How to Generate Endless Article Ideas
When inspiration has deserted you.
Inspiration is fickle and it definitely doesn’t understand things like ‘rent is due next week’. And that, my friend, is a problem. You can have the best intentions in the world, a shiny new notebook and a perfectly crafted writing routing, but that spark? That can’t be relied on.
Writing is great. But it’s also hard. Different parts of the process are more difficult for different people. Some find it easy to come up with ideas and boast of their Trello boards containing 600 yet-to-be written article ideas or outlines. Others, like me, sometimes have a good run of inspiration but generally need to make a bit more of an effort to decide what to write.
Luckily, if you put in the work, there’s endless ‘inspiration’ to be found in the most boring of places. Here are my top 6 techniques for artificially generating that ‘spark’.
- Disagree with your friends.
- Disagree with other writers.
- Eavesdrop.
- Revisit your old writing.
- Ask google.
- Read books.
Disagree with your friends.
The things you spend time talking about with your friends and family can be a great source of article ideas. A passionate discussion over dinner or at the pub (responsibly) can be the basis of at least one article, if not more. The chances are that if your friends cared enough to debate the topic with you, someone else out there will too, and that’s all you need to get started.
Next time you have an argument with someone, try writing out your point of view and see where it takes you. You might even change your mind in the research process, which can make for a good redemption arc.
Disagree with other writers.
Get into the habit of reading the recommended articles on Medium or any other platform and actively reflecting on whether you agree with what the writer is saying. Follow the tags that you’re most interested in and just get reading. Make use of the highlight tool to help you pick out the key points that are thought provoking for you (not necessarily the author’s main points). Once you’ve found an article and selected one or two highlights, write out exactly why they stood out to you. This paragraph will give you an insight into what it is that you personally have to say on a topic and can be the basis for your own article.
Eavesdrop.
Next time you’re out and about, leave the headphones at home and just eavesdrop. Or wear headphones as a decoy if you feel that makes it less creepy.
Coffee shops are great locations to take a notebook and just write down thoughts as you listen to the conversations going on around you. Even the snippets of conversations you hear walking down the street are a valuable resource. There’s something about having to fill in the blanks that really gets your brain going.
Revisit your old writing.
There’s no need to reinvent the wheel every time you sit down at your desk. Most writers have a small set of topics that they care about and write about, and that’s ok. It means that they’re writing about something they know and are passionate about.
Go back to things you’ve written before. First of all, you’ll get an idea of what topics work best for you and secondly you might just find that you’ve got more to say. Look for patterns in the type of thing you’ve written and also in what had the most success. Writing a follow up article is an easy way to get back into the rhythm of writing, and you’ll already have done the heavy lifting.
Ask Google
Autocomplete is your friend. If you have an idea of the kinds of topics that you find interesting, start a new google search and see what autocomplete suggests. These queries are based on the most popular searches using the term you entered and give you a great idea of what people care about when it comes to your favourite topics.
Another site that can help with this kind of inspiration is Answer the Public. Type in the key word or words that you’re thinking about and see what people commonly ask or associate with that term. You might find that you have a confident answer to one of the questions: there’s your article.
Read books.
They say that if you want to become a better writer you should spend more time reading. It’s true. And it stands for getting writing inspiration too. Books make you think about things, and the best books make you think about things in a slightly different way. One of my favourite things to do is to go back and revisit books that I remember liking several years ago. I’ll read them again and reflect on how I react differently to them. Once you’ve noticed that you can either write an article about the book itself, or about the observation you made. Write about what it’s like to reread Harry Potter 20 years later, or how problematic you now realise a lot of the relationships in your old YA books are.
Inspiration is a funny concept. Sometimes it feels like struggling for inspiration is a sign that you’re not a good writer, but it doesn’t have to be. Inspiration comes and goes and the best way to make sure you’re a good writer is simply by keeping writing. So use the techniques above to make sure that whether you’ve got any ground breaking ideas or not, you’ll always have something to write about.
