How to write an article

and welcome back in today's lesson  we are looking at writing an article  

so this is for all you writers out there  who want to get your work published writing  

an article might be a very good first step  in helping get that objective achieved so  

article writing is an excellent thing for  professional people to do to try and raise  

their profile whether it's publishing it via  a website like linkedin putting a link there  

um or any other sort of trade specific websites  that will provide a platform for you for sharing  

your expertise and unique take and unique  kind of insight into stuff you know about

so what i'm going to do in this lesson is  kind of guide you through a step-by-step  

process to creating an article and then in the  second half of the lesson we will be looking  

at how to transform a rather dreary paragraph  into something um much more satisfying to read  

so first thing you need to do is choose  your subject material it needs to be  

something you really know about maybe you  have first first-hand experience of it

because you know why should we be reading what  you have to say if you don't know about that topic  

do it about something you know try and  make people think so take an unusual angle  

on something rather than just saying  what everyone says about something

where are you aiming to get it published  because that should influence the way in  

which you're going to write it so if it's for a  local town website then it's not going to be as  

perhaps sophisticated as a phd  discussion platform on nuclear physics

then you kind of need to brainstorm your points  and i've got a separate lesson on brainstorming  

but just write down all the  things that you could possibly say  

about this topic and then it will be a case of  um crossing out uh anything that's repetitive  

unnecessary uninteresting nope nope nope  oh this is interesting that's interesting  

and then maybe expand on the ones that you  think sort of pop out as being interesting

the next stage is to sort of plan the order  in which you're going to write the points  

your first paragraph really needs to have  a lot of impact needs to grab the reader's  

attention so probably you want to put the most  important point there in that first paragraph  

but think how the article is going to build  from one point to the next there needs to be  

a coherent yeah an understandable  structure then once you've got your plan um  

what what i like to do is actually kind of for  each paragraph sort of put sub-points so i'm  

going to say this in this paragraph i'm going to  say this this this then the next paragraph like  

just like three ideas to make sure that when  you're actually writing your first draft it's  

like you've got a skeleton and you're fleshing it  out okay um but the better it will be to read the  

better planned it will be from point to point  there should be a nice flow uh to the article

this is probably the most difficult bit uh the  first draft once you've got something to work  

with then it's much easier to sort of play around  with it and edit and improve and cut sentences and  

um but you've you've got to get you've got to do  that difficult step of um you know writing the  

first draft and the better the planning the easier  that is and the more you know about the subject  

the easier it is the more stories you have the  more facts at your disposal the easier it is um  

you should check that your facts are  accurate especially if it's some sort of  

um you know article on a particular sort of  academic topic or a particular sort of research  

topic you do need to make sure those facts are  right and then just leave it yep close the file  

put the book away um have a break from  it for a week before you come back um  

you know and then you should find that you have  a fresh perspective you can see it again and go  

that doesn't make sense there how do i make  that make sense i need to rewrite that sentence  

there's no link between the first and the  second paragraph so i need to find a link there

at some stage you should find a short snappy title  for it that's going to get your readers to go ah  

yeah yeah i want to read that so i was thinking of  writing an article i'm actually a dog owner myself  

i was writing thinking of an article that  someone who does not like dogs being in  

my local town park would write and  i was thinking of a title of like  

who let the dogs out because that  alludes to a song who let the dogs out

um so if you can reference something else  or if you can have a rhetorical question  

or if you can have some alliteration  where you have some repeated sounds like  

dangerous daredevils destroy deanery or  something deanery being where a dean lives  

not sure why they would do that but never mind

so we've taken a break we've come back we've  improved it then we're starting to rewrite it  

superfluous means some anything above what we need  so if we don't need it in there take it out cut it  

back make every word count and then when you have  finally got it into a place that where you're like  

i can't make this any better then if you're part  of the writing group that's the point to take  

it along to your writing group and read it out  although normally they're looking for fiction but  

take it to someone who who you  trust as being very good at english  

who can help you give you some  more feedback on your writing  

um and then once you've put in any  incorporated yeah that means put into  

practice any feedback they may have given then you  need to submit it send it to that place where you  

identified here as being your where you  want to get it published send it off  

send it off to a couple of different places and  then get some feedback from them and then either  

improve it or move on to your next article okay  let's have a look at some writing so thinking  

about writing a kind of article that might be  published on um a blog site about professional  

interests i thought i'd base this idea for an  article on going to a high level conference  

but this particular piece here has not followed  the advice that i gave on the previous board  

whereas saying plan plan plan you can tell that  each thought is just kind of like oh what should  

i say next and write it yeah it's not paragraphed  it's not doesn't expand any of the points  

and consequently the person runs out  of ideas after just a few sentences

the vocab is not particularly good  

the grammar is accurate but it's not written  in an interesting style let's have a read  

i went to the conference and it wasn't very good  why not thought it was going to be interesting  

why why did you think that when i arrived i didn't  know who to speak to now what the student is doing  

here is doing show is doing tell rather than show  so they're just presenting information they're not  

describing the information i've got a separate  video on how to do showing rather than telling  

the displays weren't very interesting now  the rhythm of each sentence is exactly  

the same because each sentence is  the same sentence type what we've got  

i went to the conference yeah simple so this is  this is a compound sentence because we've got two  

ideas i thought it was going to be interesting one  idea when i arrived i didn't know who to speak to  

actually we've got a complex sentence there um  because we've got a sub clause the sentence makes  

sense without that phrase there the displays  weren't very interesting again just a single idea

main clause the displays weren't very interesting  a clause is like a phrase with a a verb that  

makes sense on its own i thought they could  have used technology a bit better again it's  

kind of the same length of sentence there  wasn't really anything interactive so i left

reading that i'm underwhelmed um there's  no there's no descriptive detail the writer  

hasn't taken me on a journey anywhere okay so  i often work with students to try and improve  

their writing and i might guide them into writing  a bit more like this now bearing in mind that the  

article hasn't been planned and we're trying to  transform something quite mediocre by 901 i had  

gained two gray hairs waste wasted three euros on  lukewarm coffee and to take an oath which means a  

um serious promise to never again  brave the paris metro before 10 am  

so what we have in this sentence is a a rule  of three yep so we've got i'm never going to  

do this i'm never going to do this and i'm never  going to do this again and it instantly kind of  

draws you into the writing by 901 hmm why 901 not  9 a.m um and it's quite a complete sentence by 901  

this and then before 10 am there's  a kind of a symmetry here at 902  

so my sentences are linking together 901 902  i pretended now if you look at the vocabulary  

capillary um it's higher level lukewarm it's it  has more descriptive detail to brave is is quite  

a a rare verb to use pretended is not of a verb we  use all the time enthralled to be really excited  

by again not a very common verb at 902 i pretended  to be enthralled by stephen a computer programmer  

who i had been unwittingly that kind of means  like it's not very good luck paired up with for um  

v should be a v in here the cringeworthy  break the ice activity so i'm setting a scene  

yep i'm taking i'm asking the reader to to  imagine this situation i don't just say it  

was bad so i left i've got to describe it  i've got to make it real for the reader  

and then and then i'm probably going to go into  my point so what is the point of the article

conferences should be better organized  why aren't more resources pumped into them  

um and then exploring my list of  points in the order i have planned them  

okay so in this lesson we've looked at  how to write an article yep you gotta  

write about what you're interested in  um but it you see once once we have this  

even though it's not planned we can transform it  but that takes you know a bit of skill it takes  

um a decent handle on vocabulary it takes a bit of  creativity um you know but remember it's not about  

just giving information it's about making the  reader imagine um how bad or how good something  

was as i said i do coach people um with their  their writing skills so if you do need any  

help in producing a professional article then  honeyourenglish.com would be a good place to go  

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sort of summarize what you've learned in  this lesson until next time happy writing