Idea File: Study, Study, Study

So you’re sitting here at the ass-end of August, and you’re wondering where to find work.

Magazines, my writerly friend. Turn to magazines.

I love magazine work. Since I started my college days in the journalism department, I’ve loved creating articles. Maybe you love article writing, too.

But the ideas — they don’t always come to you right off, do they?

Spending nearly four years as a senior editor taught me where some of the best ideas are:

• Press releases
• Other articles
• Reports and studies

Since I’ve gone over the other two in the past, why not go over that last thing? In fact, for me, reports and studies are phenomenal ways to convince an editor to carry a story. Why? Because you hit them not just with a great idea, but with the facts to back that idea up. All in the same email.

Who’s the Rockstar writer? You are, my friend.

Especially if you find that one study that no one is talking about. Or that study that confirms what everyone is talking about. It can work in your favor either way.

How do you find studies? Ah, easy. Like this:

• Read news relating to your specialty (or just read the news if you don’t specialize)
• Sign up for press releases from your contacts’ companies (or PR Newswire)
• Search for them

The last one is actually fun. Here’s what I put in the search engine box:

“Study suggests”

My lord, the possibilities that show up! Let’s work with the first one I came up with. This one is for you, romance writers:

Broken heart syndrome may be linked to cancer, study suggests

Damn, that’s sad. But it’s also a story. While this particular story somehow links cancer to broken heart syndrome, you can cull from this whatever you want. Here are my initial thoughts on what I’d make with this sentence (complete with where I’d pitch the story):

• The Psychology of Cancer: Can it Break Your Heart? (psychology mags, medical consumer-facing newsletters)
• How a Broken Heart Can Kill You (self-help mags, health pubs)
• A Broken Heart is a Real Thing (science consumer-facing pubs, newspapers, regional mags)
• Studying the Broken Heart: Insights into Cancer-induced Impairments (hospital consumer mags)

In each of these, I’d write a query that included these things:

• The lead statistic from the study
• A supporting statistic or quote from the study itself
• A list of three potential interview sources, including one from the study authors
• A list of questions I’d be asking

This post took me a whopping 15 minutes to put together. That means you, my writer friend, can find a study, brainstorm ideas, and craft a query letter in less time. Oh, and probably fit in enough time for researching the magazine’s typical article focus.

Writers, how often do studies and reports become the basis for your work?
What are your favorite sources for these studies?
If you typed “Study suggests” or “Report reveals” into your search engine, what showed up that you could run with?