I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty intuitive. I mean, I can often read people’s thoughts, almost verbatim, and it freaks people out sometimes. However, it’s very useful to me when I’m thinking about an article I want to write. I can almost feel the direction I want to go in.
- Image via Wikipedia
We’ve talked about narrowing things down over the past few days, and that’s one way you can do it without the sensitivity, but for me… the things I feel become most important. So, if off the top of my head, I wanted to write an article for teenaged boys, the first thing I’d think about would be video games. Most teenaged boys love them!
So, what about them?
Hmm… Depends on my audience. Since it said it was FOR teenaged boys, I’d probably write about a new game release like Dead Space 2. The original version was very popular, so I’m guessing that young guys will be interested in learning what the newest version would be about. I might buy it and try it first, or I might write to the publisher and ask for a demo copy. (They send all manner of things to you when you’re a writer. LOL) And then, I’d be able to write about something in that game — the controls, the graphics, the weapons, etc. I’d just know what to write about. That’s one way.
If I were writing for the parents of teenaged boys, it would be a whole different story. Then, I might write about how it helps get the aggression out, or about the violence in it. But that’s been done. I’d probably talk about the way the game might prepare kids for jet fighters or something. It would be fun to really get into that.
My daughter is 21 and plays these games. In fact, I’ve recently begun playing with her, and I have to say that Resident Evil is a blast! I’m getting fairly good at it, but I’ll never be as good as a kid — ever. So, that would be an interesting take, eh? How a 58-year-old woman can get excited about playing one of those and have their kid think they’re cool. Right? Have you ever seen an article like that? Probably not. So, I might write an article and tell parents not to be so freaked out.
But what if I were writing that same article for girls? We could bring the whole feminism thing into it. The female character is pretty spry in Resident Evil 5, as compared to version 4. That would probably be a good comparison, and show girls that they can be just as capable as the males. That’s just my initial feeling about that.
So, study your topic for a while and then try to feel what might be interesting for your audience. You’ll still have to check and make sure that it hasn’t been done before for the magazines you want to submit to, but if you can be creative enough… you’ll probably come up with a cool angle every single time just by feel.
