Sharpening Your Article's Focus

Your article's focus - also called a "peg" or "angle" - is the precise aspect of your article's subject that makes it a viable and marketable piece of work. It doesn't matter what subject you choose for your article; there will always be a different angle or slant that allows you to focus it more clearly, and thereby make it more attractive to editors and readers.

To sharpen your article's focus, you need to start with a generalized idea and whittle it down until it is specific enough for an article. For example, take the subject of Retirement. That's a fairly general subject that could benefit from sharpening. Finding the "peg" for retirement isn't all that difficult.

Think about the subject of Retirement and about ways in which you can sharpen your article's focus. What about the financial aspects of retirement? Still too broad, but we're getting closer.

You can sharpen the article's focus even further by concentrating on savings. Everyone knows that when you get ready to retire, you must evaluate your savings compared to the amount of money you'll be bringing in after retirement. And there's your article's focus, or "peg".

Sharpening your article's focus is important because there is so much information available to the public. You can give me any subject under the sun and I can find at least one article that covers it, but that shouldn't dissuade you from writing your own article. When you sharpen your article's focus, you come up with a new slant that makes the subject fresh and new.

There are a few things you can do to make sharpening your article's focus a little bit easier:

Read articles about your subject. When you read articles that others have written, you might find an allusion to a more specific topic which the author merely glances over. Even a small mention in another article can launch a sharper focus for your own article.