Before You Start Writing

1. Know Your Audience
   Who are you writing this blog post/report/article for? Knowing your reader helps you with deciding a number of factors, from the language to be used to the extent of detail you need to add.
   
2. Research, Research, Research
   Read up. Talk to people who have personal/working knowledge of the subject. Knowing your topic well makes a huge difference in the kind of storytelling you are doing. Even if it a personal anecdote, it will be good to do enough research so that you can add links for anything that needs extra reading or is of special interest. 
   
3. Write Your Synopsis
   This is your guiding light and your anchor. Every time you are stuck for content, this is what you need to return to, for inspiration. If you are not sure whether your article/blog reads right, return to this synopsis and you will get an idea of what needs to be set right.
   
   
   
   1. Keep your synopsis short, not more than 100-150 words.
   2. You can do a bullet-point style synopsis, if that helps you think better.
   3. Cover the following points in the synopsis: who you are writing for, what they will take away from this piece (do you want them to learn something/take action?), the broad idea of what you are trying to cover and all the important points you need to touch upon within this topic. 

Here is an exercise for you:

Think of a topic that you want to write about, in a blog post of about 300-400 words. This can be about a program you attended, an interesting book you read, a conversation that made you think, a wonderful person that you met, the last good movie you watched... Anything works.
Create a 100-word synopsis about this topic.