4 Simple Tricks – How to become a ‘good’ magazine writer

4 Simple Tricks – How to become a ‘good’ magazine writer

Information is fine, but what makes an article interesting is an Art. And this art is equally important for every kind of writing, regardless of the genre you have been writing for. You may be writing for a news magazine or a business magazine or fashion & lifestyle magazine or may be for technology or kids, or women or sports or health or sports or entertainment magazine… any genre for that matter.

It is not necessary that if you are a serious business or financial magazine writer then to hone your writing skills, you need to read similar kind of magazines or books only. In fact, you can learn from lifestyle magazines or men’s magazine or any respected magazine from various other verticals. That is true that to sharpen your knowledge and updates about your own subject/genre you need to read good books and magazines from your respective genre, but to learn the art of writing, you should go beyond your domain.

If you are open to learn from other magazines (then the first and the biggest hurdle you have already cleared) keep this in your mind that you have not picked up this particular magazine to read, you have to learn from it. You need to know what you should look carefully in order to learn. At the first glance it may not appeal to you and may not interest to you. But, remember your aim for picking up this magazine and go through it as per the following fourguidelines. These four points are key areas where you need to focus when you are reading any article from this magazine.

1. Headline: Read it carefully.
Read it very carefully, read them again… and one more time. Try to figure out the sole intention of the author for putting this particular headline for this article. What is the important characteristic of this headline – Is it inviting? Or is it provoking? Or shaking? Or promising, teasing, pinching, hurting, touching or is it sensational? Because, a headline for a magazine article, plays the most critical role to attract a reader when he is just flipping the pages carelessly.

2. Opening: See the starting lines and the opening paragraph.
Pay your attention to the opening sentences of the article how the author is trying to get you into the story. How is he trying to create your interest to read it further- may be by raising your curiosity in some particular topic or by promising some benefits if you read the complete article.

3. Words: Observe the selection of words.
A good story-teller always takes care of the flow of his story. He knows when a particular element needs to be introduced and how it should be introduced. He carefully selects his words to convey his exact meaning what he wants to say. He maintains the pace and the sequence of information or events in the article so that reader should not feel jerks through his smooth ride of reading the article. Look how the author has added some extra information to add value to the article. Look how does he engages, hooks and controls the attention of the reader using his tone of writing or may be through adding some personal connection with the reader.

4. Ending: Never miss the climax.
Closing is also very important, so never take it easy. Article should not have only a smooth ending but also look how a good author makes sure that his closing is fulfilling the promise he has made though his headline. He ensures that at end of the article, his reader must get some take away from the article.

Once you start reading other good magazines on these grounds, you will start gauging the quality of each article and that eventually improve your own writing skills in return. Whenever you visit to the newsstand next time, pickup a couple of good magazines from different genres and read their articles carefully and learn from them. Someday, somewhere, someone else might be learning ‘the art or writing’ by reading an article in your magazine which is written by you. Cheers!

G S Virdi
Editor and Magazine Consultant

Who is your reader

Who is your reader?

What did you say… you know your reader? Fine, just tell me-

  • Do you know when your magazine gets ready in the press, who picks the copies for the distribution?
  • In how many cities and in which cities he sends the copies for sale?
  • In each city across India, who is the dealer or sub-dealer who receives the copies?
  • Which are the stalls & where are they located where copies finally reach to get sold?
  • Who will be the person, who is going to visit on those stalls, buy & read your magazine which has traveled so far from you via so many hands?

…and sitting here on your computer, you ‘think’ that you know your reader who actually is far away from you and is the last person in this chain??

Think twice… or may be again, before writing next article for him!!!

 G S Virdi
Editor and Magazine Consultant

About Us

Vision

MAGworld has a larger vision to help everyone who is connected to the magazines and publishing industry. Right from the publishers to the editorial people, writers, art directors, designers, vendors, magazine stores and readers.

It has a mission to help existing magazines to grow and do better business at the same time providing readers the best quality of content to read.

MAGworld was started in the year 2009 with providing its consultation services to one of existing national magazine. Today it has a list of more than a dozen of print publications who have taken its services at various levels. Our services broadly range from magazine conceptualization, magazine restructuring, redesigning, magazine feedback and strict editorial quality control.

MAGworld team comprises of experienced editors, art directors, writers and designers who have just single passion – MAGAZINES.

All of you have already liked www.MediaJunction.blogspot.in in last couple of years and now www.MAGworld.in is the next step towards our big mission for the magazine industry and its people. Look forward for many things which are in the pipeline as of now- our magazines, awards, events, workshops and websites.

Keep reading magazines!


Man behind the MAGworld

GS Virdi: 30+ Years – 20+ Avatars!

(Click ‘GS Virdi – 30+ Years – 20+ Avatars 2024‘ for the PDF format)

A Visual Professional Portfolio – Creative Resume 2024

(Click ‘The Best Visual Portfolio – A Creative Resume 2024‘ for the PDF format)

G S VIRDI - Professional Snapshot 2016 - 5

For any query write to us at gurjender@gmail.com or call us at +91 98193 00669.

Magworld

100+ Reviews at http://mediajunction.blogspot.com

TRIAL & ERRORS… EK BAAR PHIR SE!

‘Mahaprabandhak of Maruti Suzuki Ltd has done
a ghoshna in a Samvaaddata Sammelan
of its vistaar yojnaa in India for 2020′
or
‘Ford Figo facelift has ekdum braabar
engine capacity of its pichhlaa wala varient’
or
‘10 aisi kaaren jo aap 10 lakh rupaye mein
khareed sakte hain in the year 2019’

How would an English-reader treat if such a headline published in an English magazine or English daily newspaper? Will a reader appreciate such piece of text which has lots of spelling errors, grammatical errors, linguistic errors and has a lot of inconsistencies in the usage of words/technical jargon? Is it good enough for an English newspaper reader that these headlines are written using English alphabets but the Hindi words are written there? Technical terms are fine but why the other linguistic terms are used in Hindi here?

Exactly!

If it is not tasteful and if it is not acceptable for the English content and for any English-reader, same is true for the Hindi-reader and for the Hindi content also. Why do the Hindi content writers or publishers think that content written in English language should be absolutely perfect but the quality check is not necessary for the Hindi content?

I generally review magazines only but recently I have noticed a popular website in the automotive domain, www.CarWale.com, where they have started putting articles in Hindi around three months ago. I have gone through more than 100 (One Hundred) of Hindi articles posted there and found it very disappointing. I am not surprised if only 2 or 3 Hindi articles out of 100 articles have got ‘Likes’ from the readers that were posted in the last three months. That made me to write this review, not to highlight thier mistakes but to bring thier attention to the areas where there is scope of improvement, where they can take some corrective steps.

What if a brand name is misspelt repeatedly and it is written incorrectly at various places and that too within the same article? How would you take it if you read MARUTI is written as MAARUTI and then MAROTI and then MARUTIE or MAROOTI? Or if you read HONDA as HAWNDA or HONDAA or HAUNDA? An excuse can be that if the readers are getting what it is meant for, it is fine. But why a brand owner will tollerate if he finds that his brand and product names are represented incorrectly, for example, if SUZUKI is written as SUJUKI or SUZOOKI or SUZUKE or if CIAZ is written as SIAZ or CIYAZ or CIAJ or if EON is written ION or EYON or EEON etc.? I assume, if the brand owners have not reacted on such errors it clearly means they are not reading these articles or they have not noticed yet. Otherwise such errors cannot be taken for granted that can spoil a reputation of a brand.

I understand that it is not a literary content product where readers go and care for the language, it is a product of domain specific information and editorial reviews & opinions. But information alone cannot hold a reader for longer but the language and the jargon plays a vital role to create a strong bond between the audience and the content. In these articles, not only the technical terms are written incorrectly but usage of Hindi words are also wrong and lots of common Hindi words are written misspelt. As a content critic, I see a huge scope of improvement in terms of quality in this product. I am sure, since it was started, readers might have brought this into CarWale’s notice, but I don’t find any improvement after 100 days are passed and more than 100 articles with the poor language are posted here.

While I am writing this review about Hindi content of CarWale, I can remember that many other publications and content products who have had same issues with the language and they failed even though their content (information) was brilliant. Most of the time publishers do the same mistakes when they come up with idea of launching the Hindi edition of their existing brand (English edition), they do ‘a try’ or they do it with ’no investment’. I have seen and experienced lots of such ‘half heartedly’ launched Hindi products and their failures also, and after failing their analysis also – ‘It didn’t work because advertisers didn’t show faith in Hindi edition!’

In this review, I am sharing my experience in following points hoping that it can be helpful to such publishers and may be who are planning to come up with the Hindi edition as a brand extension for their existing English edition-
  • Do not try. Do it with the conviction. I have seen many of such half-heartedly started launches that failed because of lack of confidence. If you yourself do not have faith in your product, why will your client or advertiser will have? Most of the time our sales executives tell this in the first line- ‘we are testing the water…’, or ‘ we have just started for a trial…’ and obviously advertiser never signs the deal.
  • Do not take it as a language edition, treat it as a stand alone product. Most of the time Hindi or any other vernacular language edition is treated step-motherly and in many cases such products die because of this only. It would need proper commitment, focus, dedicated resources, time and money as we require to launch and nurture any brand for that matter. Generally, publishers think that they will put resources and money on this once they will get a good response out of this. And, they expect such results within first six months of launch. Do you think that it is correct?
  • Its not mere a translation job, its absolutely fresh content development. My experience is that most of such language editions just die even in their infancy. Most of the publishers do blunder that they assume that it is just a translation job and the rest we have already in place and that is where they lose the opportunity to build another stronger product that could have helped them to create even bigger brand.
  • Quality from the beginning. I have seen publishers compromising on the content quality in order to cut the initial cost. Their logic says they will put money once this ’trial’ product will start getting response. I have never seen such unprofessional way to launch any other product in any industry. On the contrary, marketers put their best quality for the sampling to hook the customers  May be, later they can start compromising the quality once the product becomes popular in the market. But, the publishers think opposite to this. Publishers need to put money in creating good quality content first, they can cut costs on other sides or they can generate other money generating streams later.
  • Content Re-versioning. It’s just not enough to translate text from English to Hindi and using same visuals and layout for the both editions. Sometimes you need to change the complete presentation of an article as it is to be served to a Hindi reader from the way it was originally presented to an English reader. Not only the translator/rewriter but the editor/visualiser also need to have great understanding of its Targeted Hindi Audience; their socio-economic understanding, their preferences, their likes-dislikes etc. This is very critical aspect where most of the publications fail.
  • Product Customisation. This is very important, As I have said that it should be seen and treated as a separate product, it needs its own identity to meet the needs of its TG. Surely, the major chunk will remain the same as your English edition has, but Hindi edition must address some consumer and small scale developers issues and interests as well.
All the above said issues are ‘strategic’ issues that are mostly tackled by the key decision makers or the publisher of any media company, but the most important part is the ‘execution’ that is taken care by the editor or the editorial team. If this product is going to remain as the secondary or by-product only, then whatever minimum resources you put on this project, that must be the best in their domain. For Hindi publication, the execution part is more critical and complicated than the English edition as it needs great experience & understanding of language versatility & dynamics unlike the English language that is standard for the people from J&K to the Kanyakumari. Hindi team or the person needs special skills to handle the Hindi softwares, fonts & keyboard complications, manual proof reading, consistencies in usage of terms, creating your own stylesheet etc. The execution team must have capabilities to think strategically as well as execute the project independently.

I hope that CarWale team will take a note from this review and will take some corrective measures soon to improve their product and readers will see a great product in terms of information, flavour and presentation also.

For more reviews…


मैं हूँ किसान – किसानों की खराब हालत जैसी ही पत्रिका

screen-shot-2017-01-10-at-8-03-03-amइस वर्ष का मेरा पहला रिव्यू, और वह भी हिन्दी भाषा में! संयोग से जो मैगज़ीन रिव्यू के लिए मेरे सम्मुख आई है वह भी हिन्दी भाषा में ही है इसलिए हिन्दी में ही रिव्यू करना और भी सार्थक हो जाता है। यह है हाल ही में शुरु हुई मासिक पत्रिका – ‘मैं हूँ किसान’ जो कि कृषि एवं किसानों से जुड़े विषयों पर सामग्री प्रस्तुत करने के उद्देश्य से जयपुर स्थित हैनिमैन चैरिटेबल मिशन सोसाइटी नामक संस्थान द्वारा प्रकाशित की जा रही है।

मैगज़ीन की हालत बिल्कुल अपने विषय के अनुरूप ही है, कृषि की जैसी दुर्दशा है वैसी ही हालत में यह पत्रिका भी है। मैंने अपने रिव्यूस में पहले भी कहा है कि किसी एक क्षेत्र में अच्छा-खासा अनुभव रखने या संबंधित विषय के बारे में बहुत सी जानकारी-सूचनाएँ एकत्र कर लेने या उस क्षेत्र से संबंधित लोगों-अधिकारियों-विभागों आदि में जान-पहचान हो जाने मात्र से लोगों को अक्सर यह गलतफहमी हो जाती है कि वे उस क्षेत्र में या उस विषय पर एक बढ़िया मैगज़ीन प्रकाशित कर सकते हैं। और बस, उनकी इसी गलतफहमी का परिणाम होता है, ‘मैं हूँ किसान’ जैसी स्तरहीन मैगज़ीन। पूरा रिव्यू पढ़ें

Times What’s Up?!: It’s cool…!

Times Whats Up

Do you remember one of my older reviews about ‘Which Right Choice?’ magazine? It was quite an unusual kind of magazine to help consumers to make buying decision by providing them purely editorial perspective and unbiased verdicts on variety of consumer products and services. The USP of WRC is that they don’t accept any single advertisement or advertorial or sponsored feature (not even for the covers) to put in the magazine to ensure its positioning in readers mind that this magazine is absolutely editorial driven, not the advertisements.

Now ‘Times What’s Up?!’ is recently launched magazine by Times Of India group which is also in the same genre but interestingly it is just opposite to WRC in terms of content. TWU is merely a compilation of advertorials and promotional features except of very editorial articles. A very unique proposition and solves fairly its purpose to help consumers to in buying. Full Review…

Gorgeous Looks: Not looking even averag

Gorgeous Looks

Pratishtha Publication has recently launched this bi-monthly title – ‘Gorgeous Looks’ with the tag line of ‘The Health, Beauty and Lifestyle Magazine’. Now, each one of these three areas from the tag line are so wide and broad that you need to be very careful to decide your boundaries and scopes for the coverage and lifestyle, as I see, is the most misused genre in magazines publishing. Anything which does not fit into any category, that somehow gets a seat in lifestyle category. Exactly same is the variety (?) of content when you go through the issue of GL. You actually get lost and forget what kind of magazine you are reading by the way. Full Review…

Travel with Style: Does not take you anywhere

Travel with Style combined

What comes to your mind when someone promises you to take for a ‘Travel with Style’? Obviously, a stylish and luxurious traveling experience! I also expected the same when I picked up this magazine from newsstand which is launched last month only by Sampan Media Pvt. Ltd. But it wiped out all my expectations from this magazine when I read it thoroughly. Full Review…

Innovation + Win = Innowin: Right Equation?

innovin11

Everything that is out of the box is not an innovation. It is not necessary always is the result of creativity but also can be because of negligence. This belief of mine became even stronger after going through recently launched magazine – Innowin. The moment I saw the launch issue on the stands, when I picked up the issue in my hands, it looked different but was that enough? Here’s how do I feel about this magazine after going through it closely. Full Review…

Ye lo…framed Indian traveler!

National-Geographic-Traveller-India

National Geographic Traveller (NGT) is another publication surrounded with yellow frame and has earned same respect for its journalistic values. Its Indian edition is launched by ACK media (very well known for Amar Chitra Katha, Tinkle & Karadi Tales) this month where it has to compete with other existing international & Indian publications like Conde Nast Traveller, Lonely Planet Magazine, Outlook Traveller, Travel Plus, Geo etc to create its own mind-share. Full Review…

Small Medium Entrepreneur: Business of businesses

Small Medium Enterpreneur

‘Franchise India Publication’, the publisher of various other publications like Estate World, The Franchising World, Retailer and many web portals has recently launched a new magazine- Small Medium Entrepreneur. As name suggests itself that it is to target the small & medium sized businesses & entrepreneurs in the country where couple of other magazines already are there to target the same genre. It is quite common of having many magazines from same genre with very similar or resembling titles but at least their treatment should be different if you want to create your own identity. Full Review…

Science for a common man: Popular Science India 

cover_1

I always see ‘Popular Science’ magazine as a periodical that explains the reality of this scientific universe in simple language to a common and a layman where he lives. It covers every aspect science and technology that touches our day-to-day life and may affect our future. It brings science from scientists’ laboratories to the layman’s level understanding of complicated facts & principles and that is why I prefer to call it ‘People Science’ magazine. Full Review…

Filmfare now available in Hindi… Big deal!

Filmfare-Hindi-May-2011

In the launch issue of Hindi edition of Filmfare, Editor Jitesh Pillai has signed off his edit note with- ‘I hope that the same affection & bonding you would share with Hindi edition of Filmfare the way you have been doing for the last sixty years with English edition’. After going through the issue I was surprised if two products are not at same level in terms of editorial quality & seriousness, how can you expect the same kind of treatment & bonding from the consumer for them? In fact, for that matter, any magazine which has no editorial vision or has not done complete editorial ground work or is not serious about its standards or does not understand the content needs of its audience that magazine cannot become a great magazine. Full Review…

Imperfect magazine for a Perfect Woman

perfect-woman

Publisher of recently launched magazine- ‘Perfect Woman’ claims that it is aiming at the modern, discerning and sharp focused woman of today. Perfect Woman is the new entrant in the genre of magazine for woman in India which is launched by GGC Ltd. as a monthly magazine. Indian market is already flooded with many Indian & foreign titles like Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Femina, New Woman, Woman’s Era, Elle, Good Housekeeping, Verve and many more. Amongst them, few are fighting to be on top and couple of others are struggling even for their survival,. In that kind of competitive scenario, it becomes even more challenging to come up with an extra ordinarily brilliant product to capture a remarkable market share for you. Full Review…

100+ Reviews at http://mediajunction.blogspot.com