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How To Come Up With New Ideas For Articles

By on April 11, 2016
How To Come Up With New Ideas For Articles - Writer's Life.org

When you are a freelance writer, coming up with new exciting and unusual topics for articles and blog posts can be tricky -particularly if you are writing the same type of content each week. Keeping your article ideas fresh and interesting is so important, and if you are pitching your ideas to magazines and other publications you need to stand our from the crowd, and generate strong ideas or looking at subjects from perspectives that haven’t seen thought of before.

Keeping your article ideas fresh and interesting is so important, and if you are pitching your ideas to magazines and other publications you need to stand our from the crowd, and generate strong ideas or examine subjects from perspectives that haven’t been thought of before.

So how do you come up with fresh ideas that editors will just love? Here are some handy tips to help you.

Get out there

Good stories rarely simply fall into your lap, you have to hunt for them, just like everyone else. Keep your ear to the ground, talk to people, be interested in things. You never know where a great story might present itself, or what might inspire you - so make sure you are ever looking and ever alert.

Get it down

Write down any ideas and notes as and when they come to you. You don’t have to turn every single one into a story, and some of them might turn out to be duds, but write everything down, no matter how strange or silly or implausible it might seem - revisiting it later you might suddenly have a 'eureka' moment and find yourself writing the most exciting story of your life.

Get to know your readers

Once you have established which markets you are most interested in, make sure that you do your research and know the kind of readers you are trying to engage. If you are serious about your work you will want to become familiar with your target audience, read what they read, enjoy what they enjoy, question what they would question, and come to understand what they want to read about next.

Become an expert

If you can become an authority on a particular subject you will uncover more and more about a subject that will give you new ideas for writing. You will  also become the person that people turn to for knowledge and insight.

If you have a passion, follow it, learn everything you can about it and then write insightful and useful content about it that you know other people with an interest in the subject will want to know more about.

Be opinionated

If you have strong opinions about something then let them be heard. Particularly if you think that your way of looking at something goes against the grain. People want to be challenged, to hear different sides of the story, and if you can write intelligently and intellectually while putting your opinion across, you may very well see it in print.

Read

Read everything you can get your hands on, be it industry blogs and websites, or niche magazines and publications. Go to talks and lectures, listen to podcasts. Broaden your horizons and expand your knowledge in every way you can. The more interesting and diverse your interests are, the more ideas you are likely to come up with .

Use special dates

What holidays or anniversaries are coming up? Relevant, timely coverage of events taking place are always going to be welcomed by editors. Again try to pitch you idea so you are demonstrating how your story will be unique rather than rehashing the same tired old news.

Check out the archives

Stories from the past can be fantastic at helping us write new ones. Looking at the archives of forgotten stories from yesteryear can help inspire you to think of all the different types that are out there, you can even re-write them or follow up on them in an new, exciting way.

Look inside yourself

Everybody has stories to tell. Think about the things that you have achieved, your hopes, dreams, and fears. Use your own life to come up with great stories - and then share them with the world!

Keeping your ideas coming and your writing fresh is challenging for any writer. These tips should help you to start thinking more broadly about where to find inspiration, and, providing you have a passion for what you do and a commitment to keep on writing, those ideas will just keep coming.

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

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

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