1 Remove your limits
Narrow down your topic to one keyword and then brainstorm around that. For example, if you’re trying to write about “study skills,” broaden your thinking to “school.” Now write down whatever comes to your mind when you think about school, and when you run out of ideas, ask yourself open-ended questions about the subject and write down your answers.
Example:
Firstly, What did I like about the school?
What am I afraid of?
What would I like to know from day one?
This will help you get back into the mindset of someone who is struggling with all kinds of issues at school and give you a feel for their worries and anxieties.
2 Refocus Your Attention
Once you begin to understand the general sentiments of your readers, you can return your attention to your original topic, and study skills. What questions would you ask from your new perspective? What would you like to know? Is it really a matter of “studying” or is it more about time management or being able to work without distractions or being paralyzed by the fear of not doing well?
3 Be Your Audience
Write each question on a separate piece of paper; Don’t stop until you have at least ten and preferably more. Stay in the mindset of your readers until you feel like you’ve asked them all the important questions.
4 Take A Step Back
Set your question pile aside for a few hours, if possible overnight. Don’t think about it consciously; Just go about your day as normal. Give your subconscious mind time to process them without asking you anymore. If new questions come to mind, write them down in a safe place and then forget about them.
5 Pick up your pen and write
When you’re done, sit down with your question pages and start answering them. Handwriting your answers gives you access to ideas that you may have missed when you typed them. Do not work yourself in this condition. Using speech-to-text software or a digital recorder can also be helpful to bypass the internal editor.
Imagine someone sitting in front of you asking for advice and just talking to them. Keep your tone natural and conversational, and stick to a question-and-answer format.
6 Edit Lighting
Trust your first instinct. Proofread and fix any obvious errors, but don’t make major edits until your article has had time to “sit” for a while. Again, leaving it overnight will give you a fresh perspective the next time you look at it, but it’s important to give yourself a break even if your deadline doesn’t allow it.
If you’re short on time, writing multiple articles at once can change focus enough to make you “forget” the article you just wrote.
7 Polish It Up
Short articles probably don’t need major editing if you’ve written them in the way described here. They will already flow easily and naturally, and keeping each question and answer on a separate sheet makes it easy to select only the questions you want. Your job now is to put them in a reasonably logical order and to make sure that they make sense and that the reader moves smoothly from one question and answer to the next.
8 Tail It Up And
Always Write a short introductory paragraph as a “teaser” for the main article. Many article directories now place the first paragraph of each piece in an RSS feed that is picked up by other websites, so you want to make sure that your two or three most important keywords appear at least once in that first paragraph.