Always Give the Editor Something Extra

An editor of mine once said what readers want most is “take home” value, and that’s true. As a result, an editor will love you if you offer the reader extra value in every article. How do you do this? Three ways:

Offer Extra Detail

The more detail you put in an article, up to the point of saturation, the better an editor and the reader will like it. In a travel article, a reader wants to know what the trip costs, what to see, where to stay or camp, the distances between major points, even what they’ll find on the breakfast menu. Readers want a clear picture of whatever you’re writing about.

Details make the difference. Even in a personality piece, the reader wants all the little peculiarities that make an individual interesting. One short Reader’s Digest piece on an unusual builder detailed the clothes he wore, his habits (such as crawling under buildings with a flashlight in his mouth), his verbal expressions and all this unusual man’s idiosyncrasies.

An editor likes it when the writer goes that extra mile and digs out colorful extras that make a story interesting. When you consistently do this, the editor is more likely to give you a go-ahead on that next article than he would if you simply turned in a minimum effort.

Offer the Readers Steps to Positive Action

Years ago another editor told me “if you want to give your reader ‘take home value’ and make an editor love you, offer steps to positive action.” That is, if you tell the reader to do something, you must also detail exactly what steps he must take to do it.

If you ask that reader to homestead his property, you must explain, in steps, what forms he needs and where to get them, how to fill out those forms, where to take them within the county to file, and what to expect when he gets there.

Here is a sample of how to do this from a Family Circle article, “Social Drinking: How to Play it Safe,” which was reprinted from the book How to Cut Down on Your Social Drinking by Richard A. Basini (G.P. Putnman’s Sons).

The instructions are written to the hostess about how to keep her guests from getting pie-eyed at a dinner party. I will just list the subtitles here, but you get the point. Each of these subtitles is discussed in the text with a short paragraph or two.

Don’t Invite Problems
Offer Plenty of Food
Serve Dinner Promptly
Refrain from Refilling
Avoid the Nightcap Trap
Do it the French Way (serve sparkling mineral water)
Put Away the Bottles
Feature the Juice, Not the Booze

In writing steps, always start with a verb, as the author did here so you are giving instructions: offer, serve, refrain, avoid, do, put away, and feature. Don’t start these with a preposition or adverb, as some writers are prone to do. Examples:

Right: Put away the bottles. Wrong: To discourage having a drink after dinner,

Put away the bottles.

Right: Refrain from refilling. Wrong: At a party, don’t run to refill the minute

Guests empty their glasses.

Right: Don’t offer additional Wrong: At the end of the evening you should

drinks at the end of the refrain from offering additional drinks.

evening.

Include Sidebars Whenever Possible

The more information you can give the reader, the more valuable your article will be. I generally take a look at my article and try to see if that piece might lend itself to “sidebar” information. A sidebar is simply material that is not included in the body of the article, but is enclosed in a box at the bottom or side of the page.

For a trade magazine in the lawn service field, I did a piece entitled, “Words of Wisdom for Direct Mail Advertising.” It was designed to show lawn care entrepreneurs how to use direct mail. I wrote a fairly comprehensive article on direct mail, then added several special boxes that addressed specific subjects that consisted of a direct mail checklist, a box on overcoming skepticism, and a word power sidebar.