

“I no the job you ask and I can do. Luk at my resume. Give me a call.”

Note: Spelling errors were added for effect.

Or:

“I have worked as a business consultant for several companies and I understand that you need an expert in online promotion. There are several techniques I have mastered that will enhance your online promotion efforts. The first thing I would like to do is…”

Exactly! The second project proposal makes me feel like I’m in good hands. But, like I’ve said before that the hardest part of writing a project proposal is changing your mind around. When you wrap your brain around what the client wants and you learn to address those needs, now you are writing an effective proposal.

Acknowledge what you think the goals of the project are. What are the objectives? How does the client want them accomplished? Take a look at the timeframe too and make sure you understand exactly what the client wants as a finished project.

Most freelancers think that writing a project proposal is as simple as saying they can do the job and to get in touch with them. That’s not true at all. In fact, project proposals don’t fly when the writer doesn’t even acknowledge the final product.

For instance, a client who wants an e-book submitted in pdf format is being very specific about the finished product. Pdf is different from word doc and it used to be hard to put documents in pdf format. But, not anymore. Cutepdf.com will let you download software for free that allows you to convert your word documents to pdf format. Problem solved!

But, that’s just the final product. What if the client says that they need 30 pages with a TOC, appendixes and title page not included in the page count? In your project proposal, it’s a good thing to mention that you understand the page count exactly and that the TOC, appendixes and title page are not included.

What else does the project manager want? If the client mentions that they want cover graphics too, do you know anything about that? If you don’t address that you know anything about graphic design and can design a cover, you might as well not even submit the proposal.

It’s not hard to wrap your brain around what the client wants. Simply think about what you would like to hear if you had posted that project. Read it and put yourself in the potential client’s shoes. Once you have managed to see it from their side, you can write the perfect proposal. The only thing left is to make sure that it’s proofread. It doesn’t hurt to get a project proposal proofread if it means more business for you.

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Writing professionally, you run into things you may not have seen in awhile. The world is getting so informal and unprofessional that some of the old things go flying out the window. It takes a minute to catch up on concepts you learned years ago and get ready to apply them today.

The difference between MLA and APA is just one of those things. In fact, you just might at this moment be thinking what in the world they even are. Some of you might have a faint memory that they are documentation guidelines. But, you might not be able to remember much more than that.

If you have any kind of document to present in whatever venue you need, whether your boss needs a research journal or your professor needs an essay, you have guidelines to follow. They may have given you some guidelines on their own. But, you also have a style that your paper needs to conform to upon presentation. That style could either be MLA or APA.

MLA Style

The Modern Language Association (MLA) was formed in the late eighteen hundreds as a forum for the study of literature. Lasting throughout the years, it has become the authority on the format for documents written in scholarly pursuit. College students writing English papers or professional writers making their contribution to literature would use the MLA style.

The MLA publishes the MLA Style Manual, which answers every question for how to format your paper. If you want to know how to set the margins, it has the answer. It will tell you how to space your document and create a cover page. It will tell you how to paginate your pages and where to put the appendices. But, I think the most important role the MLA Style Manual serves is how to cite the works of others when you use them in your paper.

Plagiarism isn’t just a blatant disrespect for the work of others. It continues into cases where a work wasn’t cited properly. If you mention an author’s name in the paragraph where you are discussing that author’s work, you only need to add that work of literature to the “Works Cited” page at the end of your document. But, the guidelines are technical regulations so that there are no confusions. Plagiarism can definitely come into play when you quote or paraphrase another writer’s words, but the source of those words is unclear to the reader.

It might be considered a small infraction to you when you miss a period or a comma in your listing of a work you cited. And authors could really care less about a small period in your “Reference” list even though it’s a significant part of the MLA Style of citation. They will make a note that you don’t know how to pay attention and don’t know what you’re doing, which takes away from your overall credibility. But, they really don’t care when you make a small mistake like that. What they get upset about is when you blur the lines and you don’t make it clear that you used their work to support your own. Of course, there is more to it. But, when you are writing a paper in the pursuit of Academia, it is my personal opinion that this is the main concern in the field of scholars.

APA Style

The American Psychological Association (APA) is an equally authoritative organization based out of Washington, D.C. USA. Among the many things APA does, it publishes what is profoundly looked upon as The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. It offers guidance for writers too, but it governs an entirely different body of writers.

The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association is an editorial style manual for writers in the fields of the social and behavioral sciences. Just as in MLA Style, APA Style will tell you how to punctuate your paper and how to add tables. It offers guidance for present statistics and select headings. But, its main thrust again is to help writers properly cite works they use to support their own papers.

A well-written paper is not one that stands alone. This is debatable, but I don’t think one novel thought exists anymore. If you have a thought that is insightful or groundbreaking, I’m sure others have thought along those lines before. It’s called cumulative thinking. But, that’s not a bad thing.

When you write a paper that contributes your thoughts to the scientific community, there has to be thousands of other works that support your groundbreaking work. In other words, you’ve reviewed their works and come to your own conclusions. That’s your contribution. So, learn how to give other writers credit and get it right.

There are other editorial styles for formatting your paper. They include Associated Press, Chicago and Oxford among others. It is in my distinguished experience that if you work in journalism, the Associated Press Stylebook is the one that governs you. If you belong to an organization or work in a field like anthropology that prefers The Chicago Manual of Style, then that’s your style guide. Likewise, the Oxford Style to Guide is the UK’s equivalent to US’s Chicago Manual.

But as far as the US is concerned, MLA or APA is the editorial style you’ll most likely use. You should know what is required of you. If you haven’t been told, then follow the guidelines I just gave you. MLA is in the field of Academia. APA governs social and behavioral sciences. I guess this blog entry implicitly welcomes a view from the UK, one I cannot provide since I am a US based writer.

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Helium has just turned one year old.  You may have seen the Google adsense marketing blurbs when you are researching writing and resources for writers, and I think they are probably the number one writing services advertiser at the moment.

Helium is a site that allows you to submit your articles in anticipation that they will be sold (by them) and you get a percentage of the fee.  You can also earn a share of advertising revenues generated by the site and there are writing competitions which may can earn you extra pay as well.  The big issue is that you are not being paid for the time you spend crafting an article and getting paid any realistic amount is totally dependent upon the article being sold.

I’ve never contributed to Helium as I always shied away from submitting work with no guarantee that I’ll be paid for my efforts.  I wrote for a short while for a similar site Suite 101, but nothing ever really came of it and I stopped as work with upfront pay began to dominate my working time. The buzz on the various writing blogs regarding Helium is very mixed in terms of the effort required for no certain return but like almost everything else in life, it is a gamble.

That said, Helium has lasted a year so the business model would appear to be working, otherwise why do so many writers bother submitting to it? Currently there are almost 70,000 writers submitting articles to Helium though how many are still active is a matter for debate.  Helium allows you to view what a publisher is looking for and produce the articles as appropriate.  The publisher then will select articles and buys them; Helium’s starting rate for sale is $16 but they take a 20% commission.  Now comes the bad news, if the publisher does not select your articles then you are left with a work product that has taken you time to create but no buyer unless Helium finds someone else interested.

Like I said, Helium is a gamble!

I am going to break my Helium cherry and submit some articles to them this week, not least because of an email I received from a writing mate in Canada.  Chris outlined why he uses Helium and I think he has a point - Helium writers make money if their writng meets certain market based criteria:

• article quality - if it’s any good it will rank better and gain the opportunity to earn more;
• readership interest - if the subject matter is of no interest to anyone, no-one is going to bother with it; you need to write about interesting topics to gain a following;
• advertising attraction - in keeping with Chris’ philosophy, the market decides how much something is worth and advertisers will decide what rate they are going to allocate depending on subject popularity.  If you want to write on Aboriginal Hunting Habits you can expect a far more restricted audience than if you keep to personal finance which is a very popular subject, and advertisers follow suit with their rates.

Helium provides a naked and raw writers battleground for commercial success and if you can deliver what the market is asking for then you’ll get paid.

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I came across two websites that I think you’ll find interesting and useful - FirstWriter.com is packed full of publishing resources while The Written Road provides a wealth of information on how to go about becoming a travel writer.

FirstWriter.com

This site does require a subscription but it is very modest at only $2.99 but you get full access to a whole range of literary services. I particularly liked the very neat search engine for picking out magazines, newspapers and agents that may be interested in your work. With the search engine facility, you can narrow down a publication that accepts unsolicited approaches, work out how much you’ll be able to charge for your work - personally I think this alone is worth the subs.

Fiddling around the site, I checked out the writing competitions on the search facility and I was simply stunned at the number of poetry competitions that are being run both in the UK and the US. In the UK alone, for the month of December I counted over 20 before giving up and there were even greater numbers of fiction writing contests. Unfortunately for me, I don’t produce fiction and wouldn’t know a haiku if it stood up and bit me.

Undeterred by my literary disinterest, I had a good look around the search facilities that allow you to short list publications interested in non-fiction. There are are dozens of magazines and newspapers that accept submissions plus untold numbers of online publications too.

If you are serious about finding an agent, then just take a look at this link to the firstwriter site

They’ve very neatly categorised agents between the UK and US as well as sorting them out into topics of interest so if you are on the hunt, they’ve performed most of the legwork for you.

As another way to gain some exposure for your work they also provide an opportunity to contribute to their newsletter. Unfortunately it does not pay but I’m going to submit a couple of things myself in the hope of gaining an extra credit for my CV.

The Written Road

I stumbled into writing because I needed something to do while I am in the US - I’m unable to work there due to visa restrictions but writing is exempt as a working activity. As I’m planning on heading back to the land of Uncle Sam and cheap “gas” I’ve been researching travel related punblications in the hope of producing some travel pieces.

The Written Road was a little short on paying work but they do have a really good resource section. For no cost, I recommend this site but you have to dig around it to get to the little gems in there. One of the links I followed through took me to a blog/site called Vagabondish which provided some very useful advice on travel writing.

Like FirstWriter.com there are plenty of opportunities for no-pay article contributions if you are looking to gain some extra exposure in the market.

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