How to Make Old Article Ideas New
You have a great idea for an article on how to personalize your yoga workout depending on your hair color. It’s never been done before! As you’re working on your query, you pick up an issue of Yoga Journal — and there, on page 75, is an article about how to personalize your yoga workout depending on your hair color. And it’s not by you.
Many of my e-course students get worried when they find out that an idea that they thought was totally original has been done or is already in progress at their target magazine. And some students want to write articles on evergreen topics like potty training, walking off the weight, or how to write a business plan.
You can still pitch these ideas, whether they’re evergreens you see every month in a different magazine or something that you thought was unique but that you found out the hard way isn’t. The secret is to play with your idea until it’s different, more important, better than the ones you’ve already seen. Here’s how.
Give it a news peg. If you can tie your idea in to a recent study, piece of news, or even a forthcoming movie or book, you can make an old idea new again. To find studies, contact associations related to your topic, or check databases like PubMed for medical studies. For news, try sites like Psycport for news in psychology and Eurekalert for science-related news releases. You can find forthcoming movies at imdb.com, and soon-to-be published books at Amazon.com (do a search and sort your results by publication date instead of relevance).
Change up the packaging. Instead of a straight article, try offering a chart, quiz, Q&A, or other interesting format. You can also create a chunky format with lots of boxes, or come up with clever themed subheds.
Switch it up. If the articles you’re seeing everywhere focus on one topic, find several related ones and offer a round-up. For example, instead of writing about one family-friendly cruise, find five of them. Or try finding a surprising twist to your idea — what I like to call an “opposite idea.” So if everyone is writing about how to dump toxic friends, you can write about why sometimes toxic friends are just what you need to learn more about yourself, develop your character, become stronger, or whatever.
How do you make old ideas new? [lf]
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Jan 21, 2007 Advice, Query letters
Excellent advice. I faced this problem just last week – came up with what I thought was a brilliantly original slant on a reasonably evergreen idea, then picked up a copy of the latest issue of the mag I was planning to sell it to and found almost the exact same story. Oh well, at least I know the idea was well targeted.
My creative well is filling up nicely. Thanks for such an informative article! Keep the inspiration and tips coming.
‘Nice resources, Linda. My BA was in psych yet I’d never heard of psycport. I will have to check it out.
agreed–you have to put a new turn on it. usually news works!