Lawrence Medina

Here begins a small guide to help you (and me) create blog posts and articles that will keep you on topic and on schedule.

I’m going to strip this down to its bare bones to get the most out of it. All forms of writing are an argument. From the first word you type up you are declaring your argument. Every word following is then your back-up and proof of that initial argument.

With this in mind you can consider your structure as the following:

Headline: Primary “Argument”

Intro Paragraph: Introduce the topic at hand.

Subheadings: The proof to back-up your headline.

Paragraphs following the subheading is the explanation and detail for the subheading. This will feed back into the headline.

Call to Action: End every piece of writing with this. It can be sprinkled in throughout the piece of writing, in case you manage to convince the reader at an earlier point. Typically, the call to action at the end can be considered your conclusion and what you want the reader to walk away with.

Here is an example:

Headline:

How Outlining Can Keep your Blog Posts on Topic

Intro Paragraph:

Outlines, a dreaded thing for most. As teachers would make you draft these up before you begin to write. They are the prelude to piece. It can help you keep track of the important points you should touch on, while helping you to eliminate parts that put a damper on your writing. A good outline will often lead to good writing and keep track of the story at play, so you don’t introduce out of place elements or irrelevant story beats.

First Subheading (Consider these your paragraph breaks into your next topic):

Your Topic Sentence

A strong topic sentence will help you build your blog post. It should keep in logical progression from the headline. Since I opened this with the idea of outlines, it wouldn’t make sense to veer onto something unrelated to outlines.

Your reader will lose track of what you are talking about. So, you should begin each paragraph following your intro paragraph with a leading sentence. Every sentence following that should be detail and explanations for the topic sentence at hand.

When you are done making your argument for the first topic sentence, you should start leading into your next point.

You Next Topic Sentence

The guts and details for your topic sentences should be filled of examples that are reputable or steady conclusions for what you’re building up to. This is where you should link out to high authority people—since you are likely not an authority on the subject on hand, at least not yet. By creating connections and linking out to high authority people on the subject you can elevate your understanding, while showing readers that you are a trusted curator of content.

When you think you have fully fleshed out your argument you should begin leading to the call to action or just simply what you want your reader to take away from this.

When to End your Argument

If I were truly established, it would be here that I would tell you to sign up for my newsletter and receive a free Telamon Outline Guide (Trademark pending). It would have a simplified version of what I detailed here and at best it would be fillable, so you could keep using it for all your future writing needs.

I do hope that this helps you (by “you” I mean me too).