Here’s the first in a series of three videos about What Editors Want – but the tips are not confined to those of you seeking publication, as when you blog or have a portfolio you’re also your own editor.

In this video, we focus on articles, posts or essays, and the content’s inspired by The Byline Bible, by Susan Shapiro, a legendary writing teacher with many published students, and Zing Tseng, editor at Vice, who ran a fascinating workshop recently on the new rules of publishing for women.

Where you’re keen to move your writing forward, these types of writing are worth consideration.

I’m lucky enough to have read some stunning location based writing from you talented Complete Freelance Writing Course students, and which could form the basis of an article, short story, novel or screenplay even.

In the video, I’ve shown guidelines for writing opinion pieces from The Guardian newspaper, and again your voice airing a cause could turn into book, podcast, or screen media.

Confessional writing is always popular; at the moment memoir rides high in the best seller lists. The New York Times bestseller Maid for instance, started out as an article on Vox, by its author, Stephanie Land.

And readers will always want funny writing and how to guides… if you’d like a practical challenge over the next month, then why not try out your pet subject, narrowed down as much as you can, shaped into these five different types of writing? Monitor how difficult or easy you find each one, and any surprises you get with your results. If you’d like to send them over on the Udemy course platform, I’ll be pleased to review.

More experienced writers can sometimes benefit from this sort of exercise, too. It can remind us that an element of our blockbuster novel, or fanstasy trilogy, could benefit from strengthening and becoming more distinctive. Maybe we need to add color and constraints via our chosen location, or create a character who is strongly confessional, so our readers empathize easily…

If it’s summer where you are, and you’re taking a break, then have a great time, and happy scribbling to you all.

O