Before You Type a Single Word

Welcome. You have decided to write an article, possibly because something in your town made you mad, possibly because somebody said "you should write that down" and you were too polite to refuse. Either way, here you are. Marge is here too. Marge is the editor in this course. She has read roughly forty thousand beginner articles and has opinions about all of them. Her red pen runs on spite. She also, secretly, loves beginners, because beginners still care.

Also present: your inner editor. Everyone has one. Yours is a raccoon. His name is Dale. Dale lives in the back of your head, rummages through every sentence you write, and hisses "this is garbage" at things that are not garbage. Dale will be very important in lesson 8. For now, Dale, sit down.

Here is the first real step, and most beginners skip it, which is why most beginner articles read like a junk drawer. Before you type anything, decide what kind of article this is, who reads it and what single point it makes.

What an article is actually for

An article exists to give a reader something useful they did not have before. A fact. A decision made in a meeting they missed. A reason to care about a number on their water bill. If the reader finishes and has nothing new, the article failed, no matter how pretty the sentences were.

This course covers the two kinds beginners write most.

• News. You report what happened. Who did what, when, where, how much, and what happens next. You don't tell the reader how to feel. You give them the facts and get out of the way.
• Opinion. You argue a position, out loud, and label the piece as opinion. You still use facts. In fact you need them more, because a reader who disagrees with you will hunt for the one wrong number and then ignore everything else.

Do not blend the two by accident. A news story that sneaks in "the council's outrageous decision" is an opinion piece wearing a fake mustache. Readers can tell. The Society of Professional Journalists' Code of Ethics asks writers to label advocacy and commentary so readers know what they're getting. Pick your lane before you merge.

Who is reading this thing

Forget "everybody." Everybody is a crowd at a ballgame, and nobody in that crowd is listening to you.

Picture one person. A real-ish one. For most local writing, that person is busy, reasonably smart, cares about their town, and has not been to a single council meeting since flip phones were cool. They have a phone, a coffee, and about eight seconds of patience before they go look at a video of a dog in a hat.

Write for that person. It fixes a lot of problems at once. You stop using jargon like "enterprise fund" without explaining it. You stop explaining what a city council is, because your reader knows. You stop showing off for the three people in town who know more than you, because they are not your reader. They will read it anyway, and they'll be fine.

Pick ONE point

This is the big one. An article makes one point. Not five. Not "a few related themes." One.

Beginners resist this, because they gathered a lot of material and it feels wasteful to leave it out. Marge has a saying for this: "Your notes are the grocery store. The article is dinner." You don't serve the whole store.

Pickleton's water fight has a dozen possible points. The rate hike itself. The 40-year-old pipes. The consultant who got paid $62,000 for a study nobody read. The council member who keeps bringing a jar of brown tap water to meetings. Each one is a decent article. All of them crammed together is a mess that nobody finishes.

So pick the one that matters most to your reader right now. If the council just voted, the vote is your point. The pipes and the consultant and the jar can show up as supporting facts, or wait for their own article next week. They'll keep. That jar of water isn't going anywhere. Nobody will drink it.

The cousin test

Here's the test that tells you whether you're ready to write. Imagine your cousin. The one who doesn't follow local news and asks "so what's going on with you" at holiday dinners mostly to be polite. Tell that cousin your article's point in one sentence. Out loud, ideally. People will stare. Let them.

If you can do it, you're ready. If you can't, you're not, and no amount of typing will fix it.

Notice what the passing sentences have. Specific people or bodies. A number. A time. A consequence for the reader. That one sentence is going to become your guide for the whole article. When you're lost in the middle of the draft, and you will be, you read that sentence again and ask whether the paragraph you're writing helps prove it.

The opinion version also takes a side. It doesn't say "there are many perspectives on this complex issue." Your cousin would fall asleep in the gravy. Opinion writing that won't commit to an opinion is just a news story with low self-esteem.

Write it down and tape it up

Put three lines on a card or at the top of your document:

1. Type: news or opinion.
2. Reader: one sentence describing them.
3. Point: your cousin-test sentence.

That's your plan. It takes five minutes. It will save you two hours of wandering around a draft wondering why it feels like soup. Marge doesn't accept a draft without these three lines anymore. She used to. She has the gray hair to prove it.