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How to Write a Magazine Article

Last Updated: October 11, 2023 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Gerald Posner . Gerald Posner is an Author & Journalist based in Miami, Florida. With over 35 years of experience, he specializes in investigative journalism, nonfiction books, and editorials. He holds a law degree from UC College of the Law, San Francisco, and a BA in Political Science from the University of California-Berkeley. He’s the author of thirteen books, including several New York Times bestsellers, the winner of the Florida Book Award for General Nonfiction, and has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History. He was also shortlisted for the Best Business Book of 2020 by the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing. There are 7 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 929,106 times.

Magazine articles can be a big boost for seasoned freelance writers or writers who are trying to jump-start their writing careers. In fact, there are no clear qualifications required for writing magazine articles except for a strong writing voice, a passion for research, and the ability to target your article pitches to the right publications. Though it may seem like magazines may be fading in the digital age, national magazines continue to thrive and can pay their writers $1 a word. [1] X Research source To write a good magazine article, you should focus on generating strong article ideas and crafting and revising the article with high attention to detail.

Generating Article Ideas

Step 1 Analyze publications you enjoy reading.

  • Check if the bylines match the names on the masthead. If the names on the bylines do not match the masthead names, this may be an indication that the publication hires freelance writers to contribute to its issues.
  • Look for the names and contact information of editors for specific areas. If you’re interested in writing about pop culture, identify the name and contact information of the arts editor. If you’re more interested in writing about current events, look for the name and contact information of the managing editor or the features editor. You should avoid contacting the executive editor or the editor-in-chief as they are too high up the chain and you will likely not interact with them as a freelance writer.
  • Note recent topics or issues covered in the publication and the angle or spin on the topics. Does the publication seem to go for more controversial takes on a topic or a more objective approach? Does the publication seem open to experimentation in form and content or are they more traditional?
  • Look at the headlines used by the publication and how the articles begin. Note if the headlines are shocking or vague. Check if the articles start with a quote, a statistic, or an anecdote. This will give you a good sense of the writing style that gets published in that particular publication.
  • Note the types of sources quoted in the articles. Are they academic or more laymen? Are there many sources quoted, or many different types of sources quoted?
  • Pay attention to how writers wrap up their articles in the publication. Do they end on a poignant quote? An interesting image? Or do they have a bold, concluding thought?

Step 2 Consider recent trends or topics you talked about with a friend or peer.

  • These inspiring conversations do not need to be about global problems or a large issue. Having conversations with your neighbors, your friends, and your peers can allow you to discuss local topics that could then turn into an article idea for a local magazine.

Step 3 Look up upcoming events in your area.

  • You should also look through your local newspaper for human interest stories that may have national relevance. You could then take the local story and pitch it to a magazine. You may come across a local story that feels incomplete or full of unanswered questions. This could then act as a story idea for a magazine article.

Step 4 Consider what other writers are publishing.

  • You can also set your Google alerts to notify you if keywords on topics of interest appear online. If you have Twitter or Instagram, you can use the hashtag option to search trending topics or issues that you can turn into article ideas.

Step 5 Think of a new angle on a familiar topic.

  • For example, rather than write about the psychological problems of social media on teenagers, which has been done many times in many different magazines, perhaps you can focus on a demographic that is not often discussed about social media: seniors and the elderly. This will give you a fresh approach to the topic and ensure your article is not just regurgitating a familiar angle.

Crafting the Article

Step 1 Research your article idea using sources like books and published texts.

  • Look for content written by experts in the field that relates to your article idea. If you are doing a magazine article on dying bee populations in California, for example, you should try to read texts written by at least two bee experts and/or a beekeeper who studies bee populations in California.
  • You should ensure any texts you use as part of your research are credible and accurate. Be wary of websites online that contain lots of advertisements or those that are not affiliated with a professionally recognized association or field of study. Make sure you check if any of the claims made by an author have been disputed by other experts in the field or have been challenged by other experts. Try to present a well-rounded approach to your research so you do not appear biased or slanted in your research.

Step 2 Locate individuals who could be good sources.

  • You can also do an online search for individuals who may serve as good expert sources based in your area. If you need a legal source, you may ask other freelance writers who they use or ask for a contact at a police station or in the legal system.

Step 3 Interview your sources.

  • Prepare a list of questions before the interview. Research the source’s background and level of expertise. Be specific in your questions, as interviewees usually like to see that you have done previous research and are aware of the source’s background.
  • Ask open-ended questions, avoid yes or no questions. For example, rather than asking, "Did you witness the test trials of this drug?" You can present an open-ended question, "What can you tell me about the test trials of this drug?" Be an active listener and try to minimize the amount of talking you do during the interview. The interview should be about the subject, not about you.
  • Make sure you end the interview with the question: “Is there anything I haven’t asked you about this topic that I should know about?” You can also ask for referrals to other sources by asking, “Who disagrees with you on your stance on this issue?” and “Who else should I talk to about this issue?”
  • Don’t be afraid to contact the source with follow-up questions as your research continues. As well, if you have any controversial or possibly offensive questions to ask the subject, save them for last.

Step 4 Transcribe your interviews.

  • The best way to transcribe your interviews is to sit down with headphones plugged into your tape recorder and set aside a few hours to type out the interviews. There is no short and quick way to transcribe unless you decide to use a transcription service, which will charge you a fee for transcribing your interviews.

Step 5 Create an article outline.

  • Your outline should include the main point or angle of the article in the introduction, followed by supporting points in the article body, and a restatement or further development of your main point or angle in your conclusion section.
  • The structure of your article will depend on the type of article you are writing. If you are writing an article on an interview with a noteworthy individual, your outline may be more straightforward and begin with the start of the interview and move to the end of the interview. But if you are writing an investigative report, you may start with the most relevant statements or statements that relate to recent news and work backward to the least relevant or more big picture statements. [10] X Research source
  • Keep in mind the word count of the article, as specified by your editor. You should keep the first draft within the word count or just above the word count so you do not lose track of your main point. Most editors will be clear about the required word count of the article and will expect you not to go over the word count, for example, 500 words for smaller articles and 2,000-3,000 words for a feature article. Most magazines prefer short and sweet over long and overly detailed, with a maximum of 12 pages, including graphics and images. [11] X Research source
  • You should also decide if you are going to include images or graphics in the article and where these graphics are going to come from. You may contribute your own photography or the publication may provide a photographer. If you are using graphics, you may need to have a graphic designer re create existing graphics or get permission to use the existing graphics.

Step 6 Use a hook first line.

  • Use an interesting or surprising example: This could be a personal experience that relates to the article topic or a key moment in an interview with a source that relates to the article topic. For example, you may start an article on beekeeping in California by using a discussion you had with a source: "Darryl Bernhardt never thought he would end up becoming the foremost expert on beekeeping in California."
  • Try a provocative quotation: This could be from a source from your research that raises interesting questions or introduces your angle on the topic. For example, you may quote a source who has a surprising stance on bee populations: "'Bees are more confused than ever,' Darryl Bernhart, the foremost expert in bees in California, tells me."
  • Use a vivid anecdote: An anecdote is a short story that carries moral or symbolic weight. Think of an anecdote that might be a poetic or powerful way to open your article. For example, you may relate a short story about coming across abandoned bee hives in California with one of your sources, an expert in bee populations in California.
  • Come up with a thought provoking question: Think of a question that will get your reader thinking and engaged in your topic, or that may surprise them. For example, for an article on beekeeping you may start with the question: "What if all the bees in California disappeared one day?"

Step 7 Weave in quotes from experts or reliable sources.

  • You want to avoid leaning too much on quotations to write the article for you. A good rule of thumb is to expand on a quotation once you use it and only use quotations when they feel necessary and impactful. The quotations should support the main angle of your article and back up any claims being made in the article.

Step 8 End on a strong concluding statement that illuminates or expands on your article topic.

  • You may want to lean on a strong quote from a source that feels like it points to future developments relating to the topic or the ongoing nature of the topic. Ending the article on a quote may also give the article more credibility, as you are allowing your sources to provide context for the reader.

Revising the Article

Step 1 Discuss the article with your editor.

  • Having a conversation about the article with your editor can offer you a set of professional eyes who can make sure the article fits within the writing style of the publication and reaches its best possible draft. You should be open to editor feedback and work with your editor to improve the draft of the article.

Step 2 Apply editor and peer feedback to the article.

  • You should also get a copy of the publication’s style sheet or contributors guidelines and make sure the article follows these rules and guidelines. Your article should adhere to these guidelines to ensure it is ready for publication by your deadline.

Step 3 Revise the article for flow and structure.

  • Most publications accept electronic submissions of articles. Talk with your editor to determine the best way to submit the revised article.

Sample Articles

what is magazine article writing

Expert Q&A

Gerald Posner

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Expert Interview

what is magazine article writing

Thanks for reading our article! If you'd like to learn more about writing an article, check out our in-depth interview with Gerald Posner .

  • ↑ http://grammar.yourdictionary.com/grammar-rules-and-tips/tips-on-writing-a-good-feature-for-magazines.html
  • ↑ https://www.writersdigest.com/writing-articles/20-ways-to-generate-article-ideas-in-20-minutes-or-less
  • ↑ http://www.writerswrite.com/journal/jun03/eight-tips-for-getting-published-in-magazines-6036
  • ↑ http://www.thepenmagazine.net/20-steps-to-write-a-good-article/
  • ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0R5f2VV58pw
  • ↑ https://www.writersdigest.com/write-better-nonfiction/how-many-different-kinds-of-articles-are-there
  • ↑ http://libguides.unf.edu/c.php?g=177086&p=1163719

About This Article

Gerald Posner

To write a magazine article, start by researching your topic and interviewing experts in the field. Next, create an outline of the main points you want to cover so you don’t go off topic. Then, start the article with a hook that will grab the reader’s attention and keep them reading. As you write, incorporate quotes from your research, but be careful to stick to your editor’s word count, such as 500 words for a small article or 2,000 words for a feature. Finally, conclude with a statement that expands on your topic, but leaves the reader wanting to learn more. For tips on how to smoothly navigate the revision process with an editor, read on! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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Knowledge Base > Magazines > How to Write a Magazine Article? 12 Golden Rules

How to Write a Magazine Article? 12 Golden Rules

Although the number of magazines is shrinking in the digital age, many magazines have moved online. Many magazines created by online magazine maker are still popular, and authors enjoy fame and respect. That’s why, for many freelance writers, writing articles in magazines is often a career goal – because the pay can be ten times more per word than writing articles or texts for the local newspaper.

Writing magazine articles requires a different skill set than writing blog posts, screenplays, or advertisements. What’s more, as a magazine writer, more than in any other industry, you need to specialize to succeed. You write articles about history differently, sports differently, and sports history in a different way still.

A talent for writing, a love of meticulous research, and flexibility in creating texts are vital skills you need to master. Therefore, many people are interested in creating and publishing their own magazine need to master this specific style and learn how to write a magazine article.

What is a magazine?

A magazine is a publication that is a collection of articles that appears regularly. The magazine articles can be about any topic, as well as topics that interest a specific group, such as sports fans, music fans, or board game enthusiasts.

A magazine can be published weekly, monthly, bimonthly, or only a few times a year. Most magazines are published once a week or once a month. Most magazine articles do not have a list of sources and are written by regular magazine editors and writers, rarely freelance writers.

what is a magazine

Most magazine articles are easy to read and don’t take too long to read. They are often illustrated with photos or other images, and are written with simple but remarkable fonts . Today, magazines are increasingly being replaced by websites, but there are still many magazines on various topics.

What is a magazine article?

A magazine article is a specific text that can be found in a magazine or newspaper. It can be a report, a profile of an important person, an opinion piece, a discussion of a topic or a personal essay. Depending on the topic, a magazine article is usually 1,000 to 5,000 words long.

The magazine usually employs a group of editors who come up with a theme for each issue and relevant article ideas. This way, all the articles and features in the issue will have something in common. A sports magazine might talk about the start of a new season, a political magazine about an upcoming election, and a Valentine’s Day issue might be about romance.

magazine article mock up

How the format of a magazine article differs from that of a newspaper or other articles? In a newspaper that comes out every day, put the most important parts of the story first. Newspaper articles are usually read once and aren’t supposed to influence anyone. It has to be news, something you want to read.

On the other hand, a good magazine article should often start with a mystery, a question, or a situation that makes the reader want to read on. Daily newspaper articles should be unbiased descriptions of what happened, while magazine articles, often subjective, can cover a particular topic from a certain angle. To learn how to write a magazine article, you need to know what the magazine is about and how to appeal to its readers.

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Today, more and more people are creating magazines in purely digital form. Publuu converts PDF files into interactive digital magazines that you can easily view and share online. With support for HTML5 and vector fonts, your articles will look beautiful on any device, without the need to download additional apps.

Publuu makes your magazine article look and sound like the printed versions. Converting a regular PDF file into a flipping e-magazine using this service is extremely easy and fast.

Publuu’s online magazine example

View more online magazine examples

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With Publuu, your readers can flip through the pages just as they would with a real paper magazine, but that’s not all. Rich multimedia capabilities, analytics, and easy access make many people publish content for free on Publuu.

Your audience, and you, can embed your magazines in websites or emails, or share them on social media platforms. It only takes one click to go to your magazine and start reading interesting articles.

Types and examples of magazine articles

Magazine editors categorize articles by type and often mention them in publication’s submission guidelines, so knowing these types by name will help you communicate with the editor. These are: First Person Article, Opinion Piece, Information or Service Piece, Personality Profile, and Think Piece. Many news articles, how-to articles, and reviews can also be found in magazines, but they are slightly different, and many of these have moved online, to digital magazines . Articles can also feature essays or humor pieces.

magazine reading

First Person Article

First-person magazine articles are written in the first person because they are based on personal experience. Depending on their length and newsworthiness, they can be sold as feature articles or essays. They are frequently personal accounts, especially interesting if they are written by a well-known magazine writer or celebrity. Typically, the purpose of such an article is stated in the first line or paragraph to hook the magazine’s target audience, such as “I voted for this politician, and now I regret my life choices.” When you write a magazine article like this one, you should present an unpopular or overlooked point of view from a fresh perspective.

Opinion Piece

This kind of magazine writing piece or opinion essay is less personal than the First-Person Article, but it still requires a narrow focus on a specific topic. The reader’s main question is, “Why are you qualified to render an opinion?” Everyone has an opinion, but why should anyone read yours?

If you’re an expert on this subject, let the reader know right away. Don’t criticize music trends if you’re not a musician! Demonstrate your knowledge, and support your opinion with up-to-date information and credentials.

Information/Service Piece

An informational or service piece expands the reader’s understanding of a particular subject. This can be a guide, a list of important issues. You can either be the expert or interview one. These are extremely pertinent to a specific industry. In a sports magazine article, you can explain a complete history of a sports team and its roster for the upcoming season.

You can expect some in-depth knowledge if the article title contains the phrases like Myths about or Secrets of. Explain everything you know: magazine journalism is different than being a freelance writer in that you should have some industry knowledge already.

Personality profile

This type of magazine article can present a silhouette of an important or relevant person – a politician, a political activist, a sports legend… If you’re writing for a video game magazine you can showcase a famous game designer or even an entire article can be about a game character like Lara Croft or Guybrush Threepwood, if the fictional character is detailed enough! Explain why readers will find this person interesting or noteworthy.

Think Piece

Written in an investigative tone, the think piece frequently shows the downside or less popular ideas of a popular industry aspect. This magazine article could also explain why something is popular or why a political party lost elections. A think piece is more in-depth than most feature articles and necessitates credibility. Confirm your thesis by interviewing analysts and experts. This type of article can be also found in zines , self-published magazines in small circulation, which often focus on niche hobbies, counterculture groups, or subcultures. If you would like to expend your knowledge about interviewing, make sure to check our guide on how to write an interview article .

How to start a magazine article?

Most creative writing professionals would agree that the best way to start writing a magazine article is with a strong opening sentence. A feature article must draw the attention of your target audience, and grab them from the go.

You can start by asking the reader a question which you will answer in the text of the article – for instance “Did you know that most users of Windows never use 80% of their functions – and that’s a good thing?”. In the content of your magazine articles you will be able to answer this question.

Another example of a good magazine article beginning is storytelling – human brains are fascinated by stories. Starting your example with “20 years ago no one in the industry knew what a genitine was, but now their inventor is one of the most influential people” can draw attention and spike up curiosity.

storytelling

A great example is also a shocking quote – a compelling idea that goes against the grain is sure to capture the reader’s attention.

Most creative magazine article ideas

Even the most experienced journalists can often be looking for ideas for great articles. How to write a magazine article if you don’t have the slightest idea? Here are some of our suggestions:

Take a look at your specialty. If you’re a freelance writer, it’s a good idea to write about what you know. Delve into a topic thoroughly, and you’ll eventually find your niche and you might move from freelance writing jobs to magazine writing! Why? Having a writing specialty will make magazine editors think of you when story ideas in that genre come up.

Check out what’s trending. When browsing popular stories on social networks, many freelancers choose to write about current events. Lists of popular articles can help you understand what to focus your efforts on. Keep in mind that an article for national magazines needs to be well researched, and what’s trending now may change before the magazine finally comes out.

Reach out to the classics. Nostalgia always sells well. You can go back to books or movies that people remember from their youth or, for example, summarize the last year. Lists and numbers always look good!

12 rules on how to write great magazine articles

magazine making

1. Write what you know about

If your articles are really fascinating and you know what you are writing about, you have a better chance of getting published, whether in a local newspaper or in a major magazine. Writing requires researching your chosen issue thoroughly. Identify perspectives that have not been explored before – describe something from the perspective of a woman, a minority, or a worker.

2. Research how you should write

Check the writing style requirements or guidelines of the magazines to which you want to submit your work. Each magazine has its own set of guidelines on what topics, manner and tone to use. Check out Strunk and White Elements of Style for tips on writing styles, as this is what many magazines draw from.

3. Remember to be flexible

One of the most valuable writing talents a journalist can possess is flexibility. You may find that you discover completely new facts while writing a magazine article and completely change your approach. Maybe you’ll change your mind 180 degrees and instead of attacking someone, you’ll defend them – anything to attract attention.

4. Make connections and meet people

Networking is important in any business, especially for freelance writers who want to make a jump to magazine writing. Editors regularly quit one magazine to work for another. Therefore, remember to know the people first and foremost than the magazine they work for.

5. Prepare a query letter

A query letter tells the editors why your magazine article is important, whether you think someone will want to read it and why you feel obligated to write it. Add to it a text sample and some information about yourself as a writer. Even a local magazine might not be aware of who you are, after all.

6. Prepare an outline

Always before writing a text have an outline that you can use when composing your articles. It must contain the important ideas, the content of the article body and the summary, the points you will include in it. You will find that it is easier to fill such a framework with your own content.

7. Meet the experts

You need to know pundits in your industry. There are several methods of locating experts, from networking to calling organizations or agencies in your field of interest. If you want to meet a police officer, call the police station and ask if someone could talk to a journalist – many people are tempted if you promise them a feature article.

8. Talk to experts

Once you get a contact for an expert, do your best to make the expert look as good as possible. The more prominent the expert, the better your text. Make a list of questions in advance and compare it with the outline to make sure you don’t forget anything. Remember to accurately describe your expert’s achievements and personal data.

9. Create a memorable title

This step can occur at any point in the process of writing an article for a magazine. Sometimes the whole article starts with a good title! However, there is nothing wrong with waiting until the article is finished before coming up with a title. The most important thing is that the title is catchy – editors-in-chief love that!

10. To write, you have to read

You never know where you will come across an inspiring text. It’s your duty as a good writer to read everything that falls into your hands, whether it’s articles on the front pages of major publications or small blog posts. Learn about the various issues that may be useful to your magazine writing skills .

11. Add a strong ending

End with a strong concluding remark that informs or elaborates on the theme of your piece. The last paragraph should make the reader satisfied, but also curious about the future progress of the issue. He must wonder “what’s next?” and answer the important questions himself.

12. Don’t give up

Writers are rejected hundreds of times, especially when they are initially learning how to create articles for magazines. However, even a seasoned freelance writer and professional journalist can get rejected. The most successful authors simply keep writing – being rejected is part of magazine writing. Freelance writing is a good school of writing career – including coping with rejection.

Now you know how to write a magazine article that will be engaging and interesting. Despite the digitalization of the market, writing magazine articles still offers many possibilities to a freelance writer or a seasoned professional. The market of press and magazines is evolving fast, but the basic principles of journalistic integrity stay the same!

You may be also interested in:

How To Publish Digital Magazine? How to Make a Magazine Cover With a Template? 5 Reasons to Start Using a Magazine Maker

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How to Get Into Magazine Writing: Tips for Planning and Pitching Your Articles

by Yen Cabag

what is magazine article writing

Magazine writing is a unique type of writing distinct from what you may find in a newspaper, journal, or essay. You might even be surprised to know that within magazine writing itself, each subgenre calls for different skills and styles. 

For example, you’d approach a long feature article differently than a human interest piece; and if you are undertaking an investigative exposé, it will clearly call for different skills than a book review or cultural critique! 

However, there are some basic principles and elements you need to master for any type of magazine writing. In this article, we’ll show you the general skills you need to succeed at writing for a magazine.

How Do You Start Writing for a Magazine? 

If you want to write for a magazine, you need to adjust to a medium that digital technology has radically transformed. As you’ve probably noticed, many of the magazines of today have migrated to online platforms, and are read primarily on web browsers or mobile apps, such as Apple News. 

The good news is that the online world has made it possible for more publications to spring up seemingly out of nowhere, giving you more options and places to pitch your ideas! Here are some tips to help you find your way into writing for magazines: 

Pitch your ideas to the appropriate magazine. 

Magazine writers are normally “hired” on the basis of their idea pitches, which are sent through a query letter . When you send your ideas, make sure your proposed topics are in tune with the magazine’s preferred themes. You don’t want to make the mistake of pitching a sports article to a magazine like Good Housekeeping .

Specialize.

With the increasing number of writers in the online space, magazines place a high value on specialization. For example, Brian Windhorst of ESPN fame reportedly rose among the ranks thanks to his expertise in basketball writing. You should focus on your strengths and leverage those for your writing. 

Go the extra mile when it comes to research. 

As a magazine writer, you will need to do a lot of research, but it’s better to do too much than too little. The more details you have on hand, the easier it will be to find the best slant for your article. And always be sure to fact check your information !

Write for the target audience of your chosen magazine.  

One of the biggest mistakes that magazine writers make is to overlook who the magazine’s target audience actually is. Remember, a magazine exists only because of its readers, so make sure you speak straight to their hearts in any piece you submit. For example, if you are writing for a scientific journal, your readers will likely prefer more research-based content, instead of emotionally-driven pieces. 

Contact the appropriate editor. 

The magazine playing field is highly dynamic, with many editors frequently leaving one publication to join another. 

Remember that as a writer, connections are everything! Your relationship with any given editor is always more important than your connection to the company—after all, they are your connection to any magazine! Value these relationships, as they are your only open door into getting your articles published. 

6 Common Types of Magazine Articles 

Here are some of the most common formats for magazine writing: 

  • Long-form investigative articles: These heavily-researched pieces tend to use numerous sources and citations, and can take months to write and edit. 
  • Character profiles: These articles can range from a few hundred words to several thousand. They focus on one person, and are often run as cover stories.
  • Commentary: Magazines that feature current events tend to feature commentaries, too. A very common example is a sports commentary article. 
  • Criticism: Critical commentary or reviews are common for books, art, music, and film. 
  • Humor: Usually shorter in length, magazines like The New Yorker contain humor articles. These are often found in weeklies that accompany newspapers. 
  • Fiction: Fiction also has a place in magazines like The New Yorker and Harper , usually in short story form or as excerpts from longer works. 

How Do You Write a Magazine Article?

Now that you have a run-down of the different types of magazine writing, let’s talk about how to write an actual magazine article. 

1. Choose a subject you are an expert in. 

Keeping true to our earlier advice of specializing, when you start to write a magazine article, choose a topic you show certain expertise in.

Publishers typically choose articles with an in-depth take on a subject, and that’s where your level of experience will come into play. The more authoritative you are, the greater the chances are that your article will make the cut. 

2. Choose an interesting angle. 

Magazine editors choose articles they believe will pique their readers’ interest. From your chosen topic, find the angles that may not have been discussed before, or at least a perspective that will catch your audience’s attention right from the get-go. 

3. Research.

Before you start writing, do your research. Even if you think you already know everything there is to know, there is always more to be gained by added research. Who knows, you might come across fresh information that will give you a new spin on your article. 

4. Write an outline. 

No matter what your experience level is in terms of writing articles, creating an outline will help you organize your thoughts and make sure you don’t miss any important angles. In your outline, you can also plan where you might add images, graphics, or testimonials to supplement your piece.

5. Start writing. 

The good news is that magazine writing is not terribly rigid in terms of structure and format. Be creative! Remember that readers of magazines usually read not just for information, but in order to be entertained, so write in a conversational tone when possible. 

6. Make sure you follow style guidelines. 

If you are writing an article for a specific magazine, ask about their style guidelines. There’s nothing more disappointing than pouring your heart and soul out writing a piece, only to have it rejected because it doesn’t meet the magazine’s guidelines!

How Is Magazine Writing Different From Other Types of Writing ?

One of the biggest distinctions between magazine writing and others types of writing is that magazines typically have their own house styles. Because writing articles for newspapers can follow a standard that is consistent throughout the country, it’s hardly possible to distinguish one newspaper from another simply by reading a couple of articles. 

Magazines pride themselves for having their own unique style. This is why it’s relatively easy to identify whether an article is from Vogue , or from Ladies’ Home Journal. The writing style and tone for a famous fashion magazine, geared towards women who are into the latest fashion, are distinctly different from the magazine targeted towards stay-at-home moms.

This means that one of the most important skills you need to develop as a magazine writer is the flexibility to adjust your writing style to meet these house requirements. 

Did you find this post helpful? Let us know in the comments below!

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Yen Cabag

Yen Cabag is the Blog Writer of TCK Publishing. She is also a homeschooling mom, family coach, and speaker for the Charlotte Mason method, an educational philosophy that places great emphasis on classic literature and the masterpieces in art and music. She has also written several books, both fiction and nonfiction. Her passion is to see the next generation of children become lovers of reading and learning in the midst of short attention spans.

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Magazine Article Structure: How to Master the Layout

what is magazine article writing

Understanding the intricacies of a magazine article’s structure is crucial for writers and readers. A well-structured magazine article ensures clarity and engagement and enhances the reader’s comprehension and retention of the content. From captivating leads to compelling conclusions, every element plays a pivotal role.

Table of Contents

Visual elements, sidebars, and subheadings are also woven to provide depth and context. With the diverse formats available, it’s essential to discern which structure best fits the content and audience. Mastery of these structural elements promises impactful and memorable magazine articles.

Introduction to Magazine Article Structures

When picking up a magazine, readers must recognize the careful planning and structure of crafting each piece. However, the backbone of a magazine article is its structure, an invisible force guiding the narrative and ensuring clarity and engagement.

Why Structure Matters

Understanding the structure of a magazine article is beneficial for writers and readers. Just as architects need blueprints and chefs require recipes, writers rely on structure to build a coherent and impactful piece. The structure offers a systematic approach, ensuring that the writer’s message is conveyed precisely and that the reader’s journey is smooth and intuitive.

For readers, a well-structured article provides a clear path to comprehension. It ensures that the introduction grabs their attention, the main content delivers valuable information, and the conclusion ties everything together, leaving them with a clear takeaway or thought.

Components of a Magazine Article

At a high level, a magazine article consists of:

The Lead: This is the hook, the captivating start that grabs the reader’s attention.

The Body: This section delves into the heart of the topic, whether it’s an in-depth investigation, a profile, or a feature on a particular subject.

The Conclusion: It wraps up the article, providing closure or sometimes leaving the reader with something provocative to think about.

However, this is a simplification. Depending on the type of magazine article, the structure can vary, with elements such as sidebars, pull quotes, and visual aids adding depth and richness to the content.

Gains for the Reader

When readers familiarize themselves with these structures, they begin to read with a more informed perspective. They can anticipate the flow of the content, knowing where the author might present crucial facts, opposing viewpoints, or anecdotal evidence. This knowledge enriches the reading experience, allowing readers to extract more value from the article.

Moreover, an awareness of structure can heighten readers’ critical thinking skills. By understanding how an article is constructed, readers can more effectively assess the strength of an argument, the research’s depth, or the narrative’s bias.

A Mutual Understanding

In essence, the structure of a magazine article serves as a bridge between the writer’s intent and the reader’s understanding. For writers, it’s a tool to convey their message effectively. For readers, it’s a lens through which they can better interpret and engage with the content. A mutual appreciation of this structure ensures that the dance between writer and reader is harmonious, with each step or sentence leading seamlessly to the next.

The Anatomy of a Lead for a Magazine Article

In any compelling narrative, the beginning often sets the stage for what’s to come. For magazine articles, this critical beginning is known as the “lead.” It’s the gateway into the story, providing a glimpse of the content that awaits. The lead’s role is paramount: it either entices the reader to venture further into the article or fails to capture their attention, causing them to move on.

A magazine article example can significantly illuminate the power of a strong lead. Consider two articles on the same topic: while one might begin with a shocking statistic, the other could open with a personal anecdote. Both are valid approaches, but their impact on the reader can vary significantly depending on their execution and the target audience.

Different Types of Leads and Their Purposes

Anecdotal Lead: This type begins with a short story or personal account related to the main topic. It aims to humanize the subject and forge an emotional connection with the reader. For instance, a magazine article example about climate change might start with a villager’s firsthand account of witnessing glacier melt.

Question Lead: This lead engages the reader’s curiosity by posing a thought-provoking question. “What if you knew the exact day you’d die?” could be an intriguing lead for an article about genetic predictions.

Statistic Lead: This lead utilizes complex data or surprising statistics to underscore the article’s significance. An article discussing smartphone addiction might start with, “75% of millennials check their phones within 5 minutes of waking up.”

Descriptive Lead: Painting a vivid picture, this lead immerses the reader in a setting, scene, or situation. For a magazine article example about a bustling city market, the lead might dive into the cacophony of sellers, fragrances, and colors.

Quotation Lead: Beginning with a relevant quote, this lead lends authority or contrasts viewpoints. An article on freedom might open with a quote from Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King Jr.

Contrast Lead: This lead highlights the disparity by juxtaposing two opposing ideas or scenarios. An article about the digital divide might start by comparing a day in the life of two students, one with and one without internet access.

Mastering the Lead: A Foundation for Success

Regardless of the type, a lead’s primary function remains consistent: to captivate and guide the reader into the article’s main body. It’s the reader’s first impression; as the old adage goes, first impressions matter. Whether drawing from a magazine article example or crafting an original piece, understanding the anatomy of a lead is crucial for anyone aiming to engage and inform their audience effectively.

Person looking at magazine article structure.

Main Body Formats: From Narratives to How-Tos

The main body of a magazine article is where the meat of the content lies. It’s the detailed exploration, the unfolding narrative, the in-depth discussion. Depending on the content and purpose, the magazine article format for the main body can vary widely. From weaving engaging narratives to instructive how-tos, the format chosen significantly influences the reader’s experience and comprehension.

Narrative Format

Application: Used primarily for personal essays, long-form journalism, and features.

Description: This format relies on storytelling techniques, often flowing like a novel or a short story. It might follow a chronological order or use flashbacks, with character development, plot, and a climax.

Real-life Example: An article detailing a mountaineer’s ascent of Mount Everest would use the narrative format. It would chronicle the journey from the base camp and capture the challenges, personal emotions, and eventual triumph or setback.

Expository Format

Application: Common for articles that aim to inform or explain without the writer’s personal opinion.

Description: This format provides a straightforward, fact-based explanation of a topic. It relies heavily on research, expert quotes, and data.

Real-life Example: An article exploring the reasons behind bee population decline, detailing the role of pesticides, climate change, and habitat loss, would adopt an expository magazine article format.

How-to or Instructional Format

Application: Used for articles that guide the reader through a process or instructions.

Description: This format breaks down a task into digestible steps, often supplemented with tips, illustrations, or cautionary notes. It’s direct and often written in the second person, addressing the reader directly.

Real-life Example: An article teaching readers how to create a rooftop garden, complete with steps, necessary tools, and best plants for rooftop environments, would utilize this format.

Q&A Format

Application: Typical for interviews or articles that revolve around experts’ insights.

Description: Presented as a series of questions followed by answers. This magazine article format is straightforward but engaging if the questions are insightful and the solutions provide depth.

Real-life Example: An interview with a renowned climate scientist, where they answer queries about global warming, its impact, and mitigation measures, would adopt a Q&A structure.

Listicle Format

Application: Popular in modern digital magazines or platforms catering to readers looking for quick, engaging reads.

Description: As the name suggests, it presents information in a list form, often numbered or bulleted.

Real-life Example: “10 Revolutionary Women Writers of the 21st Century” would be a listicle briefly describing each writer and their contributions.

Embracing Versatility

The main body’s structure of a magazine article is as varied as the topics they cover. By understanding each magazine article format and its applications, writers can ensure their content is engaging and compelling, catering to their readers’ specific needs and preferences.

Using Sidebars for Additional Insight

In magazine layouts, sidebars often stand out as strategic design elements, adding layers of context, detail, or intrigue to the main content. A well-designed sidebar doesn’t just supplement the article but elevates it, providing readers with enriched understanding and engagement.

The Role of Sidebars in Magazine Article Design

The primary function of a sidebar in a magazine article design is to offer supplemental information related to the main content. Instead of disrupting the flow of the article with tangential or in-depth details, sidebars house this additional data, ensuring the main narrative remains crisp and focused. Sidebars can:

Highlight Key Points: Summarizing essential information or presenting “at a glance” insights.

Delve Deeper: Offering a more in-depth exploration of a specific point mentioned in the article.

Provide Context: Sharing background information or historical data relevant to the topic.

Showcase Visuals: Including charts, graphs, or images that support the article’s content.

Share Testimonials or Quotes: Giving voice to experts or those affected by the topic.

Designing Effective Sidebars

The magazine article design for sidebars varies, but there are a few best practices to ensure they serve their purpose effectively:

Contrast with Main Content: Different fonts, colors, or backgrounds differentiate the sidebar from the primary content.

Keep It Concise: Sidebars should be brief, offering bite-sized information. Overloading a sidebar can overwhelm readers and detract from its purpose.

Strategic Placement: Position the sidebar close to the relevant content, ensuring readers naturally gravitate towards it as they progress through the article.

Use Clear Headings: If the sidebar contains different types of information, use subheadings to guide the reader.

Enhancing Reader Engagement and Understanding

Including sidebars in a magazine, article design does more than beautify a page or fill space; it significantly amplifies reader comprehension and interaction. By offering additional insights without breaking the primary narrative’s flow, sidebars cater to readers who crave a deeper dive into specific points.

For instance, in an article about the benefits of organic farming, a sidebar could provide statistics on increased organic produce sales over the years. This immediate access to supplemental data can strengthen the article’s argument and give readers a holistic understanding.

Moreover, for readers skimming the article, sidebars can act as focal points, drawing their attention to critical facts or insights that might otherwise be buried in the main content.

The Sidebar’s Pivotal Role

Sidebars play a pivotal role in the intricate dance of magazine article design. They enhance aesthetics and enrich content, providing readers with a multi-dimensional exploration of topics. When designed with purpose and precision, sidebars can transform a good article into a great one.

Laptop on desk being used for magazine article.

The Power of Effective Headings and Subheadings

The tapestry of a magazine article is not just its intricate and detailed content but also its magazine article frame—constructed using headings and subheadings. While these elements might seem simple, they wield a transformative power in guiding and enhancing the reader’s journey and comprehension.

Significance in the Magazine Article Frame

Within the complex structure of a magazine piece, headings and subheadings function as navigational beacons. Just as a map uses landmarks to help travelers find their way, the magazine article frame uses these elements to direct readers through its content.

Setting the Tone: The main heading is the reader’s first interaction with the content. A well-crafted header grabs attention and sets expectations, highlighting the article’s tone and focus.

Segmentation: Particularly in lengthy articles, subheadings break the text into digestible sections. This segmentation aids readers in understanding the article’s flow and the progression of ideas.

Facilitating Skimming: Only some readers dive deep into the content in today’s fast-paced world. Many skim to gather the gist. Headings and subheadings allow these readers to quickly pinpoint areas of interest and understand the main takeaways.

Breaking Down Information Effectively

An article without clear divisions can appear daunting, much like a long, winding road without signposts. Headings and subheadings work to classify information, making it accessible and easily digestible.

Highlighting Key Points: Through concise and impactful subheadings, writers can emphasize the core ideas of each section, ensuring readers grasp the essential messages even if they don’t delve into every paragraph.

Creating a Logical Flow: Sequential and thoughtfully crafted headings guide readers through a logical journey, from introducing a topic to providing evidence, showcasing examples, and concluding.

Aiding Memory Retention: By compartmentalizing information, headings and subheadings make it easier for readers to recall details. The human brain often remembers structured information better than continuous, undivided content.

Crafting Effective Headings in the Magazine Article Frame

While the utility of headings and subheadings is evident, their efficacy relies on their construction. An impactful header should:

  • Be concise yet descriptive.
  • Engage the reader’s curiosity.
  • Reflect the content it precedes.
  • Be consistent in style throughout the article, ensuring a cohesive magazine article frame.

The Unsung Pillars

While imagery, quotes, and narrative arcs often steal the limelight in magazine articles, the humble headings and subheadings remain the unsung pillars of the magazine article frame. They structure and shape the content, ensuring the message is noticed in the maze of words. As integral parts of the magazine article frame, they are pivotal in enhancing readability, understanding, and engagement.

Integrating Visual Elements: Photos, Illustrations, and Infographics

The intricate blend of words in a magazine article forms a tapestry of information, weaving narratives and presenting insights. However, visuals such as photos, illustrations, and infographics play a quintessential role in any effective magazine article template. They are not mere decorations but powerful storytelling tools that complement and amplify the textual content.

The Role of Visuals in a Magazine Article Template

Instant Engagement: A picture is worth a thousand words. In the bustling world of content consumption, visuals can instantly grab readers’ attention, anchoring them to the article. Before delving into the textual content, an evocative image or a captivating infographic can intrigue readers, setting the tone for what’s to come.

Complementing the Text: A magazine article template’s relationship between text and visuals is symbiotic. While words convey detailed information, visuals support, emphasize, and enhance those details. For instance, an article on wildlife conservation becomes infinitely more impactful when accompanied by a striking image of an endangered species in its natural habitat.

Breaking Monotony: Long-form articles can appear daunting and monolithic. Integrating visuals breaks the textual monotony, offering readers a refreshing change of pace and facilitating easier content digestion.

Facilitating Understanding: Complex topics or data-heavy discussions can be challenging to convey solely through words. Here, infographics shine. They simplify intricate data, presenting it in a digestible, visually appealing manner. A magazine article template incorporating infographics can transform a dense topic into an engaging, easily understandable narrative.

Enhancing the Magazine Article Template with Varied Visuals

Photos: Authentic, high-resolution images can evoke emotions, set contexts, or provide real-life examples. They add a layer of realism to the article, allowing readers to visualize described scenarios or subjects.

Illustrations: These offer a more flexible and creative avenue than photos. Images can be tailored to match the article’s tone, whether whimsical, serious, or abstract. They add a unique flair to the magazine article template, making it stand out.

Infographics: As visual representations of information, infographics distill complex data or concepts into easily graspable visuals. They’re especially effective in articles that deal with statistics, processes, or timelines.

The Visual-Textual Symphony

The art of crafting an influential magazine article lies in the harmonious integration of text and visuals. In a well-designed magazine article template, each visual element is strategically positioned to reinforce, complement, and elevate the textual content. Through this blend, articles achieve a dynamic, multifaceted form of storytelling, ensuring readers understand and experience the content.

Person looking at magazine article structure.

The Art of Crafting a Memorable Conclusion for a Magazine Article

In magazine articles, every section has a unique role, from the gripping leads to the compelling body. But, within the intricacies of a magazine article layout, the conclusion stands out as the final note. This swan song leaves a resonant echo in the reader’s mind. Much like the finishing stroke in a painting, it completes the picture, offering readers clarity, insights, and a sense of fulfillment.

The Quintessential Role of a Conclusion in the Magazine Article Layout

Every component of a magazine article layout has a purpose, and the conclusion is no exception. It is the culmination of the reader’s journey, a destination that should leave them informed, contemplative, and spurred into action.

Leaving a Lasting Impression: The ending of an article often defines its remembrance. While readers may skim sections of the main body or gloss over details, the conclusion offers a summarized essence, reinforcing the core message. A memorable conclusion ensures the reader leaves with a clear takeaway, deepening the article’s purpose in their memory.

Providing a Sense of Completion: The conclusion acts as the seal, closing the narrative. In a well-structured magazine article layout, the conclusion ensures all threads spun in the narrative converge, offering readers a rounded perspective. This closure prevents readers from feeling adrift, ensuring they leave with a sense of satisfaction.

Inspiring Action and Reflection: Beyond mere summarization, a robust conclusion nudges readers towards introspection or tangible action. Whether challenging them with a thought-provoking question, presenting a call to action, or urging them to reconsider preconceived notions, the conclusion’s potential to instigate change is immense.

Tailoring the Conclusion to the Magazine Article Layout

While the significance of a conclusion is undeniable, its effectiveness is contingent on how it’s integrated into the overall magazine article layout.

  • Consistency with the Theme: The conclusion should harmonize with the article’s overarching theme, ensuring a fluid transition from the main body.
  • Avoid Introducing New Elements: A conclusion is a synthesis, not a place for fresh revelations. New information can jolt the reader, detracting from the sense of closure.
  • Engage Emotionally: Evoking emotions, whether hope, concern, or inspiration, amplifies the lasting power of the conclusion. An emotional connection ensures readers carry the article’s essence with them.

The Lasting Legacy of Conclusions

In the multifaceted design of a magazine article layout, the conclusion emerges as the final brushstroke, the defining silhouette against the backdrop. Its power lies in its subtlety, its ability to encapsulate the narrative’s spirit, and its potential to leave a lingering trace in the mindscape of readers. Crafting this section with intention and finesse ensures that an article doesn’t just end but resonates, echoing its core message long after the last word is read.

Common Magazine Article Types and Their Unique Structures

The world of magazine article writing is rich and varied, offering a plethora of formats that cater to different content needs and audience preferences. Each type of article possesses a distinct structure crafted to enhance its primary objective. Let’s delve into some common magazine article types and unpack their unique structural nuances, offering illustrative examples for better understanding.

Feature Articles

Structure: This is the crown jewel of magazine article writing, often diving deep into a topic, person, event, or trend. Feature articles typically start with a strong lead, setting the tone and drawing readers in. They then progress through a detailed body with subheadings, anecdotes, interviews, and personal reflections. The conclusion often circles back to the lead, offering closure.

Example: A feature article on the impact of climate change on polar bears might begin with a heart-wrenching account of a lone bear’s struggle, delve into scientific data, expert opinions, and local stories, before ending with a broader reflection on nature’s fragile balance.

Structure: Profiles focus on individuals, providing an in-depth look at their life, achievements, personality, and more. After a compelling introduction highlighting the individual’s significance, the body elaborates on their background, significant milestones, challenges, and personal anecdotes. The conclusion often offers insights into their future plans or broader impact.

Example: In magazine article writing, a profile on a renowned author might begin by discussing a pivotal moment in their latest book, dive into their writing journey, personal life, and literary achievements, and conclude with their legacy in the literary world.

News Stories

Structure: Unlike newspapers, magazine news stories offer more depth. They commence with a headline and lead that outlines the main event or update. The body provides detailed information, background context, related events, and expert opinions. It concludes with implications or future predictions.

Example: A news story about a technological breakthrough in renewable energy sources might start with the discovery’s announcement, explain the technology, its potential benefits and challenges, and conclude with its potential global impact.

How-to Articles

Structure: These are instructional pieces. They start with an introduction explaining the importance of the task. The main body follows a step-by-step format, often accompanied by subheadings, bullet points, and images for clarity. The conclusion offers additional tips or emphasizes the benefits of completing the task.

Example: An article on “How to Grow Organic Tomatoes” would detail the process, from selecting seeds to harvesting, guiding readers through each phase with clear instructions and visual aids.

Structure: Reviews assess products, books, films, etc. They begin with an introduction that provides context. The body delves into features, pros, cons, and personal experiences. The conclusion offers a verdict or recommendation.

Example: A movie review might introduce the film’s context, discuss its plot, characters, direction, and cinematography strengths and weaknesses, and end with a recommendation.

In Summation

The diversity in magazine article writing ensures writers can approach subjects from various angles, presenting engaging and apt content. By understanding the unique structures associated with each type, writers can craft pieces that resonate, inform, and captivate their readers.

What are feature articles?

Feature articles are comprehensive pieces that delve deep into a topic, person, event, or trend. They combine detailed analysis, anecdotes, interviews, and personal reflections to give readers an in-depth understanding.

Are magazine news stories similar to newspaper articles?

While both report on current events, magazine news stories offer more depth and context than their newspaper counterparts. They often include background information, related events, and expert insights.

What is the primary objective of a how-to article?

How-to articles are instructional pieces guiding readers through a process or task step-by-step . They are structured for clarity, often using subheadings, bullet points, and visuals to ensure understanding.

How do reviews offer a verdict or recommendation?

Reviews assess products or media by discussing their features, strengths, and weaknesses. Based on this assessment and the writer’s personal experience, a conclusion provides a verdict or recommendation to readers.

Can a magazine article combine multiple formats?

While each type has a distinct structure, skilled magazine article writing can blend elements from various formats to create a unique, engaging piece tailored to the topic and audience.

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How to Write an Article for a Magazine: Expert Tips and Tricks

By: Author Paul Jenkins

Posted on Published: June 14, 2023  - Last updated: June 23, 2023

Categories Writing

Magazine writing is a unique form of art that requires writers to carefully blend elements of storytelling, informative research, and reader engagement. Crafting an article for a magazine demands a flair for creative writing and an understanding of the submission process and the specific expectations of the magazine’s audience.

With a clear idea of the subject matter and a strong knack for storytelling, anyone can venture into the world of magazine writing and make a lasting impact on the readers.

The journey of writing a magazine article begins with understanding the fundamentals of magazine articles and their unique characteristics. It requires a thorough understanding of the target market, a well-defined topic, and an unmistakable voice to engage readers.

By focusing on these aspects, writers can create articles that resonate with a magazine’s audience, leading to potential ongoing collaborations and publication opportunities.

Key Takeaways

  • Magazine writing involves a blend of storytelling, research, and reader engagement.
  • Understanding the target audience and article topic is crucial to success.
  • Focusing on writing quality and a unique voice can lead to ongoing publication opportunities.

Understanding Magazine Articles

Types of magazine articles.

Magazine articles can differ significantly from newspaper articles or other forms of writing . Several types of magazine articles include features, profiles, news stories, and opinion pieces. Feature articles are in-depth stories that provide substantial information about a specific subject, often written by freelance writers.

Profiles focus on an individual or organization, showcasing their accomplishments or perspective. News stories are shorter pieces that report timely events and updates, while opinion pieces allow writers to share their viewpoints on relevant matters.

The Purpose of a Magazine Article

The primary purpose of a magazine article is to entertain, inform, or educate its readers in an engaging and visually appealing manner. Magazine writing is crafted with the reader in mind, considering their interests, knowledge level, and preferences.

The tone, structure, and style may vary depending on the target audience and the magazine’s genre. This approach allows for a more flexible, creative, and conversational writing form than news articles or research reports.

Magazine articles are an excellent medium for freelance writers to showcase their writing skills and expertise on specific subjects. Whether they’re writing feature articles, profiles, or opinion pieces, consistency, factual accuracy, and a strong connection with the reader are essential elements of successful magazine writing.

Developing Your Article Idea

Finding a story idea.

Developing a great article idea starts with finding a unique and compelling story. As a freelance writer, you must stay updated on current events, trends, and niche topics that can spark curiosity in the readers.

Browse newspapers, magazine websites, blogs, and social media platforms to stay informed and derive inspiration for your topic. Engage in conversation with others or join online forums and groups that cater to your subject area for fresh insights.

Remember to select a theme familiar to you or one with expertise. This approach strengthens your article’s credibility and offers readers a fresh perspective.

Pitching to Magazine Editors

Once you’ve generated a story idea, the next step is to pitch your concept to magazine editors. Start by researching and building a list of potential magazines or publications suited to your topic. Keep in mind the target audience and interests of each publication.

Instead of submitting a complete article, compose a concise and engaging query letter. This letter should encompass a brief introduction, the main idea of your article, your writing credentials, and any previously published work or relevant experience.

When crafting your pitch, aim for clarity and brevity. Magazine editors often receive numerous submissions, so make sure your pitch stands out.

Tailor the tone of your query letter according to the general style of the target magazine, and consider mentioning specific sections or columns you believe your article would fit.

Patience and persistence are key attributes of successful freelance writers. Always be prepared to pitch your article idea to different magazine editors, and do not hesitate to ask for feedback in case of rejection. Refining and adapting your story ideas will increase your chances of getting published.

Remember to follow the guidelines and protocols established by the magazine or publication when submitting your query letter or article pitches. Also, some magazines may prefer to work with writers with prior experience or published work in their portfolios.

Consider starting with smaller publications or creating a blog to build your credibility and portfolio. With a well-developed article idea and a strong pitch, you’re on the right path to becoming a successful magazine writer.

Writing the Article

The writing process.

The writing process for a magazine article generally involves detailed research, outlining, and drafting before arriving at the final piece. To create a compelling article, identify your target audience and understand their preferences.

This will allow you to tailor your content to suit their needs and expectations. Next, gather relevant information and conduct interviews with experts, if necessary.

Once you have enough material, create an outline, organizing your thoughts and ideas logically. This helps ensure a smooth flow and lets you focus on each section as you write.

Revising your work several times is essential, checking for grammar, punctuation, and clarity. Ensure your language is concise and straightforward, making it accessible to a broad range of readers.

Creating an Engaging Opening

An engaging opening is critical in capturing the reader’s attention and setting the tone for the entire article. Begin your piece with a strong hook, such as an intriguing anecdote, a surprising fact, or a thought-provoking question. This will entice readers to continue reading and maintain their interest throughout the piece.

Remember that different publications may have varying preferences, so tailor your opening accordingly.

Organizing Your Content

Organizing your content is essential in creating a coherent and easy-to-read article. Consider segmenting your piece into sub-sections, using headings to clarify the flow and make the content more digestible. Here are some tips for organizing your content effectively:

  • Utilize bullet points or numbered lists to convey information in a simple, organized manner
  • Highlight crucial points with bold text to draw readers’ attention
  • Use tables to present data or comparisons that may be difficult to express in plain text

As you organize your content, keep your target audience in mind and prioritize readability and comprehension. Avoid making exaggerated or false claims, damaging your credibility and negatively impacting the reader’s experience.

Remember to adhere to the submission guidelines provided by the magazine, as each publication may have different preferences and requirements. Following these steps and maintaining a clear, confident tone can create an engaging and informative magazine article that resonates with your readers.

Polishing Your Article

Proofreading and editing.

Before submitting your article to a magazine, ensure it is polished and error-free. Start by proofreading for grammar, spelling, and punctuation mistakes, making your article look more professional and credible. Using tools like grammar checkers is a good idea, but an experienced writer should also manually review their piece as the software might not detect some mistakes.

Editing your article is crucial, as it helps refine the structure and flow of your writing. Eliminate redundant or unnecessary words and reorganize paragraphs if needed. Consider asking a peer or a mentor to review it for an unbiased perspective.

Keep the magazine’s desired writing style in mind, and adapt your article suitably. For example, a news article may require a concise and informative tone, while a feature in a magazine on pop culture may call for a more conversational and engaging approach.

Using Appropriate Language and Style

To make your article stand out, it is essential to use appropriate language and style. Unlike online publication or social media writing, magazine journalism usually demands a more refined and professional tone. Focus on using a clear, neutral, knowledgeable voice conveying confidence and expertise.

Here are some tips to ensure your article fits the magazine’s desired style:

  • Ensure you have a compelling subject line that captures the reader’s attention.
  • Depending on the type of article you’re writing, decide if your piece should follow a more scholarly approach, like in a scholarly journal, or a more relaxed, opinion-based style found in lifestyle magazines.
  • Use relevant examples to support your points, but avoid making exaggerated or false claims.
  • Consider your audience and their interests. Choose the right vocabulary to engage them without making the content too pretentious or complicated.

By carefully proofreading and editing your work and using appropriate language and style, you can ensure your magazine article shines. Remember to stay true to your voice and the magazine’s requirements, and maintain a professional tone.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the key components of a magazine article.

A magazine article typically includes a headline, introduction, body, and conclusion. The headline should be striking and attention-grabbing to capture the reader’s interest. The introduction sets the context and tone of the piece while giving the reader a taste of what to expect.

The body of the article is where the main content and message are conveyed, with vital information, examples, and analysis.

The conclusion summarizes the article by summarizing the main points and often providing a call to action or a thought-provoking question.

What is an effective writing style for a magazine article?

An effective writing style for a magazine article should be clear, concise, and engaging. It is essential to cater to the target audience by using language that resonates with them and addressing relevant topics. Keep sentences and paragraphs short and easily digestible, and avoid jargon unless the publication targets industry professionals.

Adopting a conversational tone while maintaining professionalism usually works well in magazine writing.

How should the introduction be written for a magazine article?

The introduction of a magazine article should engage the reader right from the start by grabbing their attention with a hook. This can be an interesting anecdote, a fascinating fact, or a provocative question. The introduction should also establish the flow of the rest of the article by providing brief context or outlining the piece’s structure.

What are the best practices for structuring a magazine article?

The structure of a magazine article should be well-organized and easy to follow. This often means using subheadings, bullet points, or numbered lists to break up the text and emphasize important content. Start with the most important information, then move on to supporting details and background information. Maintain a logical, coherent flow between paragraphs, ensuring each section builds on the previous one.

How can I make my magazine article engaging and informative?

To make a magazine article engaging and informative, focus on finding the right balance between providing valuable information and keeping the reader entertained. Use anecdotes, personal stories, and real-life examples to make the content relatable and genuine. When applicable, include engaging visuals (such as photos or illustrations), as they aid comprehension and make the article more appealing. Finally, address the reader directly when possible, making them feel more involved in the narrative.

What are some useful tips for editing and proofreading a magazine article?

When editing and proofreading a magazine article, focus on the bigger picture, such as organization and flow. Ensure that the structure is logical and transitions are smooth and seamless. Then, move on to sentence-level editing, examining grammar, punctuation, and style consistency. Ensure that redundancies and jargon are eliminated and that the voice and tone match the target audience and publication. Lastly, proofread for typos and errors, preferably using a fresh pair of eyes or a professional editing tool.

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6 Important Tips for Magazine Article Writing

Writing articles for magazines is definitely a dream for a lot of writers. This is because the pay is usually huge. Not only that, it can also offer exposure that can lead to more article writing projects. Below are the things that you need to learn in order to write amazing articles for magazines:

1. Make sure to choose a topic that you’re an expert on or you feel interested in.

You’ll most likely to produce high quality magazine articles if you choose topics that are included in your areas of expertise and areas of interest. Publishers always look for articles that contain in-depth information or those that are very authoritative. I would recommend that you list down all the things that you feel you’re very good at. Then, choose those ones that you can easily sell to different magazines.

2. Choose interesting angles.

You have better chances of getting your articles published if they’re very interesting. Study your chosen topic carefully and figure out the angles that were not yet discussed before and those that will grab your target audience by the throat. Also, make sure that you do not write about general topics. Publishers in general do not like articles that contain too many information that are not really useful or beneficial to their clients.

3. Research.

Even if you think that you know your chosen topic inside out, I am sure it wouldn’t hurt if you conduct research. This will surely allow you to get more useful and fresh information that can make your articles more informative and more valuable to the eyes of your target audience. Read relevant resources and if needed, interview other experts.

4. Create an outline.

Next step is to create a structure that you can follow when writing your articles. This must contain the ideas that you’re going to discuss on your introduction, article body, and conclusion. Decide if you’re going to add images, testimonials, and graphics.

5. Write your articles.

Unlike when writing news articles, you’re not required to follow specific structure or format when writing your magazine articles. You can be as creative as you want to be. To hook your readers, I suggest that you write using their language. It will also help if you strive to sound upbeat and warm all the time. Remember, your readers are reading magazine articles not just to get informed but to be entertained as well.

6. Check out the style sheet or guidelines of the magazines where you would like to submit your articles to.

Every magazine has its own list of instructions about the subjects, approach, and tone that you need to use. If these are not published, I would recommend that you read all the articles that were used by the magazines where you would like to submit your copies to. Doing this will surely give you a clear idea as to what exactly they’re looking for.

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Writing for Magazine: Types, Characteristics, Difference, Writing Styles

  • Post author: Anuj Kumar
  • Post published: 10 August 2021
  • Post category: Journalism
  • Post comments: 0 Comments

Table of Contents

  • 1 What is Magazine?
  • 2 Characteristics of Magazines
  • 3.1 Size and Appearance
  • 3.2 Content
  • 3.4 Design and Layout
  • 3.5 Target Audience
  • 3.6 Readability
  • 3.7 Display Ads
  • 3.8 Visual Strength
  • 3.9 Shelf Life
  • 4 Basics of Magazine Writing
  • 5.1 Tell a Story
  • 5.2 The Beginning
  • 5.3 The Middle
  • 5.4 The Ending
  • 5.5 Extra Credit
  • 6.1 Narrative Writing
  • 6.2 Serialised Narrative Writing
  • 6.3 Descriptive Writing
  • 6.4 Persuasive Writing
  • 6.5 Imaginative Writing
  • 6.6 Visual Writing
  • 6.7 Multiple Inverted Pyramid
  • 7.1 General Interest Magazines
  • 7.2 Special Interest Magazines
  • 7.3 Farm Magazines
  • 7.4 Sports Magazines
  • 7.5 Business Magazines
  • 7.6 Environmental Magazines
  • 7.7 Entertainment Magazines
  • 7.8 Automobile Magazines
  • 7.9 Children’s Magazines
  • 7.10 Women’s Magazines
  • 7.11 Men’s Magazines
  • 7.12 Literary Magazines
  • 8.1 What is the difference between newspaper and magazine?
  • 8.2 What are the basics of magazine writing?
  • 8.3 What are the types of magazines?

What is Magazine?

A magazine is a publication that is issued periodically. It generally contains essays, stories, poems, articles, fiction, recipes, images, etc. Magazines are directed at a general and special audience, often published on a weekly or monthly basis.

A magazine can also be considered as a cabinet of curiosities; i.e. a display case in which interesting, unusual, and occasionally ‘eccentric’ objects are collected and displayed as a conversation piece or an expression of the writer’s wide-ranging interests or tastes.

The readers are treated with a fascinating, mind-expanding, and unique set of wonders they had never dreamt of.

Characteristics of Magazines

Characteristics of magazines While popular magazines provide broad overviews of topics, scholarly journals provide in-depth analysis of topics and report the findings of the research, and trade magazines report on industry trends, new products, or techniques.

A popular magazine that caters to the general public uses non-technical language. The contents of these magazines include interviews, general interest articles, and various types of features. They usually cover a wide range of topics based on research, source comments, and generalizations.

Articles are usually written by a staff writer or a journalist; in some cases, interesting articles of freelancers are also encouraged. They generally contain many interesting and sometimes sensuous photographs to attract readers.

In general, magazine articles are easy to read, fairly brief in length, and may include illustrations or photographs. Magazines don’t necessarily follow a specific format or structure in writing the articles.

Its attractive appearance, eye-catching cover pictures, and illustrations on quality paper make it more appealing to the reading public. Magazines also contain many colorful and impressive advertisements.

Difference between Newspaper and Magazine

Newspapers and magazines are two important forms of print media that are read by millions of people around the world. Some of the most common differences between newspapers and magazines can be seen through their size and appearance, content, style, target audience, design and layout, readability, and advertisements.

Let’s discuss the difference between newspapers and magazines :

Size and Appearance

Design and layout, target audience, readability, display ads, visual strength.

Newspapers are bigger in size and they can be folded. A story above the middle fold on the front page of a newspaper is considered the most important story and one that appears just below the fold is generally the second most important story.

If there are many important stories on a newspaper page, then the treatment given to a story will decide its importance: such as photos/graphics with a more important story and with no visual elements in other stories. The eyes of a reader can scan an entire page without a fold.

A magazine tends to have a “book-type” size while the newspaper is really meant to be spread at arm’s length for the reader to grasp its contents.

Newspapers deal with reports clearly, briefly, and objectively. A magazine writer focuses on specialized topics and current issues of public interest. Newspapers remain the primary source of authentic, reliable, and latest information about what is happening around the world and even in one’s own locality.

But magazines are not sources of fresh content to the extent of publishing the breaking news. However, its content is specialized and recent in nature. Thus, we have various magazines such as entertainment, science, share markets, sports, glamour, and movies.

Newspapers are more versatile in content and hence they never fall short of content as there is always something happening in different parts of the world. On the other hand, magazine content is always based on the liking of readers of diverse backgrounds.

Newspapers focus on catchy headlines to create interest in the reader. Many reporters and editors are employed in newspapers to prepare specialized reports and interpretative articles. But magazines have lesser staff. A magazine writer has more freedom to express or has more room for subjectivity.

She/he has the tenacity and freedom to express things in a creative manner. It further enhances the writer’s mastery of the expression by imploring these seemingly circular methods of self-expression.

The newspaper writer on the other hand is compounded to a somewhat strict, strong, and straight writing mostly based on facts and figures.

Newspapers are known for their simple layout and design . While the content is usually in black and white, the style and font are fairly consistent throughout. Magazines have much more visual expression than newspapers because magazines are not subject to one consistent layout.

Magazines use lots of colors, and different types and sizes of fonts, and break up their articles with images and colors.

The main difference between a newspaper and a magazine is that newspapers are written for a general audience , while magazines are for specific types of audiences. A magazine attracts varied target audiences . A newspaper’s target audience is determined by its geography and its focus is broad.

Here, the editor determines what the people should read, what they want and desire. In contrast, a magazine’s target audience is determined by demographics and interests. (‘Demographics’ means the physical characteristics of the individual such as race, gender, interest, education level, etc.).

News stories are usually written in a matter-of-fact style. But magazines employ colorful language so as to make the content enjoyable.

The newspaper readability level corresponds to a difficult classification built around tight grammatical and syntactical rules. Linguistic subjectivity which relies on expressive adjectives enhances the readability of magazines.

Though magazines and newspapers both provide readers with information, their format and appeal differ considerably. Magazines are more advertiser-driven than newspapers. Newspapers are slightly different in this regard. Newspapers are driven more by readership than by advertisers.

They focus more on catchy headlines in an effort to capture the reader’s interest and get him to read the entire story. Part of the reason for this is that people often associate what they read with an ad they see near the piece. Our minds just naturally attach and group objects and associations together.

Advertising giants know this and place their ads exactly in proper alignment with stories and articles they want to associate with their products on those specialized magazines.

The visual strength of magazines is enhanced with the effective use of color in magazines. In magazines, we can also use a color background whereas newspapers normally have only a white background. This means you can present more attractive color contrasts in your magazine visuals.

Another strength of magazines is a longer life . Newspapers are read only once and then discarded. In contrast, magazines are commonly kept for several days, weeks, or months in magazine racks which provides for possible repeat reading.

Magazines use some of the highest-quality paper and ink to produce a visually appealing product meant to be kept and read longer than a newspaper. Magazines tend to focus on entertainment pieces, and provide how-to-do articles and features about certain subjects within their chosen marketing niche.

Magazines also have advertisements taking up large amounts of page space to balance the cost of production.

Basics of Magazine Writing

The joy of magazine writing lies in its variety. Anything from a celebrity interview to a food recipe can be the topic for magazine articles and this variety demands versatility. Coverage of events for magazines offers challenges as well as opportunities to journalists.

A creative flair and innovative skill may help in producing masterpieces and also in creating an everlasting impression on the reader’s mind. The language used depends, to a certain extent, on the objective of the magazine.

Literary style is generally preferred by the magazine press. Thus magazine writing requires a different way of thinking, writing, and structuring. Effective magazine writing is accessible, interesting, lively, colorful, grabbing, and relevant.

Whatever be the type of publication a journalist writes for, the basic approach is the same: write for your readers. However, good writing for magazines depends on the adherence to some well-known guidelines.

Though there are not many lengthy rules, there are guidelines a magazine writer should follow to produce a stylish copy. The most important among them can be summarized as follows:

  • Know whom you are writing for, their interests and concerns.
  • Know what you want to say and achieve.
  • Always prefer the concrete to the abstract.
  • Be accurate and readable.
  • Have an attention grabbing intro.
  • Spend considerable time thinking about fresh ways to ap-proach the subject.
  • Keep materials and sentences short.
  • Promote a vibrant style.
  • Know the publication’s editorial policy to achieve your di-rection.

Magazine writers often develop a strong personal style that is opinionated, anecdotal, and gossipy while developing the content. The quality of the content and style are equally important. The wordplay and tricks of style make the piece entertaining to read.

How to Structure Magazine Article

As soon as you’re ready to write a magazine article, you need to think about structure. With magazine articles, you can move beyond the inverted pyramid style of news by scattering important points throughout the article .

Tell a Story

The beginning, extra credit.

The important thing to remember is that you’re telling a story to your readers. That means you need a beginning, a middle, and an end. It also means you need to think about where you’re taking your reader and create a logical path to that endpoint.

To get people to read your article, you need to find a way to grab them. For example, you can begin an article with a quote or an anecdote from a person’s life. However, you can also set the scene or use anything that will attract the reader’s attention.

With most magazine articles, you talk to a person or people. People like reading about other people, so if your interviewee says something good, use a quote rather than the reported speech. This makes your magazine article more interesting.

Finally, end with a bang. This could be in the form of an important point, a revelation, or another anecdote or quote. The idea is to satisfy your reader and to get that reader interested in your other writings as well.

When you do research for an article, you often have information left over that didn’t make it into the main piece. Don’t get rid of this. Use it to create a sidebar or table (editors will love this), or as the starting point for another article.

Magazine Writing Styles

Let us now discuss some of the common styles used by the magazines in their presentation of articles:

Narrative Writing

Serialised narrative writing, descriptive writing, persuasive writing, imaginative writing, visual writing, multiple inverted pyramid.

Narratives are works that provide an account of connected events. In a narrative style, you’ll need to tell a story in such a way that the audience learns a lesson or gains insight. Narrative writing is a type of writing in which the author places himself as the character and leads you to the story.

Here, is a narrative, a story or event is told through characters and dialogues. Narrative writing has definite and logical beginnings, intervals, and endings. Narrative writing uses many literary techniques to provide deeper meaning for the reader and it also helps the reader use his / her imagination to visualize situations.

Literary techniques include metaphors, similes, personification, imagery, hyperbole, alliteration, back story, flashback, flash-forward, foreshadowing, and narrative perspective or point of view.

In this style, you cannot find out what’s going to happen next. You have to wait. Here the writer really understands how to hold a reader by his/her side and make them stick on with the piece till the end. That’s the skill absolutely essential for this style of writing.

The first and most essential quality of a serial narrative is that it has to be immensely, intensely, and inescapably readable. They should have a powerful pull on all readers with the power of a delicious sense of enforced writing.

Descriptive writing focuses on describing a character, an event, or a place in great detail. It is sometimes poetic in nature in which the author specifies the details of the event rather than just the information of that event.

In a descriptive style, the writer needs to describe a person, object, or event so vividly that the reader feels like s/he could reach out and touch it. The writer attempts to convey as many of the senses related to the subject as possible for a clearer understanding of what is being described.

Descriptive writing has a unique power and appeal, as it evokes sensory description through sights, smells, sounds, textures, and tastes through the text to your reader.

This writing revolves around convincing someone. Persuasion requires great skill and effort to convince your readers to endorse your opinion or viewpoint. You write with the sole objective of persuading your readers. Persuasive writing utilizes the power of words to confidently and passionately convey a very important matter.

Such writings are usually written with precision and authority. Persuasive texts are set out to argue and prove a case by presenting ideas that follow a logical progression. It aims to convince a targeted audience of the validity of a viewpoint on an issue by presenting logical arguments.

Imaginative writings present ideas, issues, and arguments in an imaginative and credible way through the description, characters, settings, figurative language, the five senses, etc. Imaginative writing assumes the form of fiction, specifically short stories.

Depending on the idea, the imaginative article can discuss anything from space travel to civil rights. Because of this wide variation, some imaginative pieces require a very serious response, while others invite a much more light-hearted, fantastic one.

Usually, imaginative write-ups start with a hypothetical situation and ask how you would respond to it. It should be credible and plausible and must convey information through description and figurative language. Add sensory details and realistic conversation.

Also include imaginary interactions with the characters. The characters should be dynamic in nature and they should see things differently or act differently by the end of the story. Narrate and describe events, characters, and situations.

Visual writing is a good language for storytelling in any medium. It focuses on the mind, and distinctive details from the intricately interconnected experiences of the individual. Visual writing creates depth, quality, and pacing.

The visual style isn’t an extension of the writing, but it has to be embedded into the writing in a way that the reader may not even be aware of its presence. This means the visual style is not about adding more but enriching an already existing text.

Visual communication engages meaningful experiences and feelings within individuals through richly embedded image symbols which are conveyed either directly through text or indirectly through other senses.

In the field of magazine journalism , the term ‘multiple inverted pyramid approach’ refers to a style of writing which informs and entertains the readers through self-sufficiently built plots of information, each of which may be arranged in the form of an inverted pyramid.

The fact is that the idea of the whole story is spilled in the first paragraph itself. The reader can decide whether to continue reading the details or to go into something else. But even if the reader stops at a certain point, this form of writing may provide some essential facts to the readers.

Types of Magazines

Today, there are thousands of magazines worldwide. They inspire, inform, educate and entertain audiences across the globe. Nearly 600 years after the advent of the printing press, magazines continue to change the nature of things throughout the world.

The major types of magazines are briefly explained below:

General Interest Magazines

Special interest magazines, farm magazines, sports magazines, business magazines, environmental magazines, entertainment magazines, automobile magazines, children’s magazines, women’s magazines, men’s magazines, literary magazines.

This type of magazine is published for a wider audience to provide information, in a general manner and the focus is on many different subjects. The main purpose of a general interest magazine is to provide information for the general audience. No background knowledge or expertise is assumed.

Articles usually provide broad coverage of topics of current interest. They are written by journalists, freelance writers, or staff correspondents of the magazine. These periodicals may be quite attractive in appearance, with articles often heavily illustrated with photographs.

The language of these publications is geared to any educated audience. There is no especially assumed target audience. Mere interest and a certain level of intelligence are only required to read and enjoy such magazines.

These are usually published by commercial enterprises, though some are published by professional organizations. Examples of general-interest periodicals are Time, Newsweek, Outlook, India Today, and The Week.

Special interest publications are magazines directed at specific groups of readers with common interests. Most special interest magazines cater to any specific interests or pursuits. For instance, there are magazines that cover sports, news, fashion, business, music, and so on.

While some attempt to cover all aspects of a broad subject, others are concerned only with a particular element of the general subject. Sports Illustrated, for example, contains stories on practically any sport, but Golf Digest carries only stories related to golf.

Other special interest publications find their audiences through different demographic segmentation. There are magazines published primarily for men (Field and Stream, Gentlemen’s Quarterly (GQ), etc.), women (Woman’s World, Grihalekshmi, Vanitha, etc.), boys (Boys’ Life) and girls (Teen Vogue). Specialized periodicals also serve most professions, industries, and organizations.

These are magazines featuring news and information pertaining to the agricultural sector. It is a resource for farmers and vendors of farmers’ markets.

There are various farm magazines that contain information about various farming equipment, farming practices, ideas and technology suitable to small and big farms, raising unusual livestock, growing high-value crops, direct marketing of their products to bring in more income, the latest techniques for growing bountiful, nutritious crops and many more articles that could provide information to the farmers who are their target audience.

They also share the success stories of artisans and farmers, on government policies and programs, and also about how to promote their business by reaching new customers and develop value-added products.

A sports magazine usually features articles or segments on sports comprising of many photographic images and illustrations. Some magazines concentrate on all general sports news and related issues while others concentrate on specific sports or games such as football, baseball, athletics, etc.

But the common aim of any sports magazine is to take fans inside the game and provide a mix of columns, features, profiles of their favorite players, scores, statistics, and analysis of the game.

News and information about sports, reviews, interviews, expert advice, player profiles, season previews, predictions, and pre-game analysis as well as quality photos are some of the main ingredients in a sports magazine.

Most of these magazines are dedicated to the dissemination of information related to particular business areas like accounting, banking, finance, international business, management , marketing and sales, real estate, small business, etc.

They explore the latest news and reviews on current trends in the world of business. Business magazines offer readers an unparalleled look at business and economic news, with incomparable access to business drivers around the globe.

It also provides the most recent news about trends and developments in global business, financial markets, and personal finance.

The aim of this type of magazine is to provide information about environmental issues and to share ideas about our very diverse and dynamic environment so that readers can live more sustainable lives and connect themselves to ideas and ongoing efforts for change, as well as for building a more just and sustainable future.

They cover everything environmental – from the big issues like climate change, renewable energy, toxins, and health to the topics that directly impact the readers’ daily lives: population, poverty, consumption, and the environment in general.

In-depth reviews of major policy reports, conferences, environmental education initiatives, environmental reports, and photos from around the world with an emphasis on human involvement in an environmentally changed scenario are some of the highlighted features of environmental magazines .

Entertainment magazines are usually glossy in nature and provide entertainment. They usually carry news, original stories, scandals, gossips, and exclusives about celebrities in various entertainment fields such as film, music, TV, fashion, and related similar areas of the industry.

Cultural criticism, beauty, lifestyle trends, and shopping guides also find expression in such magazines. As its main focus is on celebrity fashion or lifestyle, it is graphically rich in nature, featuring many photographs or other images.

Automobile magazines offer a rich and varied examination of the automotive universe in all its forms, illustrated with vibrant photography. They present interesting automotive news in the industry and celebrate the automotive lifestyle and its personalities, past and present.

It also offers insights into emerging trends in the industry and also creates images of whatever comes next in the written and visual form.

Updates in the motor vehicle arena such as newly arrived cars and bikes, contemporary style of vehicles, recommendations to buyers, reviews of newly launched vehicles are some of the attractive elements in these magazines.

The main aim of children’s magazines is to engage children to learn new things through entertainment and to provide memories that last a lifetime. The content is delivered through colorful images, read-aloud stories, and various fun activities that both the parent as well as the child can enjoy together.

Children’s magazines are designed to set young children on the path to becoming curious, creative, caring, confident individuals through reading, thinking, and learning with a wide variety of stories, puzzles, crafts, games, and activities. 3D children’s magazines are now on sale in Kerala.

Women’s magazines play a variety of roles as educators, family counselors, beauty specialists,s and lifestyle experts. Women’s magazines, on many occasions, have become an arena for debate and promotion of education for women.

The personal nature of the content also makes it a unique material specifically for women. The gorgeous photographs, engaging designs, and innovative styles make them attractive.

The outlook of a women’s magazine is an intelligent perspective that is focused on personal style – the way women actually look, think and dress. They reflect the spirit of today’s woman – changing with the times, moving with trends, styles, and fashion.

Men’s magazines bring the latest style tips, travel guides, lifestyle improvement, offering advice and information useful to men on a variety of topics including money , health, sports, cars, adventure, politics, and so on. Men’s magazines use masculinity as a marketing tool.

A literary magazine devoted to literature, usually publishes short stories, poetry, essays, literary criticism, book reviews, biographical profiles of authors, interviews, and any content related to literature.

Its aim is to promote literature, encompass an overall sense of the word, preserve indigenous literature and provide a platform for creative writers through its articles.

FAQs About Writing for Magazine

What is the difference between newspaper and magazine.

These are the following points of difference between newspapers and magazines: 1. Size and Appearance 2. Content 3. Style 4. Design and Layout 5. Target Audience 6. Readability 7. Display Ads 8. Visual Strength 9. Shelf Life.

What are the basics of magazine writing?

The following are the magazine writing styles: 1. Narrative Writing 2. Serialized Narrative Writing 3. Descriptive Writing 4. Persuasive Writing 5. Imaginative Writing 6. Visual Writing 7. Multiple Inverted Pyramid.

What are the types of magazines?

The following are the types of magazines: 1. General Interest Magazines 2. Special Interest Magazines 3. Farm Magazines 4. Sports Magazines 5. Business Magazines 6. Environmental Magazines 7. Entertainment Magazines 8. Automobile Magazines 9. Children’s Magazines 10. Women’s Magazines 11. Men’s Magazines 12. Literary Magazines.

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How to Write a Magazine Article Professionally

How to Write a Magazine Article Professionally

Qualified freelance writers know how to write a magazine article up to the set quality standards. They produce articles for different kinds of magazines highlighting various topics. Even the most popular magazines are in need of the services of freelance writers to get their publications filled with the required content.

If you desire to publish your article, the first thing you need to do is send a query letter to the magazine editors and try to sell your brilliant ideas. Imagine you are assigned to create an article. What would you do to capture readers’ attention and make your editor order articles from you regularly?

How to Write a Magazine Article

Below, there are helpful prompts on how to write a magazine article properly.

Select the subject which you are good at

You will be able to succeed in creating top-notch articles if you are completely familiar with the chosen topic . Publishers always search for profound articles providing valuable information about the matter in question. In order to pick the right topic, you should create a list of themes which you find engaging and strive to select those which you could sell to some magazines without a hassle.

Highlight the issue from a new perspective

If your article is appealing, it will be easier for you to get it published. Thus, explore the chosen subject and try to determine the aspects which have not been studied yet and can be of keen interest to readers. Additionally, you have to make certain that your topic does not belong to the general ones as publishers do not buy the articles that are of no use to their target audience.

Conduct research

You should do research even if it seems to you that you are fully aware of the topic you are going to create your article on. In this way, you will be able to collect more useful material for your feature and, as a result, impress readers with the result. Browse authoritative sources and interview professionals if needed.

Do interviews

Take a look at your research and ponder over the sub-themes which you could disclose by interviewing experts. Remember that interviews make articles more interesting, and editors always give preference to such articles.

Seeking a Professional

If you want your magazine article to contain an interview from an expert, you should cold-call organizations operating in the required area. You may also address PR agencies to get some advice on where to find specialists competent in your field.

Interviewing a Specialist

In order to conduct an interview successfully, you should prepare a list of questions which you would like to ask. It is worth following your plan when creating questions not to miss any points. Ensure that your list contains such data as name, job position, and location.

Pick the place and time for the interview that is suitable for the interviewee. With the interviewee’s consent, you may record your conversation. Ask open-ended questions. Try not to deviate from your course meaning ask all questions which you intended to.

Produce an outline

The next stage is to prepare an outline by following which you will be able to create the best magazine article. Your outline has to include the points highlighting the concepts you will discuss in your paper. Think about adding images, graphics, etc.

Write your article

There is no specific format which you should apply when writing magazine articles. It is up to you to decide what mode to use. In order to catch readers’ attention, you should use their own language. However, at first, you need to identify your target audience to know how to present data. Mind that the purpose of reading magazines is to not only find out some information but also get amused.

Check out the guidelines of the magazines

Check the demands imposed by the magazine which you want to publish your article in. Each magazine has their own guidelines about how to write a magazine article. Here, it goes about the topics, writing style and tone, etc. It is advised to read the articles published in the magazine which you are going to submit your article to. Thus, you will know exactly what types of features the publishing entity is searching for.

Send your piece of writing

Strive to make a good impression on the managers of the magazine in the course of communication. Make certain your emails are produced appropriately and clearly state your intentions. Remember to respond to the received letters on time.

Arranging a Magazine Article Format

As well as other kinds of articles, a magazine one should include a title, introductory section, body, and a concluding unit.

Organizing your article appropriately will ensure its clarity. Thus, check the following points to understand not only how to write a magazine article but also arrange it:

  • Title (here, you should highlight the topic of your article)
  • Introductory section (it should clearly present the matter under consideration so that readers know what they are going to read about).
  • Body (in this part, you should highlight the details of your subject, i.e. specifics, facets, experts’ viewpoints, statistics, etc.). This section should include a couple of paragraphs only. Mind not to exceed the number of the words allowed as the whole structure may be ruined.
  • Concluding unit (this is the final section of your article where you should provide a brief summary of the entire piece of writing. Here, you are supposed to briefly describe the key ideas.). Try to finish your article effectively to give readers the material to ponder over. Make sure your conclusion is closely connected to the entire article.  
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11 Most Popular Types of Articles to Write for Magazines

  • September 4, 2023
  • 31 Comments

Want to write for magazines? This list includes feature stories, roundups, profiles, research shorts, human interest, how-to articles and more. You’ll be surprised by how many types of online and print magazine articles you can write! Whether you’re an aspiring freelance writer or an established author you’ll find lots of ideas in this list.

Learning about the different types of magazine articles is one thing. More important is finding courage to write boldly and the strength to keep pitching ideas to editors! May you get published again and again. And, may you prepare yourself to do the work now — before the day ends and you lose your momentum.

The most important thing to remember when you’re looking for different types of magazine articles to write is your audience. Learn how to slant your writing to the target audience, publisher, and editor of the magazine or publication. Books like  Writer’s Market: The Most Trusted Guide to Getting Published – are essential to your success. They reveal details and information for freelance writers that you won’t find online.

“You can’t sit in a rocking chair with a lily in your hand and wait for the Mood,” writes author Faith Baldwin in The Writer’s Handbook . “You have to work. You have to work hard and unremittingly, and sacrifice a great deal; and when you fall at, or fail to clear, an obstacle (usually an editor), you have to pick yourself up and go on.”

A crucial part of earning money as a freelance writer is knowing what to work hard on. Learning about the different types of magazine articles is an excellent way to start a freelance writing career, or even boost a faltering author’s yearly income. If you’re serious about selling your writing and making money writing, you need to be constantly learning about writing, getting published, and working with editors.

“Two types of articles continue to dominate the changing field of magazine publishing,” writes Nancy Hamilton in Magazine Writing: A Step-by-Step Guide to Success . “The personality profile and the how-to story with its self-help variant. Together, they account for an estimated 72% of magazine feature material.”

11 Different Types of Magazine Articles

I’ve been published in several different magazines (such as  Reader’s Digest, Chatelaine, Women’s Health  and More ) and have written each one of these different types of magazine articles…except for the exposé. My favorite is writing research shorts for magazines – but they are just that ( short ) and thus don’t pay much.

As you read through the following types of articles, think about which one you most like to read. This will help you decide what type of article to research and write. The best writing comes from writers who are enjoying their work and passionate about their topic, so don’t hesitate to choose the project that lights your fire.

1. “How To” Articles

“Easily the most popular and the shortest and easiest to write, the how-to article with its self-help variant gives instructions for how to do or be something or how to do it better,” writes Hamilton in Magazine Writing .

“How to” articles:

  • Make a rousing promise of success
  • Describe what you need in easy to follow instructions
  • Give step-by-step directions (sometimes with subtitles)
  • Include shortcomings or warnings
  • Tell how to locate supplies
  • Give proofs and promises
  • Make referrals to other sources

Examples of “how to” articles are: “How to Write Magazine Articles That Editors Love to Publish” or “How Freelance Writers Earn a $100,000 Every Year” or How to Think Like a Magazine Editor – 8 Tips for Writers . “How to” articles are my favorite type of feature articles; they simply tell readers how to do something.

Tip for freelance writers: Some magazine or newspaper editors require writers to submit their own photos for how-to articles. Before you accept an assignment from an editor, ask what their photo policy is.

2. Profile and Interview Articles

This popular type of article describes a contemporary or historical person – but a profile doesn’t have to be about a human being! Animals, communities, nations, states, provinces, companies, associations, churches can all be profiled (but not necessarily interviewed).

Personality profiles and interview articles:

  • Have different definitions. In a personality profile, you use additional sources, such as friends, family, kids, neighbors, colleagues. In an interview, you talk to the source him or herself – preferably in person.
  • Can have a theme or focus.
  • Can be presented as a “Q & A” or a written article.
  • Require strong interviewing and perception skills for the “best” information

Examples of profiles or interview articles are: “The Real Natalie Goldberg and Her Real Writing Career” or “Anne Lamott Shares Her Secrets for Writing Different Types of Magazine Articles.” Profiles and interview are two different types of magazine articles to write.

About this type of magazine article Hamilton says, “The most successful personality profile allows the reader to experience the story directly without having to filter that experience through the ‘I’ of an unknown writer. Despite this common-sense perspective, many magazines today prefer the ‘I’ approach for personality profiles.” Why? Because most editors want to encourage a personal relationship between the magazine and the reader by addressing them personally.

Most Popular Types of Articles to Write for Magazines

3. Informative or Service Articles

Informative articles are also know as “survey articles.” They often offer information about a specific field, such as sports medicine, health writing, ocean currents, politics, etc. Service articles are similar, but often used as shorter fillers. Service articles offer a few pieces of good advice or tips, but aren’t usually long or involved.

Informative or service articles:

  • Focus on one unique aspect, or the “handle”
  • Describe what-to, how-to, when-to, why-to, etc.
  • Answer the journalist’s who, what, when, where, why, and how questions
  • Can end with a “how-to” piece as a sidebar

Examples of this type of magazine article include: “How to Write Query Letters for Magazines” or “ 10 Magazine Writing Tips From a Reader’s Digest Editor ” or “11 Types of Magazine Articles to Write for Magazines.”

The informative or service article is similar to the how-to type of magazine article. I’d love to write a service article for the SPCA, but I’m too busy with my blogs to pitch article ideas to editors.

4. The Alarmer-Exposé

“A Reader’s Digest staple, the alarmer-exposé is designed to alert and move the reader to action,” writes Hamilton in Magazine Writing . “Well-researched and heavy with documentation, this type of magazine article takes a stance and adopts a particular point of view on a timely and often controversial issue. Its purpose is to expose what’s wrong here.”

  • Shocks or surprises readers
  • Includes statistics, quotes, anecdotes
  • Can range from how extension cords can kill to new info on Watergate

“This article is best written by an established writer who is skilled in reporting an issue and building a case without flagrant – and apparent – bias,” says Hamilton.

Examples of an exposé magazine article are: “Stephen King’s Ghostwriter Reveals Secret Writing Career” or “95% of Natalie Goldberg’s Writing is From a Ghostwriter!” Those aren’t actual feature articles that were written by freelance writers – they’re just examples of the different types of magazine articles.

5. Human Interest Magazine Articles:

  • Usually start with an anecdote
  • Are often chronologically organized

Examples of human interest magazine articles are: “Anne Lamott Shares Her Secrets to Success as a Single Mother and Bestselling Author” or “Mark Twain’s Great-Granddaughter Discovers a Brand New Type of Magazine Article.” This type of feature article interests the majority of readers of a specific, niched magazine.

People  is currently one of the most popular magazines on the market, and it specializes in this type of article. If you find someone who has done or experienced something extraordinary – and if your writing skills are pretty good – you might consider sending a query letter to the editors at People .

6. Essay, Narrative, or Opinion Articles

This is my least favorite type of magazine article or blog post to write! I’m not a big writer of personal stories (nor do I like to read autobiographies, biographies, or personal blogs). I’d much rather encourage readers by sharing information – such as these 11 different types of articles to write magazines 🙂

Essay, narrative, or opinion articles:

  • Usually revolve around an important or timely subject (if they’re to be published in a newspaper or “serious” magazine)
  • Are harder to sell if you’re an unknown or unpublished writer
  • Can be found on blogs all over the internet

Here’s some great writing advice from Hamilton: “The narrative uses fiction technique to recreate the tension, the setting, the emotion – the drama – of something that actually happened. The article must have implications and ramifications that are meaningful to a reader. It must be relevant to what’s going on today – one event that relates to the larger whole.”

Examples of this type of magazine article are: “What I Think of Natalie Goldberg’s Decision to Retire From Her Writing Career” or “Anne Lamott’s Most Famous Writing Mistakes.”

If you feel overwhelmed with all these types of magazine articles, read How to Write When You Have No Ideas .

7. Humor or Satire Articles

Humor or satire articles are really hard to write. I just read today – in the University of Alberta’s Trail  magazine – that it takes the Simpsons’ writers and staff SIX MONTHS to write and produce a single episode! That’s because humor writing seems easy and fast, but it’s actually the hardest type of writing to learn…not to mention master.

Humor or satire articles:

  • Usually have a specific audience, such as the readers of The Onion
  • Are usually written on spec (that is, you submit the whole article before the editors or publishers will accept it for publication in the magazine)

Examples of humor or satire articles might include:  “Ode to Stephen King’s Typewriter” or “What Margaret Laurence Ate the Day She Started Writing Articles for Magazines.”

8. Historical Articles

What can I say? A historical article describes a moment in time. Or an epoch. Or an era. Or an eon.

Historical articles:

  • Reveal events of interest to millions (which means at least one of my examples wouldn’t work as this type of article)
  • Focus on a single aspect of the subject
  • Are organized chronologically
  • Tell readers something new
  • Go beyond history to make a current connection

Examples of this type of magazine article include: “The Typewriter Mark Twain First Used” or “How Freelance Writers Submitted Articles Before Typewriters Were Invented” or “How the Use of the Word ‘Tweet’ Evolved From 2005 to Now.”

9. Inspirational Magazine Articles

  • Describe how to feel good or how to do good things
  • Can describe how to feel good about yourself – this type of article can work for anyone from writers to plumbers to pilots
  • Offer a moral message
  • Focus on the inspirational point

Examples of different types of inspirational articles for magazines are: “How You Can Change the World With Your Writing Career” or “13 Tips to Improve Your Writing Confidence.”

This is probably my second most favorite type of feature article to write. It’s definitely the post I write most often on my Blossom blogs!

10. Round-Up Magazine Articles

  • Gather a collection from many sources
  • Focus on one theme
  • Offer quotations, opinions, statistics, research studies, anecdotes, recipes, etc.

The Round-Up was one of my favorite types of magazine articles to write when I was freelancing. Examples of round up articles are: “ 12 Fiction Writing Tips From Authors and Editors ” or “1,001 Types of Articles to Write for Magazines.” I enjoy writing round-ups because I can squeeze in lots of information in 1,000 words.

11. Research Shorts

  • Describe current scientific information
  • Are usually less than 250 words long
  • Are often written on spec (at least by me)
  • Are fast, effective ways to earn money as a freelance writer – if you can find the right markets

Research Shorts for the “Front of the Book” are those little blurbs of scientific research you see at the beginning of many magazines.   Examples of these types of articles for magazines include: “How Alliteration Affects Your Memory” or “What Anne Lamott’s Writing Does to Your Brain Waves.”

Shorts aren’t really a type of magazine article, but they’re a great way to get your foot in the door and learn what articles editors will pay to publish .

Types of Magazine Articles You Can Write

In 11 Most Popular Articles to Write for Magazines | Tips for Freelance Writers I share different types of articles to write, to help you get published in the right magazine.

My list includes feature length stories, roundups, personality profiles, research shorts, human interest pieces, and “how to” articles. I also included examples of magazines that publish each type of article. Whether you’re an aspiring freelance writer or an established author you’ll find lots of ideas in this list.

Here’s a tip from bestselling author Natalie Goldberg about being a successful writer: “I hear people say they’re going to write. I ask, when? They give me vague statements,” she writes in  Thunder and Lightning: Cracking Open the Writer’s Craft . “Indefinite plans get dubious results.”

What are your writing goals, and how will you achieve them? Have you made a specific plan? After you read through these different types of articles to write for magazines, create goals for yourself.

Writer’s Digest Magazine

Writer’s Digest Magazine  is my favorite periodical about writing; a subscription is both motivating and informative. The more you learn about freelance writing – including the business of writing – the easier it’ll be to remember the different types of magazine articles you can write for magazines.

If you want to be a freelance writer, you have to do more than just learn about the different types of magazine articles to write for magazines. You need to research professional writing organizations, learn how to write query letters for editors, and where to pitch your ideas.

If you have any thoughts or questions about writing these types of feature articles for magazines and other publications, feel free to share below.

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31 thoughts on “11 Most Popular Types of Articles to Write for Magazines”

What if you wrote a catchier title? I don’t want to tell you how to run your Successful Writers blog, but suppose you added something to possibly grab folk’s attention? I mean 11 Popular Magazine Articles That Editors Love to Publish is a little vanilla. You ought to peek at Yahoo’s home page and see how they create post titles to get viewers to click. You might try adding a video or a related pic or two to get readers interested about everything’ve got to say. Just my opinion, it could make your Successful Writers blog a little livelier.

Thank you , Laurie! I am just starting my online magazine UpMixed in a month so these tips are going to help me.

“By the time I was fourteen the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it. I replaced the nail with a spike and went on writing.” ~ Stephen King

Most writers starts their publishing journey the wrong way. They want to start big. They want a book contract, a speaking tour, and all-around international fame and notoriety. But that’s not how this thing works. we need to start small. This is a blessing in disguise, actually, as you are probably not that good when you are just beginning. You need time to practice writing articles for magazines that are of publishable quality.

Dear Newbie Magazine Writer,

Here’s an article that will give you a few pointers:

How to Write a Query Letter and Get Your Article Published https://www.theadventurouswriter.com/blogwriting/how-to-write-query-letters-for-magazine-articles/

Let me know what happens after you pitch your query to the magazine editor! It sounds like a winner 🙂

I have a brilliant idea for an article, and I believe it’s perfect for the publication I have in mind. I just don’t know how to write a query letter to a magazine. Can you help me by giving me a formula or structure on how to pitch my idea to the editor? I haven’t done much research or reading, but I found this article on the different types of magazine articles helpful. Thank you for any direction you can offer!

Nice ☺☺☺ would give some topics of Articles. ..?

I also need some topics

Dear Lokesh,

Your first step is to learn how to write English really, really well. Take ESL courses, read books, practice writing, do whatever it takes to learn how to write English.

At the same time, you need to learn the business of freelance writing. It’s a career, not a hobby. It takes time, dedication, and energy.

Here’s one place to start:

How to Become a Freelance Writer https://www.theadventurouswriter.com/blogwriting/how-to-be-a-freelance-writer/

Read books about freelance writing, pitching articles to editors, and becoming a journalist. Rolling Stone is an amazing magazine and it’s difficult to get published in it — but you CAN do it!

Take it one step at a time. Keep learning English – you’re doing great so far – and keep reading articles, blogs, and books about becoming a freelance writer for magazines.

You can do it! Remember that nothing worth having is easy. Everything good in life takes hard work. If it was easy, everyone would do it.

Blessings, Laurie

Thanks for the help Ressa, I am just a student and I confuse for my future because every time I thinking a new Idea like what I want or which field is good for me and finnaly I diciede what I want….!! Article writer and for me I think it’s a very good choice but still I little confused that how I write my first artical, actually the problem is that my mind is confuse that what is a good topic for me…. cause I need a very new or u can say a “fresh” topic which is never be write buy anyone And unlucky my first problem is that I am not good in English as well as in grammar so, If u don’t mind any u tell me any idea how to start my dream work ???? And Yaa one more thing I want to tell my dream company also which I want to work with and the name is (rolling stone) so u think in future there is any chance to get or touch my dream???

Thanks Ressa, I appreciate your thoughts! A profile is one type of feature article, so I meant what I originally wrote 🙂

There sure are a lot of choices for magazine articles…but my favorite is still blogging. I love the freedom and immediacy of writing blog posts, without having to worry about pitching article ideas to editors. But, blogging doesn’t offer as much exposure as writing for magazines does. Unless of course you write for the HuffPost!

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How to Write a Feature Article for a Magazine

A feature article is the main story in the magazine that focuses on a special event, place or person in great detail.

There are many types of feature articles, whether they’re creatively focused or newsworthy, however, they always have one thing in common: human interest.

Writing feature articles for magazines (and newspapers) is a great way for emerging writers and authors to build up their portfolio of work.

However, there are many different elements to magazine writing and publishing that the feature writer needs to consider.

We’ve put together a little guide on what to research and what to include when it comes to writing a high quality feature article…

Don’t have time to read the whole post right now?

No problem. Let us send you a downloadable PDF so you can read it when it’s convenient for you…

Know the Publication:

Remember that each publication has a specific target audience, and a distinct style of writing. For example, if you’re writing for a well-known magazine such as the  Women’s Weekly  the article needs to focus on an emotional level, using pictures and quotes that reflect the reader’s thought on everyday life.

However, if you’re writing for a small independent magazine like  The Morning Bell  the style is more flexible, you have a lot more freedom in terms of subject matter, just as long as the content is clear and appropriate to the magazine’s theme.

Also depending on the publication, not all magazines concentrate on trends and current events; those are mostly for weekly or daily magazines.

There are publications that print annually, quarterly, bi-monthly, or monthly, which in these cases, trends are less of a focus because trends have come and gone by the time the mag goes to print.

So what do magazines focus on if not recent issues? Usually, the magazine has a theme to base their stories on.

For example, Australian literary journal,  Kill Your Darlings , focuses on commentary essays, politics and reviews.

One issue could be about the Australian Government and another on memoir; the main feature article details this theme in depth.

Get to know the magazine and what kind of content they publish; we strongly suggest reading their previous articles before submitting one of your own.

Look through the publication’s submission guidelines and identify aspects of their house style in their published content.

When you’re ready, here’s a step-by-step process in creating a feature article that will impress.

Mission for Story and the Publication:

Some magazines will give you a topic for you to research and write about, but if you’re submitting toa magazine then you’ll probably have to pitch one yourself.

This is where you’re able to brainstorm ideas and define what area you would like to write about.

However, this is no simple task because the piece you are writing has to be detailed and must provide examples and evidence along with the facts you’re providing.

FREELANCE :

To be able to work as a freelance writer , the writer is self-employed, also known as a contractor. They can write for one or more publications at the same time and are paid per article or per word.

Though freelancing technically allows you the freedom to write for whatever publications you’d like – writers must be wary of the fact that more and more companies are out-sourcing their content production, and so freelancers nowadays (especially new freelancers) must take the jobs they can get.

Extensive research will still be a major part of your job, and depending on how you’re getting paid (per word, per article or per hour) you need to be cautious of how you spend your time.

Freelancers are in charge of their own invoicing and tax. However, one of the much-loved benefits of freelancing is the fact that these writers get to work at their own pace, on their own schedule.

Some magazines or websites have employees who write for them within a team.

If you’re an in-house writer, you’ll most likely have a topics assigned to you, or you’ll at least receive a brief.

Your work will be passed to editors who will give you feedback on how to improve the article.

Usually the team and you will have regular meetings to decide on future content scheduling and subject matter.

During content meetings the writers usually brainstorm ideas for articles, and present statistics and research that will benefit the publication.

A good idea is to explore what people are reading about at the time you’re writing. Is it interesting enough to write about?

Look at the news; is an event powerful enough for a main article? Search your local community and what’s been happening. Is it newsworthy?

As author of Writer’s Digest, Chuck Sambuchino said:

The idea’s the thing. If you build your story around a unique and compelling idea, your odds of publishing it increase dramatically . Often, a perfectly good project will go unpublished because the premise on which it is based is too predictable, commonplace, or over-published.”

Once you’ve chosen your idea, proper research will cover the bones of your story with lots of meat and soul. Just gather information.

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The Mean Old Structure:

Like other articles, the feature has a basic structure.

The shape depends on the style of your magazine varies but most feature articles have three acts, just like a story or an essay.

It has a headline, an introduction; forming as one, then a main body and a conclusion.

Structure is very important when telling a story, especially for a feature article, it is what holds the piece together clearly.

Without structure, the article will fall apart and the readers will become confused and disinterested.

As writer, Robert Frost said, “if there is no tears in the writer, no tears in the reader; there is no surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.”

To clarify the structure, we’ll break it down in more detail.

Cheers to the Headline:

Probably one of the important tasks of writing a feature article for a magazine is coming up with an effective headline.

This is a short and simple line that grabs the reader’s attention and convinces them to read the piece.

A headline means to highlight the central idea of the article in a catchy, clever way.

The editor of the magazine always has the final say in what the headline says, though the writer comes up with a number of options for the editor to choose from.

Hello, Introduction:

Think of this as a preview to the rest of your feature article.

It ‘introduces’ the ideas you’re about to explore and as a general rule, is about 10% of the overall word count.

The introduction draws the reader in from the headline and provokes their interest by injecting a good dose of intrigue and speculation.

With the introduction the reader makes a conscious decision on what side of the story they believe in or whether it’s interesting enough to keep reading.

The introduction needs to be compelling enough that it is seen at a publishable standard.

Make the editor think it’s worthy; sell it to them so they can sell it to the reader.

Not only does it create the article’s tone it also establishes a relationship between the reader and the writer.

Main Body Magnetism:

This is where all the details of who, what, why and how are revealed.

It is the explanation and the proof. Include all your facts, statistics, and quotes to support your argument.

This is where all your hard-earned work pays off by resulting in a compelling and accurate piece.

Depending on the publication, some magazines require their writers to supply original images or photographs as well.

The Finishing Touch:

A conclusion is the final statement that brings together all your ideas and evidence.

Conclusions need to be strong, concise and thought-provoking, inviting the reader’s opinion.

The writer, the editor and the publisher don’t want the conversation to end at the full-stop of the feature article.

The best feature articles encourage the continuation of debate on social media platforms, comment pages and discussion forums.

Belle Savage

Belle Savage is an aspiring creative writer from Melbourne, Currently studying a Bachelor of Writing and Publishing, she likes to write novels, nonfiction articles and screenplays. She writes about realistic or psychological events and uses themes of grief, abandonment and abuse.

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The Writers College Times

What is Feature Writing in Magazines?

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Read between the lines of a magazine article, and you will see that feature writing is not solely factual, although it is based on hard facts. It is not personal opinion, but it allows a hint of an opinion. It is not fiction, but elements of fiction writing are often apparent. And although a magazine piece may provide social commentary in places, it is also not meant to be a moral essay.

If this sounds like a bit of a riddle to you, here’s another way of defining magazine journalism.

Feature writing lies between a work of fiction and hard news reporting. The magazine or webzine article can have all the entertainment value of fiction, using plot, scenes, characters and description. At the same time, the magazine journalist presents interesting, topical information – hard facts gained from research and interviews.

Also known as creative non-fiction, some believe magazine writing to be the highest form of journalism.

To illustrate, here is an excerpt of typical magazine writing:   

Are Cell Masts Making You Sick?

By Biddi Rorke, Femina Magazine

When Elizabeth Forbes* moved into her beautiful Randburg home more than 10 years ago, she imagined sharing a blissful life with her husband in their semi-rural retreat. The reality is somewhat different.

When a cellphone operator erected a base station just 250 metres from the Forbes’ front door a few years ago, Elizabeth started experiencing a host of physical complaints – and she is convinced that they are related to the radio frequency waves emitted by the unsightly cellphone mast. “I’ve lost almost 12 kg, I feel a constant burning sensation in my limbs and excruciating pain in my muscles,” she says …  

Although doctors have been unable to offer a specific reason for Elizabeth’s deterioration in health, the 53-year-old is adamant that she is sensitive to the electromagnetic field around her home. “Whenever I am away from my house, I feel better instantly. Just 15 minutes back in my lounge can drain me of all my colour,” she says …

Elizabeth is not the only person to blame her extraordinary symptoms on the presence of a cellphone mast. Last year, six reports found that …

Let’s analyse the key elements of this writing.

1. Feature writing has elements of storytelling

Like fiction (i.e. the novel ), magazine writing has an element of entertainment. The magazine writer strives to “show” scenes rather than merely telling the reader the facts. How? By describing people, places or issues.

Scenes created often have dramatic sensory appeal and atmosphere, seducing the reader into finishing the story.

Like fiction writers use characters in their novels, magazine writers use stories from real people (called case studies), as well as dialogue.

2. Feature writing includes detail and description  

Feature writing mimics the novel in that it pays close attention to detail that would be considered unnecessary and inappropriate in newspaper journalism.

Details draw the reader in ; generalisations keep them out. Yet, the details included are relevant, entertaining, to the point and written in the short sentences that epitomise most good journalism.

For example, see the underlined descriptive phrases in this sentence from the excerpt above, something you would not see in a front-page news report:

When Elizabeth Forbes* moved into her beautiful Randburg home more than 10 years ago, she imagined sharing a blissful life with her husband in their semi-rural retreat . The reality is somewhat different.

3. Include facts and opinions in magazine articles

Newspaper reporting handles hard facts rather than the writer’s opinion. Fiction is just that – pure storytelling from the author’s point of view. Magazine writing, however, tends to present both fact and a little of the writer’s opinion.

This does not mean that magazine writers suck the content for their articles out of their thumb. They must gather everything they write from interviews and research.

What we mean by “opinion” is that in most articles, you could glean the writer’s opinion on their subject by paying careful attention to the structure of their argument, and tone of the piece.

In all magazine writing, the writer must strive to present facts that are correct, and an opinion that is balanced and informed.

4 . Base your article on a strong angle

An angle is the very specific subject of the article .

For example:

  • 10 Things Your Doctor Wished You Knew
  • Extreme Sports – Extreme Lives
  • Revamp your life: Why life coaches work!

The angle, which may be controversial, edgy or sensational, provides the focus of a magazine article. Every line of the magazine article must be congruent with this angle.   

5. Feature writing is structured like an argument

Feature writing uses quotations to support or dramatically oppose the argument underlying the piece. Not just experts or authorities are interviewed, but personal stories and unusual, offbeat personalities are frequently cited.

So in the piece, “Are Cell Masts Making You Sick?”, Rorke is giving you the facts, and asking you to make an educated choice on the matter.

6. It makes use of literary devices

Magazine writing makes use of all the literary devices common to fiction writing, including rhetorical questions, metaphors, similes, and bathos. These would be inappropriate in hard news journalism.

7. Has a relatively slow pace

Unlike news articles that provide the 5 W’s (who, what, where, when and why) and H (how) in the first paragraph, the opening in a feature often withholds this information for later, first hooking the reader with story-telling, and then producing the hard facts later.

Generally, each paragraph presents one or two hard facts, whereas in newspaper writing you have up to four or five facts per paragraph.

8. Feature writing can tell a story from a personal viewpoint

The point of view taken may be personal, whereas in news reporting, this would be inappropriate. News reporting is almost always in the third person, e.g. He said…; She said…. In magazine writing, the use of first person, “I”, is sometimes appropriate, particularly in humour columns. Remember though, that social rants, or opinions on, for example, crime, if they are not funny or satirical, belong in a newspaper “Letter to the editor”.

9. It has a m ore informal, even colloquial style

News reporting makes use of a writing style that could be described as factual, formal and crisp. Magazine writing, on the other hand, may be informal, personal, even colloquial. For instance, slang and colloquial expressions are common in this genre. However, the style of writing remains plain and accessible, rather than the poetic, meandering writing that the novelist may indulge in.

10. A feature article can display a wide range of tones

Tone refers to the emotional feel underlying an article.

In news reporting, most articles have a serious, neutral tone. This is very different from the tone of a magazine piece. Here the tone could be humorous, questioning, persuasive, irreverent, sarcastic, sentimental, heart-warming or informative.   11. Features m ay be controversial

Whereas news reports present factual coverage of events, the writer of magazine articles is encouraged to be original, creative and edgy. Anything goes, depending on the type of article the magazine is interested in publishing.  

12. Magazine articles can use jargon

Magazine articles often include jargon pertaining to the subject, where jargon refers to terms that are specific to the subject matter. For instance, an article about trans fatty acids would use “jargon” like “molecular structure”, “hydrogenated vegetable fats”, “cholesterol”, among others.

13. Long-form journalism may play with perspective

One way of analysing magazine articles is to see the piece through a camera lens. The writer might start by describing a fine detail (a personal experience or perspective, a specific moment in the narrative), then open up the lens to take in the wide view (the general/global backdrop), then close the piece by narrowing back to the fine detail. Or the writer could go the other way: starting with the wide view, focusing in, then opening up to the wide view again.

14. An article in a magazine may run like a movie

Many magazine articles, like the work of fiction, unfold like a movie with characters, plot, dialogue, climax and a sharp ending. The magazine piece often first works to establish setting and character, and then, once the reader is hooked, introduces the facts.

© Nichola Meyer, All Rights Reserved

About the Author

Nichola Meyer is a freelance writer. Her work has appeared in O Magazine, Femina, Essentials, Baby & Me, Your Baby, Your Pregnancy, Little People and Cape Town’s Child . Previously a lecturer in Magazine Journalism at CityVarsity and Boston Language College, she currently tutors the Advanced Freelance journalism Course  at SA Writers College – www.sawriterscollege.co.za , NZ Writers College – www.nzwriterscollege.co.nz and UK Writers College – www.ukwriterscollege.co.uk .

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The Lure of Divorce

Seven years into my marriage, i hit a breaking point — and had to decide whether life would be better without my husband in it..

Portrait of Emily Gould

This article was featured in One Great Story , New York ’s reading recommendation newsletter. Sign up here to get it nightly.

In the summer of 2022, I lost my mind. At first, it seemed I was simply overwhelmed because life had become very difficult, and I needed to — had every right to — blow off some steam. Our family was losing its apartment and had to find another one, fast, in a rental market gone so wild that people were offering over the asking price on rent. My husband, Keith, was preparing to publish a book, Raising Raffi, about our son, a book he’d written with my support and permission but that, as publication loomed, I began to have mixed feelings about. To cope with the stress, I asked my psychiatrist to increase the dosage of the antidepressant I’d been on for years. Sometime around then, I started talking too fast and drinking a lot.

I felt invincibly alive, powerful, and self-assured, troubled only by impatience with how slowly everyone around me was moving and thinking. Drinking felt necessary because it slightly calmed my racing brain. Some days, I’d have drinks with breakfast, lunch, and dinner, which I ate at restaurants so the drink order didn’t seem too unusual. Who doesn’t have an Aperol spritz on the way home from the gym in the morning? The restaurant meals cost money, as did the gym, as did all the other random things I bought, spending money we didn’t really have on ill-fitting lingerie from Instagram and workout clothes and lots of planters from Etsy. I grew distant and impatient with Keith as the book’s publication approached, even as I planned a giant party to celebrate its launch. At the party, everyone got COVID. I handed out cigarettes from a giant salad bowl — I had gone from smoking once or twice a day to chain-smoking whenever I could get away with it. When well-meaning friends tried to point out what was going on, I screamed at them and pointed out everything that was wrong in their lives. And most crucially, I became convinced that my marriage was over and had been over for years.

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I built a case against my husband in my mind. This book of his was simply the culmination of a pattern: He had always put his career before mine; while I had tended to our children during the pandemic, he had written a book about parenting. I tried to balance writing my own novel with drop-offs, pickups, sick days, and planning meals and shopping and cooking, most of which had always been my primary responsibility since I was a freelancer and Keith had a full-time job teaching journalism. We were incompatible in every way, except that we could talk to each other as we could to no one else, but that seemed beside the point. More relevant: I spent money like it was water, never budgeting, leaving Keith to make sure we made rent every month. Every few months, we’d have a fight about this and I’d vow to change; some system would be put in place, but it never stuck. We were headed for disaster, and finally it came.

Our last fight happened after a long day spent at a wedding upstate. I’d been drinking, first spiked lemonade at lunch alone and then boxed wine during the wedding reception, where I couldn’t eat any of the food — it all contained wheat, and I have celiac disease. When we got back, late, to the house where we were staying, I ordered takeout and demanded he go pick it up for me. Calling from the restaurant, he was incensed. Did I know how much my takeout order had cost? I hadn’t paid attention as I checked boxes in the app, nor had I realized that our bank account was perilously low — I never looked at receipts or opened statements. Not knowing this, I felt like he was actually denying me food, basic sustenance. It was the last straw. I packed a bag as the kids played happily with their cousins downstairs, then waited by the side of the road for a friend who lived nearby to come pick me up, even as Keith stood there begging me to stay. But his words washed over me; I was made of stone. I said it was over — really over. This was it, the definitive moment I’d been waiting for. I had a concrete reason to leave.

A few days later, still upstate at my friend’s house, I had a Zoom call with my therapist and my psychiatrist, who both urged me in no uncertain terms to check myself into a psychiatric hospital. Even I couldn’t ignore a message that clear. My friend drove me to the city, stopping for burgers along the way — I should have relished the burger more, as it was some of the last noninstitutional food I would eat for a long time — and helped me check into NYU Langone. My bags were searched, and anything that could be used as a weapon was removed, including my mascara. I spent my first night there in a gown in a cold holding room with no phone, nothing but my thoughts. Eventually, a bed upstairs became free and I was brought to the psych ward, where I was introduced to a roommate, had blood drawn, and was given the first of many pills that would help me stop feeling so irrepressibly energetic and angry. They started me on lithium right away. In a meeting with a team of psychiatrists, they broke the news: I had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder; they weren’t sure which kind yet. They gave me a nicotine patch every few hours plus Klonopin and Seroquel and lithium.

I wasn’t being held involuntarily, which meant I could write letters on an official form explaining why I ought to be released, which the psychiatrists then had three days to consider. I attached extra notebook pages to the letters explaining that I was divorcing my husband and was terrified I would never be able to see my kids again if I was declared unfit because I was insane. These letters did not result in my release; if anything, they prolonged my stay. I got my phone back — it would soon be revoked again, wisely — but in that brief interim, I sent out a newsletter to my hundreds of subscribers declaring that I was getting a divorce and asking them to Venmo me money for the custody battle I foresaw. In this newsletter, I also referenced Shakespeare. The drugs clearly had not kicked in yet. I cycled through three different roommates, all of whom were lovely, though I preferred the depressed one to the borderline ones. We amused ourselves during the day by going to art therapy, music therapy, and meetings with our psychiatrists. I made a lot of beaded bracelets.

In the meetings with the shrinks, I steadfastly maintained that I was sane and that my main problem was the ending of my marriage. I put Keith, and my mother, on a list of people who weren’t allowed to visit me. Undaunted, Keith brought me gluten-free egg sandwiches in the morning, which I grudgingly ate — anything for a break from the hospital food. My parents came up from D.C. and helped Keith take care of our children. I was in the hospital for a little more than three weeks, almost the entire month of October, longer than I’d ever been away from my kids before in their lives. I celebrated my 41st birthday in the hospital and received a lot of very creative cards that my fellow crazies had decorated during art therapy. Eventually, the drugs began to work: I could tell they were working because instead of feeling energetic, I suddenly couldn’t stop crying. The tears came involuntarily, like vomit. I cried continuously for hours and had to be given gabapentin in order to sleep.

what is magazine article writing

On the day I was released, I didn’t let anyone pick me up. I expected the superhuman strength I’d felt for months to carry me, but it was gone, lithiumed away. Instead, I felt almost paralyzed as I carried my bags to a cab. When I arrived at my apartment, I couldn’t figure out where I should sleep. It didn’t feel like my home anymore. We couldn’t afford to live separately, even temporarily, but the one thing that our somewhat decrepit, inconveniently located new apartment had in its favor was two small attic bedrooms and one larger bedroom downstairs. I claimed this downstairs room for myself and began to live there alone, coming into contact with Keith only when we had to be together with our children.

You might assume that my fixation on divorce would have subsided now that my mental health had stabilized and I was on strong antipsychotic medication. But I still did not want to stay in my marriage. If anything, I felt a newfound clarity: Keith and I had fundamentally incompatible selves. Our marriage had been built on a flaw. My husband was older, more established and successful in his career. These were the facts, so it had to be my job to do more of the work at home. Unless, of course, I decided to take myself and my work as seriously as he took his. But that was unappealing; I had managed to publish three books before turning 40, but I didn’t want to work all the time, like he does.

I wondered if my marriage would always feel like a competition and if the only way to call the competition a draw would be to end it.

We picked the kids up from school and dropped them off, or really mostly Keith did. I appeared at meals and tried to act normal. I was at a loss for what to do much of the time. I attended AA meetings and the DBT meetings required by the hospital outpatient program, and I read. I read books about insanity: Darkness Visible, The Bell Jar, An Unquiet Mind, Postcards From the Edge. I tried to understand what was happening to me, but nothing seemed to resonate until I began to read books about divorce. I felt I was preparing myself for what was coming. The first book I read was Rachel Cusk’s Aftermath, which has become the go-to literary divorce bible since its 2012 publication. In it, Cusk describes the way her life shattered and recomposed after the dissolution of her marriage, when her daughters were still very young. She makes the case for the untenability of her relationship by explaining that men and women are fundamentally unequal. She posits that men and women who marry and have children are perpetually fighting separate battles, lost to each other: “The baby can seem like something her husband has given her as a substitute for himself, a kind of transitional object, like a doll, for her to hold so that he can return to the world. And he does, he leaves her, returning to work, setting sail for Troy. He is free, for in the baby the romance of man and woman has been concluded: each can now do without the other.”

At our relationship’s lowest moments, this metaphor had barely been a metaphor. I remembered, the previous winter, Keith going off on a reporting trip to Ukraine at the very beginning of the war, leaving me and the kids with very little assurance of his safety. I had felt okay for the first couple of days until I heard on the news of bombing very close to where he was staying. After that, I went and bummed a cigarette from a neighbor, leaving the kids sleeping in their beds in order to do so. It was my first cigarette in 15 years. Though that had been the winter before my mania began, I believe the first seeds of it were sown then: leaving the children, smoking the cigarette, resenting Keith for putting himself in harm’s way and going out into the greater world while I tended to lunches, homework, and laundry as though everything were normal.

In Nora Ephron’s Heartburn, as in Aftermath, I found an airtight case for divorce. The husband was the villain and the wife the wronged party, and the inevitable result was splitting up. I felt an echo of this later on when I read Lyz Lenz’s polemic This American Ex-Wife, out this month, marketed as “a deeply validating manifesto on the gender politics of marriage (bad) and divorce (actually pretty good!).” The book begins by detailing how Lenz’s husband rarely did household chores and hid belongings of hers that he didn’t like — e.g., a mug that said WRITE LIKE A MOTHERFUCKER — in a box in the basement. “I didn’t want to waste my one wild and precious life telling a grown man where to find the ketchup,” Lenz writes. “What was compelling about my marriage wasn’t its evils or its villains, but its commonplace horror.”

This was not quite the way I felt. Even though I could not stand to see my husband’s face or hear his voice, even though I still felt the same simmering resentment I had since I entered the hospital, I also found myself feeling pangs of sympathy for him. After all, he was going through this too. When we were inevitably together, at mealtimes that were silent unless the children spoke, I could see how wounded he was, how he was barely keeping it together. His clothes hung off his gaunt frame. And at night, when we passed in the kitchen making cups of tea that we would take to our respective rooms, he sometimes asked me for a hug, just a hug. One time I gave in and felt his ribs through his T-shirt. He must have lost at least 15 pounds.

It began to seem like I only ever talked to friends who had been through divorces or were contemplating them. One friend who didn’t know whether to split up with her husband thought opening their marriage might be the answer. Another friend described the ease of sharing custody of his young daughter, then admitted that he and his ex-wife still had sex most weekends. In my chronically undecided state, I admired both of these friends who had found, or might have found, a way to split the difference. Maybe it was possible to break up and remain friends with an ex, something that had never happened to me before in my entire life. Maybe it was possible to be married and not married at the same time. Then I went a little further in my imagination, and the idea of someone else having sex with my husband made me want to gag with jealousy. Maybe that meant something. I was so confused, and the confusion seemed to have no end.

I read more books about divorce. I received an early copy of Sarah Manguso’s Liars, marketed as “a searing novel about being a wife, a mother, and an artist, and how marriage makes liars out of us all.” In it, John, a creative dilettante, and Jane, a writer, meet and soon decide to marry. Liars describes their marriage from beginning to end, a span of almost 15 years, and is narrated by Jane. The beginning of their relationship is delirious: “I tried to explain that first ferocious hunger and couldn’t. It came from somewhere beyond reason.” But the opening of that book also contains a warning. “Then I married a man, as women do. My life became archetypal, a drag show of nuclear familyhood. I got enmeshed in a story that had already been told ten billion times.” I felt perversely reassured that I was merely adding another story to the 10 billion. It made it seem less like it was my fault.

The beginning of my relationship with my husband wasn’t that dramatic or definitive. I thought I was getting into something casual with someone I didn’t even know if I particularly liked, much less loved, but was still oddly fascinated by. I wanted to see the way he lived, to see if I could emulate it and become more like him. He lived with roommates in his 30s — well, that was the price you paid if you wanted to do nothing but write. I wanted what he had, his seriousness about his work. We went on dates where we both sat with our laptops in a café, writing, and this was somehow the most romantic thing I’d ever experienced. On our third date, we went to his father’s home on Cape Cod to dog-sit for a weekend, and it was awkward in the car until we realized we were both thinking about the same Mary Gaitskill story, “A Romantic Weekend,” in which a couple with dramatically mismatched needs learn the truth about each other through painful trial and error. Our weekend was awkward, too, but not nearly as awkward as the one in the story. On the way home, I remember admiring Keith’s driving, effortless yet masterful. I trusted him in the car completely. A whisper of a thought: He would make a good father.

In Liars, cracks begin to form almost immediately, even before John and Jane get engaged; she is accepted to a prestigious fellowship and he isn’t, and he is forthright about his fear that she will become more successful than he is: “A moment later he said he didn’t want to be the unsuccessful partner of the successful person. Then he apologized and said that he’d just wanted to be honest. I said, It was brave and considerate to tell me. ”

Through the next few years, so gradually that it’s almost imperceptible, John makes it impossible for Jane to succeed. He launches tech companies that require cross-country moves, forcing Jane to bounce between adjunct-teaching gigs. And then, of course, they have a baby. The problem with the baby is that Jane wants everything to be perfect for him and throws herself into creating a tidy home and an ideal child-development scenario, whereas John works more and more, moving the family again as one start-up fails and another flourishes. Jane begins to wonder whether she has created a prison for herself but pacifies herself with the thought that her situation is normal: “No married woman I knew was better off, so I determined to carry on. After all, I was a control freak, a neat freak, a crazy person.” The story John tells her about herself becomes her own story for a while. For a while, it’s impossible to know whose story is the truth.

I thought about Keith’s side of the story when I read Liars. Maybe it was the lack of alcohol’s blur that enabled me to see this clearly for the first time — I began to see how burdened he had been, had always been, with a partner who refused to plan for the future and who took on, without being asked, household chores that could just as easily have been distributed evenly. Our situation had never been as clear-cut as it was for Lyz Lenz; Keith had never refused to take out the trash or hidden my favorite mug. But he worked more and later hours, and my intermittent book advances and freelance income could not be counted on to pay our rent. As soon as we’d had a child, he had been shunted into the role of breadwinner without choosing it or claiming it. At first, I did all the cooking because I liked cooking and then, when I stopped liking cooking, I did it anyway out of habit. For our marriage to change, we would have needed to consciously decide to change it, insofar as our essential natures and our financial situation would allow. But when were we supposed to have found the time to do that? It was maddening that the root of our fracture was so commonplace and clichéd — and that even though the problem was ordinary, I still couldn’t think my way out of it.

Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story, by Leslie Jamison , is in some ways the successor to Aftermath — the latest divorce book by a literary superstar. It is mostly an account of Jamison’s passionate marriage to a fellow writer, C., and the way that marriage fell apart after her career accelerated and they had a child together. It then details her first months of life as a single mother and her forays into dating. In it, she is strenuously fair to C., taking much of the blame for the dissolution of their marriage. But she can’t avoid describing his anger that her book merits an extensive tour, while his novel — based on his relationship with his first wife, who had died of leukemia — fails commercially. “It didn’t get the reception he had hoped for,” Jamison writes, and now, “I could feel him struggling. He wanted to support me, but there was a thorn in every interview.” C. grows distant, refusing to publicly perform the charming self that Jamison fell in love with. “I wished there was a way to say, Your work matters, that didn’t involve muting my own,” Jamison writes.

For all my marriage’s faults, we never fought in public. Friends encouraged us to reconcile, saying, “You always seemed so good together.” (As if there were another way to seem! Standing next to each other at a party, it had always been easy to relax because we couldn’t fight.) And we never did anything but praise each other’s work. Until this last book of my husband’s, that is. I had read Raising Raffi for the first time six months before it was published, while I was out of town for the weekend. I had, at that time, enjoyed reading it — it was refreshing, in a way, to see someone else’s perspective on a part of my own life. I even felt a certain relief that my child’s early years, in all their specificity and cuteness, had been recorded. This work had been accomplished, and I hadn’t had to do it! There had been only a slight pang in the background of that feeling that I hadn’t been the one to do it. But as publication drew nearer, the pang turned into outright anger . The opening chapter described my giving birth to our first son, and I didn’t realize how violated I felt by that until it was vetted by The New Yorker ’s fact-checker after that section was selected as an excerpt for its website. Had a geyser of blood shot out of my vagina? I didn’t actually know. I had been busy at the time. I hung up on the fact-checker who called me, asking her to please call my husband instead. (In case you’re wondering, Keith has read this essay and suggested minimal changes.)

I related to the writers in Splinters trying to love each other despite the underlying thrum of competing ambitions. But most of all, Jamison’s book made me even more terrified about sharing custody. “There was only one time I got on my knees and begged. It happened in our living room, where I knelt beside the wooden coffee table and pleaded not to be away from her for two nights each week,” she writes. Envisioning a future in which we shared custody of our children made me cringe with horror. It seemed like absolute hell. At the time we separated, our younger son was only 4 years old and required stories and cuddles to get to bed. Missing a night of those stories seemed like a punishment neither of us deserved, and yet we would have to sacrifice time with our kids if we were going to escape each other, which seemed like the only possible solution to our problem. Thanksgiving rolled around, and I cooked a festive meal that we ate without looking at each other. Whenever I looked at Keith, I started to cry.

We decided to enter divorce mediation at the beginning of December. On Sixth Avenue, heading to the therapist’s office, we passed the hospital where I’d once been rushed for an emergency fetal EKG when I was pregnant with our first son. His heart had turned out to be fine. But as we passed that spot, I sensed correctly that we were both thinking of that moment, of a time when we had felt so connected in our panic and desperate hope, and now the invisible cord that had bound us had been, if not severed, shredded and torn. For a moment on the sidewalk there, we allowed ourselves to hold hands, remembering.

The therapist was a small older woman with short curly reddish hair. She seemed wise, like she’d seen it all and seen worse. I was the one who talked the most in that session, blaming Keith for making me go crazy, even though I knew this wasn’t technically true or possible: I had gone crazy from a combination of sky-high stress and a too-high SSRI prescription and a latent crazy that had been in me, part of me, since long before Keith married me, since I was born. Still, I blamed his job, his book, his ambition and workaholism, which always surpassed my own efforts. I cried throughout the session; I think we both did. I confessed that I was not the primary wronged person in these negotiations, and to be fair I have to talk about why. Sometime post–Last Fight and pre-hospitalization, I had managed to cheat on my husband. I had been so sure we were basically already divorced that I justified the act to myself; I couldn’t have done it any other way. I had thought I might panic at the last minute or even throw up or faint, but I had gone through with it thanks to the delusional state I was in. There aren’t many more details anyone needs to know. It was just one time, and it was like a drug I used to keep myself from feeling sad about what was really happening. Anyway, there’s a yoga retreat center I’ll never be able to go to again in my life.

At the end of the session, we decided to continue with the therapist but in couples therapy instead of divorce mediation. It was a service she also provided, and as a bonus, it was $100 cheaper per session. She didn’t say why she made this recommendation, but maybe it was our palpable shared grief that convinced her that our marriage was salvageable. Or maybe it was that, despite everything I had told her in that session, she could see that, even in my profound sadness and anger, I looked toward Keith to complete my sentences when I was searching for the right word and that he did the same thing with me. As broken as we were, we were still pieces of one once-whole thing.

My husband would have to forgive me for cheating and wasting our money. I would have to forgive him for treading on my literary territory: our family’s life, my own life. My husband would have to forgive me for having a mental breakdown, leaving him to take care of our family on his own for a month, costing us thousands of uninsured dollars in hospital bills. I would have to forgive him for taking for granted, for years, that I would be available on a sick day or to do an early pickup or to watch the baby while he wrote about our elder son. I would have to forgive him for taking for granted that there would always be dinner on the table without his having to think about how it got there. He would have to forgive me for never taking out the recycling and never learning how to drive so that I could move the car during alternate-side parking. I would have to forgive him for usurping the time and energy and brain space with which I might have written a better book than his. Could the therapist help us overcome what I knew to be true: that we’d gone into marriage already aware that we were destined for constant conflict just because of who we are? The therapist couldn’t help me ask him to do more if I didn’t feel like I deserved it, if I couldn’t bring myself to ask him myself. I had to learn how to ask.

No one asked anything or forgave anything that day in the couples therapist’s office. After what felt like months but was probably only a few days, I was watching Ramy on my laptop in my downstairs-bedroom cave after the kids’ bedtime when some moment struck me as something Keith would love. Acting purely on impulse, I left my room and found him sitting on the couch, drinking tea. I told him I’d been watching this show I thought was funny and that he would really like it. Soon, we were sitting side by side on the couch, watching Ramy together. We went back to our respective rooms afterward, but still, we’d made progress.

After a few more weeks and a season’s worth of shared episodes of Ramy, I ventured for the first time upstairs to Keith’s attic room. It smelled alien to me, and I recognized that this was the pure smell of Keith, not the shared smell of the bedrooms in every apartment we’d lived in together. I lay down next to him in the mess of his bed. He made room for me. We didn’t touch, not yet. But we slept, that night, together. The next night, we went back to sleeping alone.

Pickups and drop-offs became evenly divided among me and Keith and a sitter. Keith learned to make spaghetti with meat sauce. He could even improvise other dishes, with somewhat less success, but he was improving. I made a conscious effort not to tidy the house after the children left for school. I made myself focus on my work even when there was chaos around me. Slowly, I began to be able to make eye contact with Keith again. At couples therapy, we still clutched tissue boxes in our hands, but we used them less. Our separate chairs inched closer together in the room.

That Christmas, we rented a tiny Airbnb near his dad’s house in Falmouth. It had only two bedrooms, one with bunk beds for the kids and one with a king-size bed that took up almost the entirety of the small room. We would have to share a bed for the duration of the trip. The decision I made to reach across the giant bed toward Keith on one of the last nights of the trip felt, again, impulsive. But there were years of information and habit guiding my impulse. Sex felt, paradoxically, completely comfortable and completely new, like losing my virginity. It felt like sleeping with a different person and also like sleeping with the same person, which made sense, in a way. We had become different people while somehow staying the same people we’d always been.

Slowly, over the course of the next months, I moved most of my things upstairs to his room, now our room. We still see the therapist twice a month. We talk about how to make things more equal in our marriage, how not to revert to old patterns. I have, for instance, mostly given up on making dinner, doing it only when it makes more sense in the schedule of our shared day or when I actually want to cook. It turns out that pretty much anyone can throw some spaghetti sauce on some pasta; it also turns out that the kids won’t eat dinner no matter who cooks it, and now we get to experience that frustration equally. Keith’s work is still more stable and prestigious than mine, but we conspire to pretend that this isn’t the case, making sure to leave space for my potential and my leisure. We check in to make sure we’re not bowing to the overwhelming pressure to cede our whole lives to the physical and financial demands, not to mention the fervently expressed wants, of our children. It’s the work that we’d never found time to do before, and it is work. The difference is that we now understand what can happen when we don’t do it. I’m always surprised by how much I initially don’t want to go to therapy and then by how much lighter I feel afterward. For now, those sessions are a convenient container for our marriage’s intractable defects so that we get to spend the rest of our time together focusing on what’s not wrong with us.

The downstairs bedroom is now dormant, a place for occasional guests to stay or for our elder son to lie in bed as he plays video games. Some of my clothes from a year earlier still fill the drawers, but none of it seems like mine. I never go into that room if I can help it. It was the room of my exile from my marriage, from my family. If I could magically disappear it from our apartment, I would do it in a heartbeat. And in the attic bedroom, we are together, not as we were before but as we are now.

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AI Writes Scientific Papers That Sound Great—but Aren’t Accurate

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F irst came the students, who wanted help with their homework and essays. Now, ChatGPT is luring scientists, who are under pressure to publish papers in reputable scientific journals.

AI is already disrupting the archaic world of scientific publishing. When Melissa Kacena, vice chair of orthopaedic surgery at Indiana University School of Medicine, reviews articles submitted for publication in journals, she now knows to look out for ones that might have been written by the AI program. “I have a rule of thumb now that if I pull up 10 random references cited in the paper, and if more than one isn’t accurate, then I reject the paper,” she says.

But despite the pitfalls, there is also promise. Writing review articles, for example, is a task well suited to AI: it involves sifting through the existing research on a subject, analyzing the results, reaching a conclusion about the state of the science on the topic, and providing some new insight. ChatGPT can do all of those things well.

Kacena decided to see who is better at writing review articles: people or ChatGPT. For her study published in Current Osteoporosis Reports , she sorted nine students and the AI program into three groups and asked each group to write a review article on a different topic. For one group, she asked the students to write review articles on the topics; for another, she instructed ChatGPT to write articles on the same topics; and for the last group, she gave each of the students their own ChatGPT account and told them to work together with the AI program to write articles. That allowed her to compare articles written by people, by AI, and a combination of people and AI. She asked faculty member colleagues and the students to fact check each of the articles, and compared the three types of articles on measures like accuracy, ease of reading, and use of appropriate language.

Read More : To Make a Real Difference in Health Care, AI Will Need to Learn Like We Do

The results were eye-opening. The articles written by ChatGPT were easy to read and were even better written than the students'. But up to 70% of the cited references were inaccurate: they were either incoherently merged from several different studies or completely fictitious. The AI versions were also more likely to be plagiarized.

“ChatGPT was pretty convincing with some of the phony statements it made, to be honest,” says Kacena. “It used the proper syntax and integrated them with proper statements in a paragraph, so sometimes there were no warning bells. It was only because the faculty members had a good understanding of the data, or because the students fact checked everything, that they were detected.”

There were some advantages to the AI-generated articles. The algorithm was faster and more efficient in processing all the required data, and in general, ChatGPT used better grammar than the students. But it couldn't always read the room: AI tended to use more flowery language that wasn’t always appropriate for scientific journals (unless the students had told ChatGPT to write it from the perspective of a graduate-level science student.)

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That reflects a truth about the use of AI: it's only as good as the information it receives. While ChatGPT isn’t quite ready to author scientific journal articles, with the proper programming and training, it could improve and become a useful tool for researchers. “Right now it’s not great by itself, but it can be made to work,” says Kacena. For example, if queried, the algorithm was good at recommending ways to summarize data in figures and graphical depictions. “The advice it gave on those were spot on, and exactly what I would have done,” she says.

The more feedback the students provided on ChatGPT's work, the better it learned—and that represents its greatest promise. In the study, some students found that when they worked together with ChatGPT to write the article, the program continued to improve and provide better results if they told it what things it was doing right, and what was less helpful. That means that addressing problems like questionable references and plagiarism could potentially be fixed. ChatGPT could be programmed, for example, to not merge references and to treat each scientific journal article as its own separate reference, and to limit copying consecutive words to avoid plagiarism.

With more input and some fixes, Kacena believes that AI could help researchers smooth out the writing process and even gain scientific insights. "I think ChatGPT is here to stay, and figuring out how to make it better, and how to use it in an ethical and conscientious and scientifically sound manner, is going to be really important,” she says.

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Guest Essay

A Slap Shot Against Climate Denial

A photo illustration of a gavel holding up the Earth.

By Michael E. Mann and Peter J. Fontaine

Dr. Mann is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of “Our Fragile Moment: How Lessons From Earth’s Past Can Help Us Survive the Climate Crisis.” Mr. Fontaine is an environmental lawyer who served as co-counsel for Dr. Mann in the defamation case detailed in this essay.

The climate is warming. Polar ice is melting, glaciers are receding, the chemistry of the ocean is becoming dangerously acidic, sea levels are rising. All of this and more are consequences of the greenhouse gases we continue to emit into the atmosphere, where they trap and radiate heat that would otherwise escape into space.

Those are facts, not conjectures. Yet the scientists researching the fallout from that inconvenient fact, established more than 100 years ago, continue to face attacks that threaten their research, reputations and livelihoods.

One of us, Michael Mann, is just such a scientist. Twelve years ago, he found himself accused of research fraud for his work documenting the rapid rise of Earth’s temperature since the early 20th century.

An adjunct scholar at the time at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which has said it “questions global warming alarmism,” compared Dr. Mann on a blog hosted by the institute to a convicted sex offender. “Instead of molesting children,” the post read, “he has molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science.” Then a conservative writer republished parts of that post on a blog hosted by National Review and added that Dr. Mann was “behind the fraudulent climate-change ‘hockey stick’ graph.”

Last week, after our decade-long journey through the court system, a jury in Washington, D.C., found that both writers were liable for defamation . We hope this sends a broader message that defamatory attacks on scientists go beyond the bounds of protected speech and have consequences. The jury awarded $1 in compensatory damages from each defendant, and punitive damages of $1,000 against one defendant and $1 million against the other.

However, we lament the time lost to this battle. This case is part of a larger culture war in which research is distorted and the truth about the climate threat is dissembled.

The assault on climate science has grown broader and more sophisticated. Rachael Lyle-Thompson, a lawyer for the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund, which has supported Dr. Mann in the past, warned recently that sweeping and “invasive open records requests” to harass and intimidate and “other misuse of the legal system” continue to “threaten climate scientists’ ability to freely conduct research and openly share it with the public.”

And the attacks have expanded to other frontiers of science. Witness the ongoing assault on public health experts such as the doctors Anthony Fauci and Peter Hotez, who have sought to address the Covid-19 pandemic. Or the false claims about adverse health effects from wind turbines. Or efforts by the Trump administration to limit the scientific and medical research that the government can use to determine public health regulations. Or rollbacks of environmental regulations. The list, unfortunately, goes on.

It is in the context of this broader war on science that our recent trial victory may have wider implications. It has drawn a line in the sand. Scientists now know that they can respond to attacks by suing for defamation.

A scientist defamed can publish a thousand peer-reviewed articles in the effort to clear his or her name, but when scientists and lawyers join forces, disinformation can more readily be defeated. What’s disheartening is that it took more than a decade and countless hours by a team of lawyers to win a jury verdict in our case when the verdict on human-caused global warming was rendered decades ago.

Nearly 60 years ago, in fact, scientists warned President Lyndon Johnson that the continued combustion of fossil fuels would cause irreversible warming of the Earth’s atmosphere, with consequences we are seeing today. Concentrations of carbon dioxide then were at 320 parts per million in the atmosphere, compared to preindustrial levels of approximately 280 p.p.m.

Three decades later, with atmospheric carbon dioxide at 370 p.p.m., Dr. Mann, then a young postdoc, and two veteran climatologists, Raymond Bradley and Malcolm Hughes, published the first version of a graph that resembled an upturned hockey stick.

The handle of the stick charted the relatively constant temperatures of preindustrial times, while the upturned blade showed a rapid warming that began with the Industrial Revolution. To assemble the graph, they used natural temperature archives such as tree rings, corals and sediment and ice cores to estimate global temperatures back in time. The hockey stick graph soon became what a 2013 article in The Atlantic called “ the most controversial chart in science.”

“Climate deniers threw everything they had at the hockey stick,” the author, Chris Mooney, now a climate reporter at The Washington Post, wrote. They failed to disprove it — but “they certainly sowed plenty of doubt in the mind of the public,” he noted.

Which, of course, was the point. And that brings us back to our case.

In 2012, with atmospheric carbon dioxide having risen to nearly 400 p.p.m., the two blog posts attacking the hockey stick graph appeared, comparing Dr. Mann, then a professor at Penn State, to Jerry Sandusky, an assistant football coach at Penn State who had been convicted of abusing young boys.

As a jury has now decided, those posts were defamatory and were published with actual malice — meaning the defendants either knew the allegations were false or showed reckless disregard for the truth, a difficult hurdle for plaintiffs considered public figures to clear. But we did. And the hockey stick graph in the meantime has become firmly ensconced in the wall of evidence that burning fossil fuels is warming the planet at a pace and scale unseen.

Yet the machinery of disinformation, waged in part by the fossil fuel industry, continues to seed doubt, divert attention and delay action. Indeed, one of the defendants said in court that he stood by “every word I wrote about Michael Mann” and “his fraudulent hockey stick.” Both defendants are likely to appeal.

As of Tuesday, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide had hit 424.20 p.p.m., levels not seen for at least three million years , when Earth was warmer and the seas were much higher.

Clean energy solutions are readily available. But meaningful action in the United States, one of the world’s biggest carbon emitters, is in jeopardy of being blocked or slowed if a significant portion of the electorate does not accept the basic scientific facts and understand their implications. Voters should keep this in mind when they go to the polls later this year. With climate science still under attack and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations increasing, we’re running out of time.

Michael E. Mann is a professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of “ Our Fragile Moment: How Lessons From Earth’s Past Can Help Us Survive the Climate Crisis. ” Peter J. Fontaine is chair of the environmental law practice at the law firm Cozen O’Connor and served as co-counsel for Dr. Mann in the defamation lawsuit detailed in this essay.

Source images by Roberto Machado Noa and Oleksii Polishchuk/Getty Images

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Instagram , TikTok , X and Threads .

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  1. How to Write Articles for Magazines

    Magazine writing is a craft that stands apart from the kind of writing you might encounter in a newspaper, journal, essay, or full-length book. Even within the broader landscape of magazine writing, many subgenres demand different styles and skills—you'll approach a long feature article differently than you would a human interest story; tackling an investigative exposés requires a ...

  2. Writing Magazine Articles

    A magazine article is a nonfiction composition that stands on its own within a publication. Examples include a profile of a significant person, an opinion piece, or personal essay. Usually, a ...

  3. How to Write a Magazine Article (with Pictures)

    1. Research your article idea using sources like books and published texts. One of the key elements of a good magazine article is good research. Take the time to locate good sources and read any necessary supplementary material to help you get a better sense of the article idea.

  4. How to Write a Magazine Article (in 10 Easy Steps)

    Step 1: Choose a magazine. Step 2: Get to know your audience. Step 3: Confirm or choose your topic. If you already have an idea…. If you need an idea…. Step 4: Choose an angle. Step 5: Write a query letter. Step 6: Know the job. Step 7: Research the topic.

  5. Structure of a Magazine Article: The Full Guide

    In magazine writing, the body text forms the backbone of the article, providing the substance and depth required to convey the author's message or argument effectively. Drawing inspiration from magazine editorial examples can help writers build a compelling narrative that keeps readers engaged and maintains their interest throughout the article.

  6. How to Write a Magazine Article? 12 Golden Rules

    4. Make connections and meet people. Networking is important in any business, especially for freelance writers who want to make a jump to magazine writing. Editors regularly quit one magazine to work for another. Therefore, remember to know the people first and foremost than the magazine they work for. 5.

  7. How to Get Into Magazine Writing: Tips for Planning and Pitching Your

    1. Choose a subject you are an expert in. Keeping true to our earlier advice of specializing, when you start to write a magazine article, choose a topic you show certain expertise in. Publishers typically choose articles with an in-depth take on a subject, and that's where your level of experience will come into play.

  8. Writing Magazine Articles: What You Need to Know

    Magazine article writing differs significantly from other types of writing. Unlike news reports, which prioritize the timeliness and objectivity of information, magazine articles can delve deeper, offering comprehensive exploration and a personal touch. They often present a unique blend of factual reporting, narrative storytelling, and opinion ...

  9. Magazine Article Structure: How to Master the Layout

    The world of magazine article writing is rich and varied, offering a plethora of formats that cater to different content needs and audience preferences. Each type of article possesses a distinct structure crafted to enhance its primary objective. Let's delve into some common magazine article types and unpack their unique structural nuances ...

  10. How to Write an Article for a Magazine: Expert Tips and Tricks

    The writing process for a magazine article generally involves detailed research, outlining, and drafting before arriving at the final piece. To create a compelling article, identify your target audience and understand their preferences. This will allow you to tailor your content to suit their needs and expectations.

  11. How To Write Articles for Magazines in 4 Steps (Plus Tips)

    4. Draft a query letter. Write a short, formal letter to an editor that expresses your interest in writing for their magazine. If the publication has more than one editor, send it to the person who accepts pitches for the story's topic. Address them by their name, include the date and outline your pitch.

  12. 6 Important Tips for Magazine Article Writing

    4. Create an outline. 5. Write your articles. 6. Check out the style sheet or guidelines of the magazines where you would like to submit your articles to. Writing articles for magazines is definitely a dream for a lot of writers. This is because the pay is usually huge.

  13. Writing for Magazine: 12 Types, Characteristics, Difference

    Target Audience. The main difference between a newspaper and a magazine is that newspapers are written for a general audience, while magazines are for specific types of audiences. A magazine attracts varied target audiences. A newspaper's target audience is determined by its geography and its focus is broad. Here, the editor determines what ...

  14. Magazine

    magazine, a printed or digitally published collection of texts (essays, articles, stories, poems), often illustrated, that is produced at regular intervals (excluding newspapers). A brief treatment of magazines follows. For full treatment, see publishing: Magazine publishing. The modern magazine has its roots in early printed pamphlets ...

  15. 10 Simple Ways to Improve Your Magazine Writing Skills

    9. Use different sentence lengths for different tones and moods. This isn't just a tip on how to write a magazine article, it's a general tip for good writing. Your writing should match the tone or mood of your piece. If you're describing quick or abrupt action, for example, use short, punchy sentences.

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    Here, you are supposed to briefly describe the key ideas.). Try to finish your article effectively to give readers the material to ponder over. Make sure your conclusion is closely connected to the entire article. Writing magazine articles can be easy if to stick to the points provided below. By following the given instructions, you will learn ...

  17. 11 Most Popular Types of Articles to Write for Magazines

    Tell readers something new. Go beyond history to make a current connection. Examples of this type of magazine article include: "The Typewriter Mark Twain First Used" or "How Freelance Writers Submitted Articles Before Typewriters Were Invented" or "How the Use of the Word 'Tweet' Evolved From 2005 to Now.". 9.

  18. Writing Submissions for Magazines: How to Submit Writing to a Magazine

    Poetry. The expectation with poetry is also to submit the complete manuscript with a cover letter. However, most magazines like poets to submit a grouping of poems—most commonly three to five poems in a submission. Nonfiction. Nonfiction is a little more complicated because it depends on what type of nonfiction you're writing on how you submit.

  19. Writing for Magazines: How to Land a Magazine Assignment

    In magazine writing, this is the point at which you're ready to create a great query. Start with an amazing hook, which entices the editor to read more and get to the heart of your pitch, which includes what you plan to cover in your article. End with a strong bio explaining why you are the perfect person to write the piece.

  20. How to Write a Feature Article for a Magazine

    Cheers to the Headline: Probably one of the important tasks of writing a feature article for a magazine is coming up with an effective headline. This is a short and simple line that grabs the reader's attention and convinces them to read the piece. A headline means to highlight the central idea of the article in a catchy, clever way.

  21. A magazine article

    Worksheets and downloads. A magazine article - exercises 1.07 MB. A magazine article - answers 138.92 KB. A magazine article - article 485.25 KB. A magazine article - writing practice 362.52 KB.

  22. What is Feature Writing in Magazines?

    Feature writing lies between a work of fiction and hard news reporting. The magazine or webzine article can have all the entertainment value of fiction, using plot, scenes, characters and description. At the same time, the magazine journalist presents interesting, topical information - hard facts gained from research and interviews.

  23. Should I Leave My Husband? The Lure of Divorce

    By Emily Gould, a novelist and critic, is a features writer for New York Magazine. She writes the 'Making It' newsletter and is most recently the author of 'Perfect Tunes.' ... while I had tended to our children during the pandemic, he had written a book about parenting. I tried to balance writing my own novel with drop-offs, pickups ...

  24. Here's What Happens When ChatGPT Writes a Scientific Article

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  28. Opinion

    Dr. Mann is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of "Our Fragile Moment: How Lessons From Earth's Past Can Help Us Survive the Climate Crisis." Mr. Fontaine is an ...

  29. Writing Inside the Holes by Léon Pradeau

    This regenerates Giraudon's long-lasting poetics of the "hole" and open wounded body, coupling vulnerability with radical openness and rawness in living and writing. She phrases this beautifully in a 2016 interview for Diacritik: writing "takes place in the body. But you're acutely alone when you're writing.