At the beginning of this month I received a tip that this wonderful website, How to, was looking for more articles and was offering a cash prize for the best one submitted during July.  I rubbed my hands together with glee.  After all, I have been told that writing “how to” articles is one of the easiest types of articles to write; all you have to do is find a topic, give a brief introduction, write out a step-by-step list of what to do and you’re done.  Easy.  I am working on a travel-writing course and living in Japan so thought the “Abroad” section would be a perfect fit.  I brainstormed and came up with about 5 topics and started writing.  I sent each article to my “bad ass” editor (his description of himself although he also answers to Dad).  He sent each article back with the basic analysis: boring.

If you are writing a basic, “How to open you screen shot in Paint”, you want boring.  Click on this, press this key, open this menu and you are done.  Perfect.  However, if you are writing a travel article, for example, you do not want your reader to read two lines and fall asleep.  You need to keep you reader interested enough to read the whole article.  So how do you as a writer do this?  From my experience over the past month, I have found a few things that work.

1. Make your introduction a story in which you introduce a problem.  Allow your readers to put themselves in that particular situation.  Then the numbered list acts as a solution to that problem.  As long as your readers can picture themselves having the same problem at some stage, they will want to read on to discover how to solve it.
2. Choose a topic that makes you as the writer feel excited.  If you are interested in the problem then your writing will be more alive and interesting to read.
3. Finally keep practicing and brainstorming.  It is amazing how the quality of my articles has improved over the last month until I have 3 or 4 articles that I am happy to submit.
    

This content was provided by one of our users, Penny