How to create headlines that ignite spontaneous interest in your work? The most important part to any article writing is to find a headline that touches and speaks to your reader. The need to craft a title that grabs the attention of your reader, which draws them into your content right where they are sitting. What makes an article title special and how do you spark life into it, that makes it become more than your point of contact?

With hundreds of thousands of titles to choose from, making yours stand out from the crowd is the aim of most aspiring writers. Your reader will spend under 2 to 3 seconds scanning your title, deciding if they will to read your piece or not. That is your only window of opportunity, so you have to make it work. Just realising this fact and being aware of it is the beginning to getting it right. This means that time, focus, care and thought needs to be zeroed in on this most important part. The next most essential element is the opening lines that follow on from this, but that's another story.

To start with, search the article directories in your category and scan the different headings to see what gets your interest. Stop and look to see what it is that spiked your awareness? Try to find the secret to its success that magnetising your attention. Jot down all the words that you can use to work for you. Look at the construction and style. What words are in bold or in italics. Doing this gives your a feel to what works and what you can imitate to suit you.

Think of your targeted reader and try to understand what it is that they are looking for. If you can give them this, your mission is half done. The other half is finding the right words to put it across in a compelling way, to elicit an immediate emotional response. Headlines need to speak a clear and bold message to your reader, enough to get them to stop, and take notice. The more you can touch them emotionally the better. People are prompted to take action through an emotional appeal and self interest.

Using a question can sometimes do it, other times, if it is information that you are offering, a "How To ...?" does the trick. Controversy, fear, gossip, novelty and a challenge are all used in this quest. Remember that all great headlines of the past have roughly all the same essential elements to them. No need to reinvent the wheel, just learn and grow. Sometimes just changing a simple letter turns a good headline into something great.

I hope that this will be the beginning to your article writing success, to develop attention grabbing headlines that work for you.