How-to articles, Step 2

See, yesterday's title piqued your curiosity to read more, didn't it? This is how a "killer" title works. Now, moving past the title to get to your article. You often hear that taking the initial step in an endeavor like this -- just coming up with an idea -- is the hardest part. This is just someone trying to make you feel better about the process. You have the whole article to write now! This alone might be incentive to put it off for another day. Then you could go have that fun promised in our title.

But we shall practice some discipline, however difficult and contradictory to our article's premise. How-to experts advise choosing a method for your process that readers will find simple and practical. One particular expert also advises that it also be free of hazards (which leaves out 99% of home improvement projects). However, you can get around this by putting a disclaimer at the end of your article if you are worried that readers will take you seriously and actually attempt to follow your directions. If this really worries you, you might put the disclaimer at the beginning of your article: DO NOT ATTEMPT TO READ THIS ARTICLE ABOUT PROCRASTINATION. SEVERE LETHARGY, MORAL LAZINESS, AND EVEN BANKRUPTCY MAY RESULT. Or, you could make the disclaimer your title: HOW TO SAVE YOURSELF TIME AND TROUBLE BY PROCRASTINATING ABOUT READING THIS ARTICLE.

Now, what are the points you want to make in your article, besides your strong belief that broccoli should be outlawed? Preferably your points should have something to do with your subject, such as "Procrastination is great." Your wording should be direct and, as one expert (not me) advises, arranged into "small sentences" that are easily digested by readers. Since our subject, procrastination, is itself longer than the average sentence of some primitive languages (such as Toddlerese), the sample point above might best be rendered thus: "Pro. Cras. Ti. Nation. Is. Great."

True as it may be that "procrastination is great," you will nonetheless need more than one point for your article. Your readers need step-by-step instructions so that they also can arrive at this conclusion. It is sometimes helpful to present your steps in bullet format, as in

• "Follow these steps or I will shoot you with this bullet."

However, though your language should be firm, as one expert advises, you do not want to be too commanding. The earlier sentence might therefore be better worded as

• "Please follow these steps or I will shoot you with this bullet."

This establishes a friendly tone that your readers will no doubt warm to, after they have been fanned back to consciousness.

One of the most important points that you will want to communicate to your readers about procrastination is that it takes a great amount of practice to perfect. To help you see what I mean, we will now take a break so I can put off writing the rest of this step. Our next installment will be: Procrastination, Step by Slow Step.