Article Writing Tip – Creating A Smooth Flow Of Thoughts

About five seconds. That’s how long it will take for readers to turn the page on your article if it’s not easy to understand.
Fortunately it’s not difficult to satisfy them when you know how to create a smooth flow of information.
The way to do this is to put yourself in the minds of the readers. The first thing you have to do is capture their attention. Your first tool is the headline. In the case of this article, if you don’t want to write articles or if you are totally sure you already know how to create a smooth flow of information you probably won’t read it no matter how well it’s written. That’s fine, we want to find the readers who will benefit from what we have to offer.
Assuming the headline intrigues them, the next step is to hook them with an opening sentence that isn’t boring. In this article, I start with “About five seconds.” That creates a bit of curiosity-what about five seconds? Then I say that’s how long the reader will give you if your article is confusing. None of us want that to happen, so you read on (I hope).
Keep the hook short. People want to get to the meat quickly. They also want an idea of the solution to the problem and that’s what is in the second paragraph above: it assures you that you can do this and reiterates the promise of the headline.
The next paragraph should get right into the useful information. Here this means starting to break down the composition of an article: headline, hook, promise, methods.
Then you give more additional information. A series of bullet points makes this content easy to scan. Here’s the additional information about keeping that smooth flow going:
If you are describing a process, put the steps in the right order. For instance, if you are giving instructions for accessing a file on a computer, don’t say “click on the file marked ‘Error messages’ in the Files drop down menu.” Instead, say “In the Files drop down menu, click ‘Error messages.’
Keep your language simple. If somebody has to stop reading in order to look up a word they don’t know, most likely they won’t bother. If you have to introduce an unfamiliar term, immediately define it.
If a photo or illustration would help clarify the article, provide it.
Finish with a summing up. If you can find a logical way to refer back to the opening of the article, it gives a sense of completion.
In the case of this article, I’ve described the process in the logical order: from the title or headline to the hook, to the promise, to the content. The language is simple, and no illustrations are required. This paragraph is part of the summing up. That leaves just the rest of the summary that echoes the opening:
The steps described here are easy to follow and can be adapted to just about any topic. If you use them, it won’t be your article that people are putting aside after five seconds.