Home Tutorial for Indian Abroad (IA) article/feature writers

Tutorial for Indian Abroad (IA) article/feature writers

The first step would be to ask for article/feature topics from us or suggest your own topics. Ideally, you should be suggesting some topics for us to choose the ones we find fit. While researching and writing, kindly keep in mind that these articles are targeted at chiefly one group of people, which are our target audiences: Indian community in Australia.

  • We need articles that fall in these categories: Local news and articles from various Australian states, Business and Investment, Interviews, Immigration, Health, Travel, Arts and Culture, Kitchen and Cuisine, and even Bollywood.
  • Our target audiences are Indians living in Australia. So whatever topic and the focus you choose, everything has to be decided keeping the Australian Indians in mind.
  • The words limit is 300 words to 800 words, depending upon various factors.

Vital Components of IA Articles

Headings

First, we write article headings in sentence case rather than in title case.

Second, we expect witty and sharp headings from our writers, so that the readers feel compelled to read our features and articles. Mediocre or passable headings that seem to have come from a 6th grader will not do.

Blurb or Intro

With blurb, we tell readers what they can expect to read. If you read novels, then you know a blurb as that little information given at the back cover. This little write-up talks about the novel, its storyline, and characters and is written to entice the readers into buying the novel.

Here are a few ways to write a blurb for a news magazine article:

  • Just try to summarise in roughly 15-25 words what you have written in the whole article
  • Instead of summarising, you can also mention something interesting from within the article/feature and leave it for the readers to guess what the focus of the article or feature is going to be
  • Another way to write a blurb would be to try and sell your article to the readers in 15-25 words; just think how you can do that
  • To get a practical idea, go through the blurbs on the features and articles published in monthly magazines or in the magazine sections of a weekend newspaper

Lead

This is the first paragraph — or, in some cases, first few paragraphs of the feature — that makes the angle or the focus of the feature known to the readers. It comes directly after the blurb and is the device feature and article writers use to attract the attention of the reader.

  • Usually just one or two graphs long
  • Different ways it can be written:
    • You can make the reader curious; explain what’s in store for him; ask a question or questions; make an unusual statement; provide surprising or alarming statistics; write a quotation, adage or proverb; or state an unusual opinion

Sub-Headings

You have to provide sub-headings within the body of the feature; we do not accept a feature without them.

  • Make sub-headings bold

Within the body of the feature, we try to write at least 30 words under a sub-heading. This is to give the feature more body as well as for the sub-headed part to justify having a sub-heading.

  • Sub-headings having hardly any matter in them or those having just a one liner are not acceptable (like the one below).
    • Take a Small Nap Studies reveal that a small nap during the day helps our mind and body recover from energy loss.

Box

The information in the box is not really central to the article but is still germane to the topic, in that it throws a sidelight on the issue, or provides something extra to the readers that they will appreciate. To get ideas for the box material, kindly go through a few lifestyle monthlies.

Pull-quote

Choose the most interesting, educative, or informative sentence from the article and copy and paste (not cut and paste) that at the bottom of your article (soon after it ends). We will showcase this sentence to the readers by putting it in bigger font within the article.

Photos

Please provide 1-4 good photos to go with your article. The photos have to be original, high resolution and copyright-free.

Formatting

You need to format the write-up this way: single line spacing between paragraphs, font style ‘Times New Roman’, and font size 12. Also (please take it as very important), you have to italicize all the foreign language words, including Hindi words.

Any questions on the above? Just get in touch with us at editorial@indianabroad.news.