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The angle of your writing piece is its message — it’s what you are saying in the writing piece.
You can write about any topic, but you’re not really saying anything unless you’re approaching that topic with an angle. Without an angle, a writing piece is just a lot of information-sharing. It’s grandiloquence — and the written form of ‘talking a lot but saying nothing’.
The most important ingredient in toothpaste is fluoride. There are over 6,000 languages in the world today. The Eiffel Tower is in Paris. These are facts. I can share a lot of facts with you, but unless there’s a connection between them, they’re just facts; they don’t say anything.
If I wrote a letter to a friend and they opened it to read ‘The Eiffel Tower is in Paris’, they’d be confused. Did I want them to go to the Eiffel Tower? Was I researching the Eiffel Tower and wanted their help? Had I been kidnapped, and was contacting them through a coded message?
A writing piece with no angle is frustrating to read. The reader will think you’re going to share something insightful at the end that ties the whole piece together — and if you don’t, they’ll be let down. An angle gives them a reason to be interested, because they can connect the dots between ideas and follow where the writing piece is going; like a story that they can follow from premise to conclusion. If there are no connections to follow, changing ideas will be jarring (just like the facts I listed were) and the reader will need to constantly reorient themselves, since the writing is not guiding them.
An angle will make your writing piece better in the end, even though it means you will need to do more planning at the start.
So, how do you find the angle of your writing piece?
1. What are you writing about? This is the subject.
The first thing you need to determine is what your subject is. This is the broad, general idea that you are writing about. For example: the rain, getting sick, board games or long jump.
For this writing piece, I’m going to use the example: dogs pooing on nature strips.
2. What is the overlap in your content? This is the topic.
More specific than the subject is the topic you are writing about. The topic narrows the focus of your writing piece.
Continuing with the subject ‘dogs pooing on nature strips’, potential topics could be:
- Picking up dog poo on nature strips.
- Dog poo on nature strips affecting the environment.
- Stepping in dog poo on nature strips.
The narrower your subject, the narrower your topic. If I had gone with a broader subject, such as ‘dog poo’, my topic would also be broader. In such a case, potential topics could be:
- Dogs pooing on nature strips.
- The smell of dog poo.
- How often dogs poo.
You want to only pick one topic. If you write about the smell of dog poo, then dog poo on nature strips affecting the environment, then stepping in dog poo on nature strips, your writing piece will be difficult to follow.
If you’ve started working on your piece already, you may have lots of content. What is the one encompassing focus of your content? Are there parallels or similarities between the ideas you’ve already written about? If you can’t find any, I suggest noting the idea you have the most content for — as this is likely the one that interests you most — and finding a related topic.
If you haven’t started working on your piece yet, try writing down thoughts and ideas about your subject. Then look for any parallels or similarities. Again, if you can’t find any, pick the idea that interests you most to find a related topic.
3. What is your opinion of the overlap? This is the angle.
Once you have a topic, you need to decide your opinion of that topic. What do you want to say in your writing piece?
If the example topic chosen was ‘Picking up dog poo on nature strips’, the angle could be ‘Dog owners should pick up their dog’s poo on nature strips’.
An angle is usually an opinion. Sometimes it is informative — ‘How to pick up dog poo on nature strips’ — or a narrative — ‘The time I picked up my dog’s poo on the nature strip’ — but even then there is usually an underlying opinion. An article about ‘How to pick up dog poo’ insinuates that the writer wants you to pick up your dog’s poo.
Every good writing piece says something, even if not explicitly. By finding the angle of your writing piece, you can know what you’re saying before you say it, structure your writing so it’s easier to read, avoid writer’s block, and give your writing purpose.
You can find this article on Medium too.