Thursday Thinking.

 I've been studying today - 'Article Writing and Freelance Journalism', I'm on Assignment Three - 'Planning your article'.

"Good construction happens best because of good planning. A planning technique used by many article writers is:

1.     To draft an outline of the article, simply indicating the order in which thoughts, ideas and information will be presented. Each of these, at this stage, is placed under a subheading. The subheadings may or may not appear in the final manuscript; at this stage they are simply there to help construct the article.

2.     To have a separate sheet of paper, or a separate file card, for each of these subheadings. We will call these the subject files. On each subject file, set out the information in greater detail and indicate where you need to find further information.

3.     When all the information you need is assembled and recorded on the subject files, it should then be set out in the form of topics to give yourself a topic list. At this stage you can rearrange the order of your subject files to make the finished article as coherent and logical as possible.

4.     At the end of this exercise, you will have a series of topic lists. You can now write each topic as a topic sentence and develop the paragraph that follows from the topic sentence.

In this way, you have a clear set of objectives as you write. Your writing will be more disciplined, and you will avoid rambling or straying from the subject."