A Writing Challenge
Do the Hundreds of Writing Tips Work? Yes, but Not Always the Way You Expect.
Writing tip: Rewrite every sentence — an interesting concept that’s easy to test, with these results.
The April 30 article, How To Write Articles That People Want To Read, by Matt Lillywhite triggered this experiment. His tips were partly a way of thinking and partly procedures. The idea of rewriting every sentence was intriguing, but daunting.
1. Start With An Engaging Headline
2. Make It Interesting For The Reader
3. Provide Some Personal Experience
4. Rewrite Every Sentence
I decided to apply his four tips to an existing article
and measure the results
I have a way to analyze all of the tips numerically instead of using fuzzy impressions.
The experiment
The subject article ranks 61st out of my 67 articles in views and reads. I will determine if that is because of the subject, or the article’s structure and writing style.
I’ll provide before-and-after examples for each tip as I applied it. I’m particularly interested in the results from the sentence rewriting tip.
