9 Tips to Be a Better Article Writer

Lonnie Pacelli is an Accenture/Microsoft veteran with four decades of learnings under his belt. He frequently writes and speaks on leadership, project management, work/life balance, and disability inclusion. Reach him at [email protected] and see more at ProjectManagementAdvisor.com.

  Career Development   Communications Management  

Since my first book in 2004, I have written more than 50 books and 400 articles on topics such as project management, leadership development, work/life balance, and raising a child on the autism spectrum.

My earlier attempts at writing articles were a jumbled mess and required hours of refining thoughts after my editor had given me constructive feedback. I’ve spent a lot of time figuring out how to write both more effectively and efficiently.

If you’re interested in writing articles, my singular goal is to help you produce topical content that’s relevant, helpful and entertaining for your readers.

I wrote a blog post about how I write articles. Most of my articles contain four sections:

1. Opening story
2. Core message
3. Takeaways
4. Close

While these four sections are important components, the order of the sections is also important.

1. Takeaways
2. Core message
3. Close
4. Opening story

To help breathe life into this approach, I will use my article 9 Ways to Be a Better Feedback Receiver as a basis for explaining each of the sections and provide some additional tips to consider when writing articles. Here we go:

1. Start with a singular problem to solve. In “9 Ways,” I focused on one problem: how to effectively receive feedback and use it to help you grow. Having a crisp and singular problem you are trying to solve sets …

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