Idea File: Getting Freelance Ideas from Articles

Have you ever read an article that left you with more questions than it answered?

Right there is a fountain of freelance writing pitch ideas. I’ve read articles that never answered the one question I was hoping they would, and the ones that just brought up four or five questions. Did the writer do a bad job? Not necessarily. Depending on the approach, the writer may have fulfilled the original assignment just fine. Some topics simply bring up tons of questions.

Then there are articles that seem to answer all the questions the readers might have. Nothing there to see, right?

Wrong. Plenty there to see.

Here’s an example. This comes from the Harvard Medical School blog from a few years ago:

Tossing Flossing?

The burning question in the news last week was this: should you bother flossing?

That’s the title and lead-in sentence. Obviously, I can’t post the whole thing without permission, so click on the link (in the title) if you want to read more.

Here’s what I see in the article:

• New health guidelines removed a once-present sentence saying that flossing, brushing, and drinking fluoridated water is “he most effective way to reduce dental caries.”
• Where’s the evidence?
• Why is flossing even mentioned in health guidelines?

It’s a blog post, so it’s short on content and questions, but the three points above are pretty potent on their own.

Here are the questions that article brings up for me:

• Really? Where is the evidence driving that conclusion?
• When did flossing become a recommended thing? What drove it?
• What should a good dental care regimen include?
• How important is dental care to one’s physical health?
• How are dental problems causing health issues?
• What kind of research goes into setting health/dental guidelines?
• What changes have occurred in dentistry that have improved our dental health?

There are so many questions from a seemingly straightforward post.

When I read an article, I’ve learned to do these things to unearth the potential story ideas:

• Are the who/what/when/where/how/why questions addressed?
• Do the answers fully satisfy my curiosity? What’s missing?
• What one other question (or two, if it’s a meatier story) am I asking as I’m reading it?
• Are there questions posed in the article that aren’t answered? How can I make those a query?
• Who is the audience? How would this article be written if the audience were X or Y?
• What does this topic mean to the people I typically write for? What else do they need to know?

Writers, where do you find your ideas now?
How do you mine ideas from what may seem fairly standard topics?