Ask a bunch of aspiring magazine writers what editors are looking for when they read article queries and I’ll bet most of them answer, “good article ideas.”
Well, sort of. What editors most want to find in queries are good article ideas from writers who have an appealing edge over other writers. Contrary to what most beginning freelancers think, that edge need not be writing talent. A good many other qualities, some of which don’t show up in a query, make a writer valuable to an editor.
Ever hopeful yet skeptical, editors read queries for evidence that a writer not only has a relevant article idea but also one or more of the following qualities:
1. Research ability. Writers who can turn up little-known, highly interesting truths, track down hard-to-find statistics and answer thorny factual questions can easily rack up magazine assignments as long as they also understand what makes a topic relevant to a certain publication’s readers. Build your queries around such material and you’ll soon have lots of editors as regular clients – especially if your submissions sail through the fact-checking process.
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