Writing a Good Magazine Article

The lead is the most critical part of your article. A magazine article attracts your attention with a good lead, also called a hook. The hook is what compels the editor to buy your article. It makes the reader desire to continue reading your article.

The next paragraph of this article is a narrative hook: a sequence of events with punch.

Imagine a boxer in the ring, scrutinizing his opponent's every move, then an opening attracts him: his opponent lowers his arms. The trap is set. He leads with his right foot, bends his arm and swings a short blow hooking the other guy's chin.

The writer must hook his reader the way one of the boxers hooked his opponent's chin. There are numerous methods for writing leads to draw the reader into your article.

There are other striking lead techniques mentioned by Lisa Collier Cool discussed here. An anecdote is one of them. It is a snippet describing an incident or event of interest. Sometimes it is a short biographical sketch. The provocative quote is another lead technique. A surprising fact makes a good hook. Statistics are used as successful leads.

Writers often use references to celebrities or news events to lead into an article. Wittiness and exaggeration are two more methods. Referencing dramatic events or common situations with a unique twist are often used as hooks. A vivid description can captivate the reader from the start. Thought-provoking questions, commands to the reader, rare definitions, and surprising comparisons or contrasts are commonly used lead techniques that work well.

You can also relate an emotional experience or create a mystery and explain it. Do something that relates to your topic that gets the reader involved from the beginning of your article.

The first sentence is crucial; it introduces your article's topic. You narrow down your topic from a larger subject. The history of boxing in the United States is a book's topic and a subject too large for an article. The history of women boxers in your city is an article's topic.

Another component is slant. Slant means a certain point-of-view from which the author writes the article. You can use slant to rewrite an article, changing it enough that different magazines will accept it. This is a traditional approach to making more money with basically the same article because it is made to appeal to several markets. When you change the slant of the article, you can change the title too.

You could write two different articles from your subject of women boxers. An article about women boxers in your city might appeal to the sports section of your local newspaper and women boxers that followed in their father's footsteps might be bought by a women sports magazine. Or you could change the slant by emphasizing women boxers from your city that won a title.

The lead or hook has to be attached to a topic and a slant. A boxing magazine is slanted towards the boxing fan. Some boxing Internet sites are slanted towards women boxers and their fans. Your slant causes your article to have an appeal to a particular audience. Your article's slant could be narrowed down to women boxers that followed in their father's footsteps, which leads to a human-interest approach. It also appeals to fans specfically interested in women boxers.

Another component of article writing is research, which can be done through interviews, reading articles or books or gathering information from the Internet. If you are already an expert on a subject, your research is done.

Traditionally to do an interview, the writer gets his questions ready, makes an appointment with the person to interview, goes to see him, and does the interview, recording it as it happens or he interviews by phone. These days you can contact the person of interest through an email and interview by sending the questions and receiving the answers by email.

Though you can gather your research by reading articles and even some books on the Internet, for longer works the local library's contents is still the most reliable source of written information.

After you have chosen your subject and narrowed down to a topic, research it. Organize your research. Narrow your final notes to fit your slant. Select your lead material for your first paragraph. Write your ending. Make sure your lead and ending work well together. Select your material for intervening paragraphs focusing on your slant making your article swing towards a conclusion.

Write an article that delivers content relevant to your topic. Don't make your editor throw in the towel because you promised an intriguing article, a great lead, appealing content, heart-warming anecdotes, and an effective close, but only showboated in your query letter.

Remember that the ending is only second in importance to the lead. You can use the exact method you used for your hook/lead to end your article. One ending technique is the "circle ending." This technique utilizes the idea or a phrase from the lead to bring the reader around completing the circle. Deliver the final blow: the good ending. Make it a knockout.