Supaproofread Blog

Generating Interesting Articles and Titles – Part Two

Delving into parts we should not have to reach….colon cleansing made “interesting”

My previous post provided some generic formulae widely used for generating articles and titles that readers are attracted to. As a professional writer, you are not always in a position to pick and choose your assignments and you may be faced with producing content on the most unsavoury of topics. In this instance, I recently had to deal with an assignment on colon cleansing, and though the memory still haunts me, the writing show must nevertheless go on.

Previously, I dealt with “How to..” Lists and quoted a “Study” as a way of generating titles and articles. I will finish this off here, with three more general formula techniques.

Copyright – A Must For Internet Safety

It is a common trend, today, that online content is often found to be republished on other websites without permission being asked from, or credit given to, the original author of the writing. As more professionals make their work available online, protecting it is of primary importance. It is imperative that writers and publishers take steps in protecting their work from people who use it for personal gain. Copyrighting all their online material, gives writers and producers the safety that is needed to protect their work.

Copyright is a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States (title 17, U.S. Code) to the authors of “original works of authorship” including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, architectural and certain other intellectual works.

Mistakes That Ruin Your Writing Credibility

picture of an erazer

The following are the most common mistakes that people make when writing for fiction, a manuscript or looking to promote a book title.

Poor grammar, spelling, typos and usage

One of the basic aspects of writing is being grammatically correct, without making silly spelling mistakes. The single most common error that people make is the usage of the passive voice. In passive voice, nothing is ever anyone’s fault, because people do not do things. Things happen to people. “Bobby ate the pizza” is active. “The pizza was eaten” is passive. Note that the action of food and the food is more important than the character in the passive voice. When writers are unsure of themselves they often drop into the passive voice. Along with this, people often make mistakes in the usage of tenses. Immature writers will begin stories in whatever tense they want, and not maintain logic in their use of tenses.

Generating Interesting Articles and Titles – Part One

Colon Cleansing is not a pleasant subject but……..

As a writer for hire, you may have some choice over your subject matter, but realistically you’ll take any work that pays what you are looking for. It’s a stark choice between paying the bills or not and like someone said, “I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor and of the two, being rich is better!”

So you have an assignment to deliver articles on a mundane or less than interesting subject and now you have to come up with content that will attract readers and promote your client’s objectives for creating the project. This is where you can start employing some generic approaches for developing articles that can be adapted for pretty much any subject. Looking through these examples, you will probably start recognising the general formulae for many of the articles and content that you come across on the web.

Here’s our subject then – colon cleansing – this is a real project I worked on recently and frankly, it’s a pretty disgusting and distasteful topic, which I knew almost absolutely nothing about when I was given the assignment. Now, how do we go about generating article ideas for flushing out your insides?

What Not To Do When Writing For Children

Yesterday I was going through a book written for children. Interesting, but not captivating enough. Writers make the mistake of underestimating the quality of work when it comes to writing for children. That doesn’t make sense, as right from the beginning children should be accustomed to reading quality writing. Hence, I would like to enumerate 7 points on what not to do when it comes to writing for children. If you’re interested in writing for teenagers then see my previous post on writing for teens.

Never underestimate children’s capacity and use of kiddish language

Remember that you are writing for children who are often more shrewd and clever than what you were as a kid. After all, the internet, television and computers have widened the range of information and knowledge that is available to them. Nowadays, even children expect quality and substance when they read.

Article Templates – How To Write An Article

Learn How to Write an Article

Now this may seem like teaching granny to suck eggs; however, I assure you it is not. Assignments frequently arrive for articles to be delivered in batches usually following a related or common theme. They may need to be twisted slightly to accommodate different keywords and phrases for SEO purposes or indeed to generate interest for the sake of pure marketing and promotion.

Ask yourself how you would handle twenty 500 word articles on male pattern baldness and your deadline is 24 hours from now?

Using a template will help you focus on delivering the content in a structured fashion that keeps you on topic without meandering through hours of fruitless research or preparation. You do not need to be a slave to a template but I use them frequently and alter them as seems fit depending on the project I’m working on. Below is a template I use and have saved as a Word document and reach for it whenever I am starting a new batch of articles.

There may be cries of “foul” from some of you, but my time is my money and the same applies to anyone seriously looking to earn a living writing.