Awards | Marketing | Online Course With Appy Pie Academy

Awards

Lesson Details:
October 19, 2020


I: Introduction

A: Landing page conversion rate optimization

II: Body

A: Awards

III: Conclusion

Goal of an outline is to make it clear how the body of the article will be used to support the thesis. If there are any sub-points that are important that don’t fit into this format, then they should be added as footnotes. The key here is to think about what you want your reader to know, and then use your outline to communicate it to your reader in a way that is simple to follow.

Writing the first draft of the article

The first thing you want to do when you write your first draft is read through your outline to see if there are any holes or weak spots. This is not the time to go back and refine your outline. Instead, just focus on making sure that you’re hitting all the points that you want to hit, and that everything is explained clearly. As you write, you may find that some things aren’t explained well enough, or that some parts don’t flow as well as they should. That’s okay! When you revise, you’ll fix those things.

What you want to do is to force yourself through writing all the words in the article. You don’t want to stop and revise anything until you have finished writing it all. Think of this like an archeologist sifting through sand for artifacts. If you spend too much time digging around looking for an artifact, it will be lost forever under new sand. Instead, you just dig down until you feel something interesting, then pull it out. If there’s more below it, then you can dig some more. Once you find everything, you can spend all the time in the world excavating and cataloging everything. But until you find it, keep digging and moving quickly.

The point of this analogy is that you want to get all the words out on paper before going back and reading them and trying to edit them. It’s much easier to edit when you have a full idea of what you’re trying to say than it is when you’re trying to figure out what the point of the article actually is.

Once you have finished writing, take a break. Don’t look at what you wrote for at least 24 hours, and preferably 48 hours. When you come back and read it again, you will be much less emotional and much more objective than when you were writing it. This means that you can better judge whether or not what you wrote is good enough, and whether or not your thesis statement was strong enough. If either of these things has changed, then update your outline accordingly and start writing again. If the writing still feels good after two days, then move onto the next step.

Revising and editing your article

Revising and editing is where the hard work comes in. It’s very tempting to dive right into editing and try to make everything perfect. This is a wasted effort because no matter how close to perfect your writing is, if it isn’t engaging enough, then no one will read it anyway. So instead of spending all day long trying to make your article perfect, focus on making it clear and interesting instead. Your passion for your subject should be conveyed through the way that you write, not by how many times you mention that you love it in your article. The best way I have found to convey passion is through details from real life experiences, especially if they are funny or interesting. Another thing that helps with clarity is to provide examples or analogies whenever possible. One last thing I will suggest is to keep a dictionary handy while writing so that you can look up any vocabulary words while you write instead of going back later and trying to remember what they meant when you used them earlier in the article. This will help avoid awkward sentences where a word could mean several different things depending on how it’s used in context.

The key things to focus on during the revision process are: clarity, structure/organization, and flow/sentence structure/word choice/passion/interesting details/conversational tone/and grammar. These things are all interrelated; improving one usually improves several others at the same time. The more clearly something is written, the better structure it usually has; the better it flows, the stronger its sentence structure usually is; etc. It can sometimes seem like there isn’t much rhyme or reason to the way things improve when you revise; but don’t worry about that; just keep refining each part until it begins to feel like someone else wrote it (in a good way). You will begin to notice patterns emerging which make sense even though they didn’t necessarily make sense when they started out (no pun intended). Once all these things begin lining up together in a way that makes sense in conjunction with each other, then start paying attention to sentence variation and word choice in order to add variety and interest into your writing while keeping it clear and concise at the same time (I will talk more about this later). Then once all of these things are in place, it’s time for finishing touches like adding transitions between paragraphs, making sure that all sentences are complete so that they aren’t confusing, making sure that every paragraph follows logically from the previous paragraph (this sometimes requires restructuring), etc. Sometimes this stage can take longer than any other stage in writing an article since there are so many tiny details that can be improved upon without changing the overall meaning of the article drastically. Once these finer details are cleaned up, then try reading through your entire article out loud (you may need someone else to read it with you). This will help catch any problems with word choice or sentence flow since they will stand out more when read aloud than when read silently in your head. After this final pass through edits has been completed, then proofread your article for grammar errors using Grammarly or whatever program your school uses for proofreading articles (if they have one). If there are any problems after proofreading, then try rewriting the sentence(s) in question until they are perfect before moving on. If there are no more mistakes after proofreading then print off a copy of your article so that you can start taking notes on what kind of references you need in order to finish off your bibliography section at the end of your article properly. Now repeat all of these steps for every single article assignment that comes along! It may seem like a lot of work at first; but over time this process will become second nature, and I promise it will save you a ton of time in the long run! Good luck!

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