Writing is a wonderful tool for people to express themselves and their opinions, understand their emotions and simply have fun! Her Campus is a platform where writers can do just that and even get their work posted online which is one of the reasons that I love it so much.
Therefore, I chose to write about how to write a Her Campus article. This idea seems silly, but for me, writing an article is a process. I wanted my final article of the semester to end on a high, yet informative note.
Hopefully, this article will inspire other Geneseo students (and writers) to open their laptops, start typing and writing their ideas away.
- Brainstorm/ choose an idea
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The only way you can write a Her Campus article is if you have an idea. The best part about Her Campus is that the idea can be anything you want it to be. Topics could range from entertainment and celebrities to health and mental well-being. I’m writing an article about writing a Her Campus article. Talk about being meta.
Once you’ve got a list of ideas, you just need to choose one! It may be hard to let go of other ideas, but you can never write too many Her Campus articles, especially since our chapter at Geneseo loves new voices and ideas. You will always be able to revisit other ideas and even continue expanding upon ones you’ve already written.
- Planning
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Planning your article is probably the most important part of the process. Is your article going to be a profile? A listicle (like this one)? You need to choose the best form for your work to make sure your idea is highlighted properly.
Writing a Her Campus article can also involve doing some research, especially if it’s going to be about a real person or event. Ensuring that facts and other information are accurate is one of the jobs of a campus correspondent and making sure you properly link anything you use from an outside source is essential to the article following proper form.
- Take a step back
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Once you have planned out your article, it’s time to take a break. Yes, sometimes I “procrastinate” writing Her Campus articles. I can have the entire idea mapped out and have a bunch of websites bookmarked, yet I’ll still end up wasting about a half-hour on my phone. Sometimes even if I have the plan, I won’t write the article until the next day or even week.
I don’t just slack off writing for no reason—well at least most of the time. I’ve learned that stepping away from your idea can help you gain a clearer picture of what you want to write which helps keep consistency and clarity within the piece.
- Write the article
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While writing may come naturally to some, Her Campus articles are still a slightly different style of writing to most. These articles are a form online media, which means that people read them differently. You will need to include hyperlinks to link sources, write shorter paragraphs so people can read quicker without staring at blocks of texts and still follow proper journalistic styles such as Associated Press and the Her Campus Stylebook.
In addition, anything that’s posted online remains on the Internet forever. You want to make sure whatever you’re writing is something that you’re okay with going out into the world. While Her Campus at Geneseo does allow some anonymous articles, I personally don’t want to make too much of a habit of it unless it could potentially harm the writer. If you want to be in any type of media-related career, Her Campus is the perfect website for you to create archives of past articles too.
Although there are some challenges while writing a Her Campus article, hopefully I have provided clarity for writers who wish to join us and highlighted the versatility of Her Campus articles.