- Prick a type of article: advice, short story, poetry, cooking/recipes, crafts, educational, science experiments, organizing, life hacks, or whatever we haven't thought of yet!
- Pick a subject you are passionate about. If you love it a lot, many girls will love it as well. Not sure how it can relate to the theme? We try to keep a rather broad theme to incorporate plenty of different articles but you can message us and let us help you figure that out!
- Brainstorm all that you already know about the subject.
- Narrow down your subject. Likely, you brainstormed a very scattered list of information but a great article should be narrowed down into something focused and from a particular viewpoint.
- Research: Adding things you didn't know is part of the fun too. You can learn about it and completely put it into your own words or you can give credit where you found it. Just don't copy someone else's work without giving them credit! Plagiarism is a crime!
- Organize by using an outline or a thought/bubble map or some other way to keep your thoughts on track as well as focused on the point you are trying to make.
- Free-write with your outline or thought map without any worry about spelling, grammar, or any other structural issues. This is where your creativity can really come out. Worrying about the other details derail your brain from the creativity track. Tell it like you are talking to a friend because you will be sharing it with lots of future friends!
- Editing will be something you will do a lot of. Each time you edit, go at it with different purposes such as:
- Improve word usage by changing your nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc into really vivid and colorful words. Make it as interesting and easy to picture as you can!
- Improve organization so that ideas that aren't in the right place or ideas that don't fit what you are trying to say are removed or moved to the right location.
- Improve flow so that when you read it out loud, you don't stumble or struggle and the words seem to flow like a refreshing mountain stream.
- Improve grammar and spelling issues. This is often best done with the help of an adult and as you type it into a word processing software program that will do a lot of the work for you. Be careful to know that just because the word is spelled correctly, doesn't mean it isn't the wrong homophone (i.e their, there, and they're) and often software will miss those problems.
- Share it with someone else to get their insights and improve it one more time!
If it seems that you may do more work in editing than actually writing, it is sort of true, but the reality is that this is the entire writing process. Taking shortcuts may mean you don't have something you are 100% proud of. We want you to show everyone you know your awesome, well-written published article!