The secrets of a good articles are now listed up for you. No bad articles anymore!

Every good movie has a good opening scene. The same goes for articles. You want to attract your reader from the very first words. Be original without overdoing it, and make sure your first three sentences cover the ‘what’, ‘who’, ‘where’, ‘when’, ‘why’ and ‘how’ of the occurred events. 

‘Your new secret: KISS!’

No, we are not advising you to kiss every stranger you meet in the street. KISS stands for ‘Keep It Simple and Short’. Starting journalists have the habit of writing elaborate articles full of difficult adjectives, archaic grammatical constructions. On top of this their texts are way too long.

To please your reader, your text should sound like a very good pop song: just enough bridges and not a refrain too much. In other words, your text should be ‘trimmed’. Get rid of the ballast, dump the clichés, avoid long hefty constructions and use every day vocabulary. You want to make sure that your 80-year old neighbour understands every word you wrote.

‘News!’

Your article should start with the most important information of your text. If your editor-in-chief wants to cut a piece of your article he will start by cutting the last paragraphs, would be a pity if all the relevant information was cut, no?

‘Look mommy!’

Sometimes you are so proud of something you have written that you do not have the guts to delete it from your article, even though it is ballast. In journalism we have a mantra: “kill your darlings”. But if your killer instinct is not Jack Bauer-like, just print the original, show your loved ones how great you are, put it in a frame above your bed, but do not ruin your article.

It can also help that someone else reads your article. Listen carefully to their suggestions and maybe alter your text.

With all of these tricks in your pockets, you are on your way to become a top notch journalist!