The next three paragraphs are going to be mimicking the same process of creating 100 word pieces of text about 3 different ideas.
I call them “support ideas” simply because they support the original concept of the article. But if calling them that confuses you, just think of them as whatever your post is about.
If you are writing about a central idea, what are 3 things related to that idea that you think are important?
For this example, my main concept for the post is ‘how to keg your homebrew’. Three topics related tot hat idea that I think are important are buying equipment, setting it up, and serving beer with that equipment.
Below, you can see that I also break down this paragraph into 3 ideas, then write a few sentences on each idea. It can be hard to pull off 100 words with just 5 sentences, but that's just our starting point. 2 sentences per support idea almost always exceeds our 100 word goal.
Breaking Down Your Paragraphs
In practice, I tend to freestyle on the topic until I think I’ve covered everything that needs to be covered. But if you are stuck, go into robot mode and divide the paragraph into 5 sentences again: introduction, 3x support, conclusion.
Support Idea #1: Homebrewing Equipment
Introduction
Support 1: Keg
Support 2: Tank
Support 3: Gas + Beverage lines
Conclusion
When you set up your paragraph like that, it doesn’t seem to hard to write just one sentence about homebrew kegs, right?! If you can write without setting up the structure beforehand like this, go for it. The structure is there for those of who who are still thinking, ‘I just don’t know what to write about’.
For the examples below, you can see I embellished a lot. Although not shown here, I frequently h3 tags as a paragraph titles. This helps with readability of your post. People know what’s coming up, which can help with reading comprehension, and can skim if they are lazy or looking for specific bits of information.
Also, remember to avoid chunky bits of text. Although in this tutorial we are dividing our paragraphs into 100 word sections, that doesn’t mean you need to squish 100 words together. I usually eyeball it, to see what’s readable or not, but as a rule of thumb I rarely put more than 2-4 sentences in a paragraph.
Here's the content I created for my first support idea:
Sometimes when I look at other websites, in my niche area I see great looking websites with great content, then I say to myself," I can't write like that" This lesson is very helpful, I don't have to be a great writer just good enough to give pertinent information to visitors.
Reply
I personally use a free-writing exercise: A Free-Writing Exercise To Unleash Your Creativity It's a great way to unleash one's creativity for sure. I always recommend it to people who have writer's block :)
Wayne
It is simple, straight to the point and takes away the fear that comes with writing.
I can relate to this as a language teacher. Whenever I tell my students that we are writing a 500 word essay their first reaction is 'What on earth shall we do to have 500 words!"
But by the time I start breaking the process down, they realize it possible. Strange enough the end result is always amazing. That is holding them down to 500 words and not more. When they find the topic interesting, they always want go beyond that.
