Creating a unique Article: getting Material
In article writing, sometimes it can be hard to be original, with so much other content out there. When you want to make yours unique, it’s a good idea to borrow (not plagiarize) ideas from other article writers. To do this, all you need is some good old fashioned internet searching skills. Finding the right sources to borrow material from is one of the biggest things you can do to make your article great. Even if you find a variety of sources and they’re relevant to your article’s topic, if they are poorly written or incorrect in their claims, they will yield a bad article for you, too.
Finding Article Material
Here’s the first step: search a few related keywords about your article’s topic and see what comes up. Read around many different websites so that you have an overall knowledge of your topic, bookmarking only the most useful or poignant ones. Then, when you think you’ve done enough, go back to the ones you bookmarked and think about why they stood out to you. Here are some questions to make you think:
- What about the tone of this article did you like? Was it friendly, humorous, tough love, or extremely factual?
- Consider the length: if you don’t have a word limit, take all the word counts of the articles you loved and get the average. Try to model your after this.
- Did the articles address aspects of your subject that are well known with a unique perspective, or lesser known topics from a relatable angle?
- How are the sentences formed? Are they punchy and short, leading to easy reading, or long and detailed to convey exactly what the author intended?
Use the above questions to figure out the best parts of your favorite articles, and then use that in your own writing. Combining styles, formats, and ideas from multiple sources is always the best way to go. If you’re stuck on finding any articles you like, here are some ways to find some:
- Use well known sites that have many articles, such as wikiHow or eZine Articles.
- If you do find one that you enjoy, search the rest of that site to see if they have others on the same topic. You’ll probably find more from the same author that you like reading.
- Look for journals or online magazines that relate to your topic; these will often have many articles from different authors relevant to your article.