Hi writing family. Kelly Eden here.
The weird writing world jargon this week is “service piece.”
Service pieces, personal essays, “how to..”, listicle, creative non-fiction? What is that you’re writing anyway?
Knowing the answer is important when you’re sending your piece out into the world, because editors expect different things from different types of stories.
Service Pieces:
I spent most of my early career writing service pieces for parenting and health magazines: pieces like, “How Coaches Teach Their Kids to Swim” and “5 Ways to Help Your Child Transition to School”
Service journalism is all over the internet and it can be an especially good place for new writers to break into the market.
Service pieces are useful, practical stories with clear takeaways for the reader. Listicles, how to’s, and other information-based stories that help readers live their lives better are usually service pieces.
Are AI taking over service pieces?
AI is starting to write articles, particularly service pieces, but you don’t need to be intimidated.
AI can write a service piece about “10 Ways to Spot Dating Scammers” using data, but you can write the same article with your own experience of almost being caught up in a romance scam.
Your short anecdotes and experiences make a service piece more interesting and, importantly, human.
They don’t even need to be your experiences. You can research other people, celebrities, fictional movie characters, people from history to make your service piece more relatable.
Service pieces also do quite well on Medium.com
Do you have an area of expertise, or an experience where you learned something others may benefit from? Might be time to pull a service piece together!
If you want to give Medium a go, I updated my “Submit to Medium Publications” guide yesterday. Here’s a friend link if you need it.
Have a great week,
Kelly