Home   >   Writing for a Living   >   How To Generate New Article Ideas

How To Generate New Article Ideas

By on May 16, 2017
How To Generate New Article Ideas -Writer's Life.org

As a freelance writer, it can often be hard to continuously come up with new ideas.

Finding inspiration and always having a steady stream of fresh content is one of the freelance writers biggest challenges. You can’t keep regurgitating the same tired old story, and to keep your job interesting and those paychecks coming in you to need to always be one step ahead when it comes to winning story pitches to ensure that you’ve always got work going on, and to make your job more fulfilling too!

So how can you make sure you consistently come up with new article ideas? Here are some useful things to try.

Get new hobbies. Writing about what you are passionate about is the ideal job. While, as a freelance writer, you can’t always pick and choose, if you are able to land a gig writing about what you love, it’s pretty much the best job in the world!

So, if you are feeling stuck for new ideas, why not try some new hobbies and see whether you develop an interest in them? These days there are publications for just about anything, so if you suddenly develop a taste for fly fishing or collecting antique dolls or whatever, you can use your  new found skills, interest and knowledge and pitch article ideas to the publications that cover those topics.

Join a class. The same goes for joining a class. The more expertise you can offer on something the more likely you are to be seen as an authority on the subject, and therefore the more likely it is that an editor will go for your idea. So learn a new skill and then come up with some article ideas about it, pitch to the relevant publications and see how it goes.

Read everything. Try to read as much as possible, from newspapers to online blogs. There is a whole wealth of information out there and the more you read the more you are likely to get inspired with ideas of your own.

Research new trends. Try to keep your ear to the ground and find out what is on the horizon as the next big new trend in your chosen subject. If you can be one of the first to start writing about something that’s just on the cusp of catching on, your article stands a good chance of being published and widely shared.

Take a different stance. You don’t always have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to article writing. If you are interested in a subject that has already been written about it, that’s OK - just try to find a different angle or a unique point of view and people will still find value in that.

Go bigger and better. Another trick is to take an article but go bigger and better with it. So someone has written a piece about the 10 best restaurants in the city you live in, well you do the 20 best restaurants, or better still,  get more specific and write about the 10 best fish restaurants, the 10 best budget restaurants and so on. If you can exceed and improve upon what someone else has done, your piece becomes immediately more worthy.

Think local. Figure out how bigger stories affect what’s going on in your local community. By keeping your articles local and specific you are zoning in on a niche and specific audience - and are more likely to see your work in print.

Above all else always think about your reader. Who are you trying to reach, what information are you trying to give them, how do you want them to react? Make sure all your pieces are useful and engaging - they need to offer something to your reader otherwise what is the point in writing them in the first place? If you always keep this in mind, you can’t go too far wrong!

Bethany Cadman -author of 'Doctor Vanilla's Sunflowers'

Bethany Cadman -author of 'Doctor Vanilla's Sunflowers'

About Ty Cohen