How to Create Great Titles for Your Writing

 

A great title is there to engage and inform an audience.

Titles Can Achieve Many Things

The role of a really great title can:

1. Explain what you're writing about.
2. Set the tone of your writing.
3. Tells the audience they're reading something of value.

Simply put the title explains an idea, sets the tone, and gives the reader something useful.

All three things are taken into consideration before the audience starts reading.

So with that in mind let's take a look at the different kinds of titles you can use in your writing.

Explanatory

An explanatory title just describes what you're writing about.

Example:

Writing for Beginners

Often not always the best choice because they don't sound that exciting, but the format is really straightforward and always a favourite for writers.

How to Give Your Writing Structure and Cohesion

 

Provide your writing with structure and cohesion to enable your audience to understand your message.

Why Using a Structure is Essential

The structure you use will gently lead your reader through all of the relevant points you've written, while educating them on the current information they need to know.

With a well thought out structure the groundwork is already laid out making the information more consumable, and all of this is done before they start reading.

Information can be demonstrated by using:

1. An Inverted Pyramid
2. A Step-By-Step Guide
3. A Question and Answer Format

When you start writing you may find that you have to accommodate your point around your structure in order to get your message across.  Structures should be seen as more of a writing tool than a model that needs to be adhered to rigidly.

1. Inverted Pyramid

This form is more commonly used in journalism where the most important information is showcased first. Which is to say the who, what, when, where and why of the story swiftly accompanied by supporting details and background information.  

Here's an example of how the inverted pyramid can look:

Top

The Lead

The most important information.  (Who? What? When? Where? How).

The Body

The crucial information. (Evidence, background, details, logic).

The Tail

 Extra information. (Interesting or related items). 

Bottom

The inverted pyramid structure is a popular style of writing that is well-suited to all types of readers.  Even those impatient readers that only want to read one paragraph. 

How to Articulate Your Writing Voice

 

When you write your audience gains admittance to a small part of who you are, and gains the ability to affect a reader's mind, but all of this requires consistency.  Through consistency you become a legitimate voice, and that, in time, creates influence.

People gravitate towards the things in life that are reliable, and that includes both brands and authors.  Seeing someone act one way and change the next week is unnerving and is naturally a put off.

When you're marketing yourself your writing voice is who you are, and is the words and language you use every time you put pen to paper.  You use your personality to different effects throughout your life so why should your writing voice be any different?

The persona you market will communicate your message when it's done regularly and will offer your audience an experience so powerful they'll want to keep coming back.

Marking Out Your Brand Purpose

Finding your brand purpose is harder than you think.

It's more than just a passion for writing, or making money, its about what your conveying to your audience writing is conveying to your audience, and what makes them want to purchase one of your books.

Here are some simple advantages of having a brand purpose.

Advantages of a Brand Purpose:

• Support a belief that will give value to your readers.
• Using a long-term strategy your brand will be more prominent to the public.
• Using an ethos that will be used throughout your writing and will stay steadfast in your future writing goals.

Why is a Brand Purpose So Essential?

As the name suggests a brand purpose is just that, a purpose and reason why you're not just in it for the money.  More and more people are buying because they want to be part of something, an ideal, or a company's message.  

How Much is Enough When You Write?

Keeping the reader's attention by writing just enough is one of the hardest parts about writing.

How Much is Enough When You Write?

“To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement. To condense the diffused light of a page of thought into the luminous flash of a single sentence, is worthy to rank as a prize composition just by itself…Anybody can have ideas–the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph.”

Mark Twain.

Every writing project is going to be different to the one before.

Here are some questions to think about when you start a writing project: