Coming up with article ideas. Photo of a circle of colored pencils. Photo credit: Agency Olloweb, via Unsplash.
Boston-based Freelance writer Susan Johnston, has an excellent blog post about coming up with article ideas over at the website Writing Blossoms.
Some writers have more ideas than we know what to do with (raises hand). Others stare at the computer screen, paralyzed by a fear of the blank page, secretly worried about rejection, feeling like a fraud.
So what do you do when you’re trying to come up with article ideas? You want to write but you’re not sure about what? After all, you need to make a living. So you’ve got to get cracking.
Among Susan Johnston’s suggestions are:
1) Read alumni magazines
You get great ideas in these magazines to pitch to other newspapers and magazines. Besides, there is some surprisingly good writing in alumni magazines. In my experience, it’s often a pleasure to write for these magazines. They pay a fair price for articles. And you only have to deal with one—or at most two—editors. Glossy women’s magazines, on the other hand, often edit by committee and sometimes the editors don’t communicate well internally. Which means that you can make an entire set of changes for one editor and then have to make an entirely different set of changes (even changing things back to how you had them) for another editorial committee. The pay may be better but the back and forth can make you crazy.
2) Combine seemingly unrelated ideas when coming up with article ideas
This is the chocolate and peanut butter concept. Put two awesome foods together that are both tasty on their own and they taste even better, unexpectedly, together. So take two subjects that usually don’t go together, put them together, and you have a novel idea to pique the interest of an editor. A doctor who had three C-sections weighs in on home birth, for example. Or the zoo that lives in you and on you (that is, why humans aren’t actually human). Or the surprising connection Depression-era photographer Dorothea Lange, who was born in Hoboken, New Jersey in 1895, had to southern Oregon and northern California.
3) Repurpose past articles
If you’ve written an article on a subject in the past, you can always refresh and repurpose it for another audience or outlet. This is a great way to generate new articles because you’ve already done a lot of legwork and you know more about the subject than your average Joe or Jane. Maybe you’ve sold a first-person opinion piece about the importance of breastfeeding. You can then write a longer research-based article about the advantages of extended nursing.
Susan Johnston’s techniques for coming up with article ideas are all very smart and inspirational.
My challenge has never been coming up with interesting and creative ideas for magazines, newspapers, or on-line sites. I think sleep deprivation helps my creativity. I have many interests, and love to write about what I don’t know but want to learn more about as a way to get paid to learn. What’s harder for me is the follow through: pitching my ideas and following up with editors if I get the Black Hole of Silence in response.
And once I sell an idea, oddly, I sometimes feel letdown, as if the thrill of the hunt has ended.
Not that I’m really sorry, of course, as I’m always grateful for assignments.
But I can’t help feeling, sometimes, like “Yikes! The editor called my bluff. Don’t they realize I have no idea what this article will really look like?! And now I have to figure that out?!”
Writer friends and colleagues, what about you? What advice do you have about coming up with article ideas?
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Published: November 25, 2009
Last update: August 25, 2022
Haha! I’ve had that feeling!
i can’t wait for the link to work.
I know that feeling well. You think you have such a brilliant idea, convince an editor that it is, only to realize something: now you have to actually do the work.
Thanks for the shout out, Jennifer! I totally know that feeling. A lot of times I’ll pitch something because I know I need to stay on the editor’s radar. Then when I actually get the assignment, I’m sometimes surprised. Sometimes it’s the ideas that I don’t expect to interest an editor that get assigned, so I try to keep lots of ideas circulating and not get too attached to one or two.
I think this cartoon here leads to a good article idea about urban legends.
“And once I sell an idea, oddly, I sometimes feel letdown, as if the thrill of the hunt has ended. ”
Woah! I thought I was the only one who felt that way. I still get a feeling of panic whenever I get a new assignment. Glad to hear I’m not the only one…
I think this is pretty standard for writers, really. Susan’s ideas are good ones – I seem to waffle between having tons of ideas and not enough time to pitch, and having no ideas.
I’m with Stephanie. I have a contract sitting in my inbox for an idea that I’m almost sad to write up. Once I have the piece done I know I probably won’t return to it again. Alto, if I follow Susan’s advice I should be retweaking and pitching the idea again elsewhere, right?