However…Making Transitions Count

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A killer article has a few key components: developed, compelling lede, thought provoking closing, thorough research and smooth transitions.

Writers will spend hours, if not days, combing over their research. They will take a hard look at their lede and closing to make sure each gives the desired impact. Many will check over the article for proper word usage and spelling, then send it in to the editor.

Wait. You missed a spot! Transitions cannot be ignored. They give an article flow, acting as speed bumps, yellow lights and stop signs throughout the piece. Have you ever read an article that starts and stops like freeway traffic during rush hour? As you read, you feel yourself hopping from one subject to another without so much as a “however,” or “Others seek…”

Transitions let the reader know, “Okay we’re finished with this subject – now please adjust your seatbelts as we move on to another related topic.” Transition words and phrases are key and Study Guides and Strategies has a great tool to help you find the right ones.

There are times when there isn’t an easy way to transition from one subject to another. This is where you insert a full stop known as a heading. Headings break the article into smaller, easy traveled sections. They tell the reader immediately where they are going. Time to change lanes!

Another great transition technique to use is quotes. A quote uses a person to move your piece into another area. It gives a human voice to the transition and brings color to a piece.

Ensuring smooth transitions within  a piece is tricky, but so important to crafting a well written article. Before you send that article in, read it out loud. Are there any spots where you stumble over words or feel an abrupt stop in ‘the flow?’ You may a transition problem. Tune it up and turn in a killer article.

Too Many Articles Killed the Freelance Writing Star

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Success is going to happen. As a freelance writer, if you keep plugging away, success will happen for you. Sometimes it will hit all of the sudden. A deluge of articles, projects and client meetings suddenly appear in your email box. In between giddy high fives to yourself, you quickly say yes to everything and get to work. Other times it builds slowly, like a tide coming in and you suddenly find yourself surrounded by work.

Soon you’re slogging away frantically trying to meet all your deadlines and while steak for dinner is nice, you don’t really get to enjoy it because you’ve got to wolf it down between edits. Sound familiar? If it doesn’t, it will soon. Too much success can kill your career.

While it’s nice to be popular, if you have too many projects you cannot pay due diligence to each one and you’re going to make mistakes. Silly mistakes you would have caught had you not been so busy. Or you’ll miss deadlines – the ultimate career killer.

“No” is the word.

As a successful freelance writer you need to strike the balance between the feast and famine seasons. It’s against a freelancer’s genetic make-up to turn down work. Yet, the word ‘no‘ must be reinserted into your vocabulary.

Do you have time to complete a 2,000 word article in two hours?

“No.”

See? Easy! Be realistic with time. It doesn’t stop or rewind. Being the crack, go-to-writer for last minute stories is a great way to earn a reputation. What kind of reputation is up to you. If you know you would need two days to turn in a large piece, don’t commit to a tight deadline. This keeps you from making yourself crazy and ticking off an editor who counted on you to get the job done.

For pieces that have a little more lead time, no doesn’t have to be the end of the conversation. Insert a comma after your “no.” Sometimes it’s possible to negotiate deadlines – but do so in the beginning. Waiting until two days after your piece is due is a big no-no.

By now some of my intrepid freelancers are wondering how in the world are they supposed know what they have time to do. Honestly, it just takes knowing your writing style. Unfortunately, it takes time to get to know yourself as a writer. A simple tool can help you develop a good feel for your writing time needs.

Cue the editorial calendar.

Yes, I know, this horse is pretty much dead. I beat it often. It has personally begged me to stop, however I cannot stress the importance of having and MAINTAINING an editorial calendar. Simply putting due dates on a wall calendar is not maintaining a calendar. Jotting everything down dutifully once month and then never looking at it again is not maintaining a calendar. Regularly logging in due dates, carving out writing, editing, revising and “marinating” time for each article or project and noting when pieces are finished is maintaining a proper editorial calendar.

Planning for success means not just listing what you’ll do with all the money flowing in – it means planning for all the work as well. Establish a system now, so when the wave hits, you’ll be ready.

5 Ways To Tell Your Article Angle Sucks

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Coming up with article ideas or interesting angles is one of the challenges of being a freelance writer. Throw out the thoughts of being in competition with other writers, your main competition is yourself. Can you continually come up with ideas and angles? Are those angles fresh and interesting or the stale standard? Do you have the determination to mine resources for new ideas?

I know, it gets tough out there. It seems there are a million “writers” and actual writers covering every topic under the sun. The internet has spawned a deluge of information and the average writer may get lost in a sea of evergreen articles. But, you’re not the average writer are you? The information tidal wave may seem like a negative, but in reality it’s a positive. A large amount of average allows for the different and extraordinary to stand out. So, that article you’re working on right now…does the angle suck?

1. Does it… Show up on Google?

If it does, can you switch out the sources with yours and pretty much have the same piece? Google is a great source of ideas, it’s also a great source of ideas that have been done to death. My favorite freelance writing dead horse is the editorial calendar. We’ve covered it at length here, will likely still cover it again in the future. It doesn’t make that horse any less dead.

2. Does it…Give you writer deja vu?

Like you’ve have the feeling you’ve written it before? Muuuaaaahh! Don’t just shrug this one off. Go back and find the article. It will help you avoid repeating yourself and if you’re like me, rereading your work you’ll find an angle you could have conquered differently, other sources you could have contacted. Learn from your past.

3.  Does it…Take longer than a few moments to explain to a lay person?

Unless it’s a heavy tech or specialized niche article you should be able to spit out the basic premise. It may be interesting and definitely different, but if it’s too conceptual and you have trouble explaining it, readers may have trouble with the point of it.

4. Does it…Make you sleepy just thinking about it?

I’ve written about this before, if you’re bored writing it, I’m going to be bored reading it. Not every topic is going to have the passion and excitement that gives writers and readers goosebumps. That’s still not an excuse to go auto-pilot. Find a way to get interested in the piece. Talk to a kooky source. Talk to a stranger about your topic and take note of the questions they may ask. This is how you get to the heart of the audience.

5. Is it…The result of low self-esteem?

There are times a writer, for whatever reason, doesn’t feel quite worthy of their position or craft. I know of writers who spend the first 10 seconds looking at their latest published piece with glee then the next 20 minutes pouring over it with a magnifying glass, gasping in horror at this turn of phrase or that choice of word. Low writing self-esteem may lead a writer to take a tried and true, or tried and through, angle on a piece. They don’t want to rock the boat, they are unsure of how the angle will be received, they don’t want to blow it with this editor, that publication, etc.

When I think of these folks I’m reminded of on my favorite moments from the movie The Incredibles, a woman is sobbing saying she doesn’t know what she’s going to do and her helpful friend smacks her about the head a couple of times and tells her to pull herself together and reminds her that she’s a superhero. On those low-esteem days when you begin to wonder what to do, I want you to remind yourself of who you are: You are a writer! Pull yourself together!

People can get information from a variety of sources, any day or night. Give them a reason to read your piece. If it’s an evergreen topic, give readers fresh pine aroma not dried stick with shedding needles.

Bitesize: Subheads in Article Writing

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Often an article will have a topic that is like a giant buffet or one of those burgers loaded with everything under the sun. While impressive to look at, it is best to break the whole thing down into manageable bites so that the reader isn’t overwhelmed with information and the writer isn’t overwhelmed with finding a way to transition each morsel into a delectable feast.

Outlines Help

When writers cull their research and outline their article before starting the writing portion of the process, they’ll find subheads tend to highlight themselves. These standouts are a part of important information that support the overall topic. They have several key points that warrant special highlighting. Take the time to identify subheadings early and streamline the writing process. No need to spend hours mulling over a better transition when a subheading will break up the information in a concise and clear way.

Speaking of Clear

Subheadings are intended to make the information presented easier to understand, read and digest. This means it is imperative for the headings to be concise, clear and complementary to the headline and to the other subheadings. So far in this post my headings have leaned toward a sentence-like structure, in order to maintain consistency throughout the rest of my post I’ll need to follow the same format. If you chose to make each subheading a funny phrase, then be sure you’ll have enough hilarity to last throughout the article.

Allow for Digestion

Have you ever seen those articles or blog posts that look like this: subheading, one sentence; subheading, one sentence; subheading, one sentence? It’s the equivalent of biting and then before you’ve finished chewing taking another bite. The information is coming in rapid succession without allowing the reader to digest what they’ve just read before jetting off to another subject. When deciding whether or not to use a subheading, first figure out if you have enough information to support it. If you merely have a series of single sentences then you most likely need to bullet point, not subhead.

Not All About Keywords

Some writing “experts,” especially those SEO “gurus,” tout subheading as a perfect way to slip in extra keywords to give your article the all important SEO fuel. They are not entirely wrong, but their approach is often too heavy handed. Your subheading should be about clearly communicating the main idea of the information that follows. If you can work in a keyword then fantastic, but it should not be seen as merely a vehicle to get more Google-juice. It has to do something, say something.

Subheadings take a knife and fork to the full article, carving it up in bite size pieces so all the information can be enjoyed and savored. The reader doesn’t get messy – covered in indecipherable information, and you reap the benefits in web hits and/or happy editors.


Three SEO Headline Writing Tips

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After my post “Three Tips for Killer Web Headlines” Cheril Vernon asked a great question about SEO or search engine optimization in headlines:

I would like to see more suggestions for headlines and making them SEO friendly. Is it better to put your keywords in the first part of the headline or does it make a difference?

SEO writing for headlines isn’t as difficult as many make it out to be, especially traditional media journalists who often deride writing for ‘a machine’ as stifling to creativity. The key to making SEO headlines work is to make SEO a natural part of the headline. Already, the headline is comprised of a description of the article so the important keyword(s) should already be included in it.

Keyword Placement

To answer Cheril’s question, I don’t think keyword place in the headline makes much difference as long as it’s before the natural search engine cut off. Search engines give you anywhere between five to ten words in their listing before they cut of your headline with the lovely period of ellispsis (…), so if you’re title gets a little wordy, be sure to hit that keyword before it wonders off into nothingness.

Example: Freelance Writing Pros and Cons for the Person Who Wants to Eat and Earn a Living. Your keyword is freelance writing and Google would have likely cut your headline off at: to Eat and Earn a Living if not at for the Person. I’d like to caution you on long headlines, depending on the cut-off, you’re well researched, witty article may not see much traffic.

If I cut this article off at for the Person, I at least get the important/impact point of Freelance Writing Pros and Cons. If the article is not geared toward basic writing pros and cons, but toward specific markets or genre of writers i.e, freelance writing for technical writers; the cut off will make a big difference in reaching your target market.

Keyword Overload

Just like a well written SEO article doesn’t lose itself to its keywords, a well written headline isn’t chock full of them. Resist the temptation to throw in a bunch of keywords to generate hits. Honestly, it’s annoying and those headlines, while ripe with search engine juice, are likely to be ignored by readers.

Most internet users are aware of keyword driven articles. They may not have a name for it, but they resoundingly hate those sites that appear geared toward sucking in anyone looking for “growing tomatoes” by filling the screen with keywords, weirdly structured sentences and billions of largely useless links. Overload your headline and you may turn off the engines as well. Google is known for banning such blatant SEO work.

Check Your Competition

The SEO for Journalists blog had a good piece of advice:

A good test for journalists is to type their headline into Google News before the story is published. If you see results that are similar to the topic you’re writing about, it’s probably a good headline for search. If you see the exact same headline multiple times, you should rewrite it to stand out from the others, possibly by putting different keywords at the front of the headline. If you see a random assortment of topics, you need a new headline.

Got a great headline writing tip or question? Email me ([email protected]) or post below!

Three Tips for Killer Web Headlines

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The other day I wrote “Down with Deb Ng! Headline Writing 101” where I touched on misleading headlines and basic, across the medium rules for writing headlines. The responses are still coming in, many people tuned in to see what dirt I had on Deb and others were ready to jump to her defense – not that she needs it because girlfriend can take care of herself! Anywho, the headline was a success and I got a few emails asking how to write a headline the right way. The parameters change depending on the genre, so today, let’s look at web writing.

Brief is the word

Five words or less – what is the article about? That’s your headline. Search engines, busy readers and feed skimmers only need one glance to decide if they are going to click your link. Your headline can be longer, but readers often translate a wordy headline into a wordy article.

Writing great web headlines has gotten a little more complicated since the rise of social media and microblogging. Headlines not only need to be short for  readers skimming search engines for interesting titles, you now have to think about the “Retweet factor” and link sharing. A short headline allows for retweeted or forwarded links, title and commentary.

Lists Rock

One sure way to increase your clicks is through lists. I’m not quite sure why people love lists so much, but I know I’m a sucker for those end of the year “Best Rock Songs of…” countdowns and the VH1’s “I Love…” series. Perhaps it’s because lists are direct and can spur debate – what was left out, what should have been ranked higher or lower, etc. They also work well on the web because they are skim-friendly and easily digested. “Three Tips for Killer Web Headlines” is more interesting than “Killer Headlines.” It’s also clear I’m talking about writing a great web headline as opposed to headlines about killers.

Punctuate for Pete’s Sake

I talked about this a little in my last post, but it is worth repeating. In the retweet, Google juice world, using punctuation to make a title brief and clear is one of the best ways to get a reader’s attention. Let’s take a look at a couple of web headlines:

From CNN:

Weir snubbed by ice tour; GLAAD upset

Jennifer Love Hewitt, Jamie Kennedy split

Now insert the missing words and the headlines become long and boring on the eyes: “Weir was snubbed by ice tour and GLAAD upset” or “Jennifer Love Hewitt and Jamie Kennedy have split.” Commas, semi-colons and colons turn long titles into catchy, clickable headlines.

Come across a killer web headline? Post it below!


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