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If you’re interesting in writing an article, maybe you should consider writing one based on hobbies and human interest. Here is a guide on how to go about writing a marketable article about these topics.
Hobbies
Almost everyone has some special outside interest, some hobby, to which he happily devotes his spare time and energy. The hobby may be golf, motoring, baseball, cooking, shopping, collecting coins, or any subject not directly related to the task of earning a living. Active persons grow their hobbies by developing avocations; simply reading about them satisfies less active persons.
Much journalistic writing that we read today appeals to this interest; that is, all sporting sections, articles on genealogy, book reviews, amateur agriculture, gardening, movies, music, etc. These hobbies are diversified, but certain hobbies appeal to the American people; thus, events related to them make good subjects for marketable articles.
Human Interest
Everyone experiences or has experienced strong emotional feelings; therefore, almost any event that appeals to the reader’s emotions is an excellent subject to aim for in your writing. You might write a story about a starving child or a crippled animal that catches the reader’s sympathy.
Perhaps you might write an article with a deeper story of happiness or suffering that tugs at the reader’s heart. Or it may be a more or less worthy appeal to a person’s good or bad passions. The principled writer appeals only to the worthy emotions of pity, sympathy, and love; some other writers appeal to more sinful emotions. We can see, by just scanning the headlines, that writers use many ways to abuse and manipulate emotional interest to attract more readers.
Unusual Events
The bump of curiosity opens eyes and ears everywhere. Almost any event that is unusual is a good subject. The fact that it is out of the ordinary will generate interest in it. You might find it difficult to judge, based on your broad or limited experience, just how unusual the subject is. The subject that you want to cover may seem extraordinary to you, but ordinary to others.
Instructive Articles
Sharing and distributing information has grown tremendously because of the Internet. People love to learn and educate themselves. Any subject that instructs or educates will interest readers. Some readers will be interested in learning how a carburetor works, or why a geyser gushes, or what causes dew, or why orioles build hanging nests; other readers will be interested in how the tax assessor figures incomes, or how to cut utility bills in half, and many other things. The difficulty, with so many writers covering similar topics, is to find something new.
Related Subjects
The constant shifting of scenes and crowding of events results in a continually changing interest in various subjects. Whenever Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble releases a new or updated eBook reader, everyone starts talking about eBooks and mobile tech devices; with plans of building a new amusement park in my area, local citizens are immediately interested in other attractions that will attract tourists for next summer; the appearance of a new coin recalls interest in previous coins; a car wreck starts people talking about other car wrecks.
Know what interests readers
The interest of readers changes day by day. You should continually watch for a chance to write about unique things in which you can stir interest. These are but a few of the things that interest readers. Your job is to analyze interest in the ways that I have covered above and to discover subjects, topics and events related to these types of interest.
The more interest you generate with your story, the more value you add to the publication and its readers. You need to decide how much to tell of any subject, or decide how long your article should be. A good way to decide is to know why the subject or event will interest the reader. My rule is to let the amount of interest in the article dictate its word length.
