Blog Better & Faster: Find Your Slant

Last week I realized that I've written over 2,000 posts between this blog and my other one. My indie author hat magically appeared on my head, and I thought: "Raw material."

Now I'm in the process of putting together an ebook containing my blogging advice. Today's post is an excerpt from what will be that book. I'd give you the title, but I haven't thought of a snappy one yet. Any ideas?

Blog Better and Blog Faster: Find Your Slant


Slant? What is that? What does that mean when you're talking about writing? It means you must find the angle, the smaller part of the bigger picture about which you want to write. You simply can't write everything about a given subject. This is where a lot of beginning writers go wrong.

They tackle a subject and try to tell every single thing about it. That's called rambling, and that's the surest way to ensure that you'll lose an audience. Also, if you're trying to write for money, you won't write something for which you'll get paid -- whether it's an article or a book you're writing.

Endless Ideas

You see, every subject has an infinite number of slants or angles. For instance, if you wanted to write something about book publishing, the ideas are endless. A short list includes: paperback book publishing, hardcover book publishing, ebook publishing, book rights, the library book market, nonfiction books, fiction books, history of publishing, first novel published, how authors write books, how agents sell books, how editors bring a book manuscript to publication, how publishers make money on books, how publishers are now parts of conglomerates, etc. You can come up with hundreds if not thousands of ideas about book publishing.

Narrow Your Focus

You must figure out which part of the subject you want to address. That makes the subject manageable for you and your audience. You focus on that aspect, exploring it so that your reader comes away with real information that's of use. When you have an idea, you must play with that idea until you've figured out what narrowed, focused part of the idea you want to explore. Then you have the slant.

Takeaway Truth

Find your slant, and you'll write better and faster, and your writing -- whether blog posts or book-length will be the better for it.