You have completed the first draft of your article. However, it appears flat as well as drab, even to you. It needs to ignite that important psychological link to your viewers. You’re at a loss regarding how to spruce it up.
Take a breath! Writing a non-fiction short article can be difficult, especially as you don’t have the time to develop a character before rocketing into the story. So how can we give readers a strong mental image of this short article? What needs to be added or changed to make this a brilliant piece of non-fictitious writing?
There are a few important steps that you must take before rewriting your short article. Read on to learn the four basic steps of writing the perfect non-fiction article!
Step 1: What Feeling are You Trying to Get Across?
Begin by defining the primary feeling you wish the reader to feel or understand from your writing. Were you feeling down when you wrote it? Did something amazing happen and you wanted to share it with your readers? Did you, perhaps, fall in love?
Any emotion can be portrayed with the correct writing style, even in the non-fiction realm. In the same way that we convey emotion through our actions, we can equally well portray those feeling through our writing.
You may have already accomplished this in your first draft, however, some prefer to write immediately and then rewrite with the feeling added. This is entirely up to you as both methods work brilliantly.
Step 2: Check Your Writing
No matter how much emotion you include in your writing if it isn’t written well it will lose much of its power.
Read your article aloud to yourself and check for the main points and ideas. If you find more than one major point in a single paragraph, consider separating it into two or more paragraphs.
If you find yourself running out of breath during certain sentences you should endeavor to separate them into new sentences. Your article should be written in the same fashion that you would talk in order to convey the message you desire.
Can you envision the event in your mind without any confusion or missing pieces? If so, you are ready to move onto the next step.
Step 3: Enhance the Emotion
Now that you’ve added feeling and ensured that your article is well-written and in logical order, you can improve the emotion within the article. If you feel as though your article is still a bit dry, try sprucing it up with more impactful words.
If no words come to mind, try using a thesaurus to improve the level of writing. You’d be surprised at the impact of such a simple change!
Step 4: Editing and Proofreading
The last step is to go back over your article one last time and make sure that all your spelling and grammar is correct. You can do this yourself, get someone to check over for you, or use a tool like Grammarly to check the writing for you.
Once you’ve followed all these steps, you should find yourself with a perfectly written, non-fiction short article!