Learn How To Choose A Topic To Write in 3 Steps

Aabha Gopan
3 min readSep 6, 2021

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Photo by Michael Burrows from Pexels

Writing is fun until you’re stuck without a topic. As a writer, you may feel confused about what to write on. What you dread the most would be whether you’ll feel the topic is unapt when you’re halfway done with the article.

Just imagine reading, thinking, writing, and editing over 1000 words about a topic that doesn’t interest you. That’s a writer’s nightmare!

But how do you choose the right topic to write an article on?

You’ll find the answer here.

Here, I’ll present you with three effective steps that will lead you to the perfect topic for you.

1. Who’re you writing for

Writing is a customized art where the article is created with the reader in mind. Therefore, you need to choose a topic that adds value to your readers. Ask yourself these questions and your topic will mostly be one of them.

  • What are my readers thinking about?
  • What are my readers curious to know?
  • What content will my readers find useful?

Now, here are two other questions you should ask yourself.

  • Which age group are you targeting?
  • What is your reader’s profession?

The answers to these questions will give you a better idea about the topic to write on.

For example, if you’re writing articles for high school kids in January, you will learn that the answers to the questions lead you to a topic.

  • Which age group are you targeting?- 13 to 18
  • What is your reader’s profession?- Student
  • What are my readers thinking about?- Prom
  • What are my readers curious to know?- How to make the most out of the experience
  • What content will my readers find useful?- How to decorate the school auditorium?/ Latest dressing trends for prom

You can see from here that you can write on decorating school auditorium/dressing trends/ different prom themes? /etc.

As said above, you can derive the topic from the answers.

2. Choose A Writing Platform

You would have noticed that different writing mediums have readers from around the same age group. For example, the average age of people who read People magazine is 41.1. Similarly, most users of Facebook were between 24 to 35 years of age.

So, you have to choose a topic that resonates with the platform. As you can see that all mediums have different readers, you need a topic that the readers of the platform will read. For your article to click in the People magazine, you need a relevant topic for people in their 30s and 40s.

Also, different writing mediums promote different writing styles. Wired is an informative platform, whereas Instagram is more fun-packed. So, you should choose a topic you can publish in the platform of your choice.

3. Brainstorm Ideas And Narrow Down The Topic

Once you have a vague idea about the topic, you can brainstorm ideas. Gathering many ideas and thoughts can help draft a better article.

Furthermore, you can use these ideas to build a topic for your article. In short, you can develop the main topic from all the brainstormed ideas.

Consider you decide to write about prom. The ideas you brainstormed may include games to play, dance steps to learn, popular hairstyles, etc. From these brainstormed ideas, you can develop the main topic like ‘Stylish Prom Looks That You Can Adorn in 2021’ or ‘How To Organize The Best Prom Ever’.

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Aabha Gopan

Loving human minds while changing my toddler's diaper.