Basic Guide for Writing a Story on Medium — Technical Articles
Writing a Medium Story about Tech can be as easy as ranting with your coworkers about that Outsource Engineer that you’re working with and putting it into a blog post. That can be one the case, but might not be the best way to help you write more technical articles in your career. I’m, by no means an expert in writing, but I have had several occasions throughout my career where I shared my experiences through Medium. So I just wanted to share my journey, or maybe just some hints when start writing a tech story.
Personal Experience
One of the most compelling stories would be coming from your own experience. Imagine reading a solution — related to tech, that is really long, but you ended up realizing that it’s just his theory without any proof that the person doesn’t really experience it. Well, personally, I don’t like that because I can’t really relate to it if that’s a theory, not really implemented and experienced by the writer.
Imagine someone theorizing about the usage of a new search algorithm that is very effective but not proven yet, because that’s just his theory. Now compare that with an engineer who actually contributed to Google’s search and he’s sharing his experience in a blog post. Now that is interesting!
Also, don’t forget to use your own screenshots to convey to the reader what you’re talking about. That helps with the visualization and also just a quick break from reading a very long text.
Cat’s on Fire — Headline
This is just to grab your readers’ attention on what you’re trying to tell. You, as a writer, are like buying the readers’ time to read your story; so first, you need to grab their attention, then followed by a story worthy of their time. And no, the cat is not on fire; that’s just an example.
Alongside the headline, I’d suggest inserting a stock photo that is related to the topic that you’re going to cover. If you are writing about tech or processes, any stock photo that is related to laptops might be a good idea. Here are the 2 options that you can use to find free stock photos: Unsplash or Pixabay.
Lastly, don’t forget to add a short 1–2 paragraph for the background of why do you write this story. It helps the reader to understand where you are coming from.
The Content — Time is Money
It’s really important to be straightforward with the things you discussed in the story. As I mentioned above, we will need to keep in mind that we’re kind of buying readers time to read our story, so need to be concise on what you are trying to convey or to tell the reader. And hopefully, by reading your story, the readers will get some benefit out of it. I’d suggest have a 3–7 minutes of reading time to make sure that you are not making the story too long.
Grammar Mistakes
There’s a tool out there called Grammarly where it can help you fix your grammar mistakes when writing. I personally do find it really helpful!
Opinionated vs Declarative
Tech articles can either be opinionated or declarative. And because the purpose of this article is to guide Kargo’s Engineering team in writing tech articles, I’d suggest that it should be more declarative and informative for the user than opinionated like for a personal blog.
The reason is to help readers get the benefit from the content of the articles rather than reading people’s rambling about a certain topic.
Closing
Last but not least, this is just a simple guide to get you to start. If you have any other suggestions, feel free to add them to the comment sections!
