The Article Writing Process – Developing Your Idea

Developing an idea into an interesting article involves making a few decisions. Ideas are broad and an interesting article is focused. Finding the right slant to the article involves identifying several areas.
Audience
The person who reads your article may be obvious if you already know where the article will be published. You’ll want to slant your idea to an area that readers of that market will be interested in. Try to picture the average reader in that market and make a list of what you think he’d like to know.
Decide if you’re going to present your article as an informative article, as an advice piece or as a how to guide.
Narrow the focus of your idea. You’ll often find that as you eliminate the excess information that you will add to the article, you come up with a list of ideas of future articles on the same subject.
Once the idea has been developed to a workable article, decide what you want your identified reader to know once he has read the article. The main idea will become the theses of your article and will be presented in the thesis, or first couple of paragraphs.
Content
Make a list of the information that your article must include, listing in the order that you think is most important. Keep the list focused on the thesis. If your listed item of information doesn’t relate to your lead in paragraphs, it may not belong in the article.
If, on the other hand, the obscure piece of information brings the reader to the same conclusion as you intended, keep the information in, looking for a way to tie it into the rest of the article.
Your goal is to determine exactly what the point of the article will be. Just as you wouldn’t begin playing a sport without having an idea of the point of the game, you also shouldn’t begin the writing process without having an idea of what purpose the article will serve.
Goal
The goal of the article may be to inform, it may be to entertain or it may be to persuade. Choosing the slant or angle that your article will take before you begin writing enables you to clearly see and begin planning out the article. Without this step your article may begin as an informative article and evolve into an opinion piece. If you can see the possibility for different goals with your article make notes so that you can write more than one article on the topic.
Preparation for writing an article is the most important step because it helps you organize your thoughts and create a focused basic plan for an article while you are still examining your broad idea.