: Re: How can I write in a way that encourages discussion? I have a nice sideline as a freelance journalist. Obviously editors consider my work good enough on the whole to be worth commissioning,

@Samaraweera193

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I had a quick read of both posts and, to my mind, the writing styles were noticeably different.

You mention nothing about traffic in your question but it might be pertinent to your writing. Obviously if one website only attracts 1,000 visitors and another attracts 10,000 visitors then it would be unrealistic to expect the same level of reader engagement.

As a journalist, it seems a reasonable expectation to ask your commissioning editor or whoever to give you some site statistics. What is the traffic to the website? How many visits did you have to the page over the course of - say - a month, two months, three months? I'm surprised you are not asking for these sorts of numbers so you can bang them into a spreadsheet and see:

a. how much traffic the commissioning website attracts
b. how much traffic your article attracted
c. how many comments were posted over different periods of time

You can then start to analyse your performance much better.

Secondly, stuff written for the internet hangs around for ever. For example, yesterday, I saw that someone had upvoted some comments I made on a newspaper article using Disqus. Nothing unusual about that - except that I made the comments over three years ago! It is not unusual for people to find articles, read comments and vote accordingly. At least, it seems to happen to me a lot!

Now to the actual writing. As I said, I read both the sample posts. To my mind, the differences between them were quite marked. The article with fewest comments was much more wishy-washy than the other one. In the more popular article, you made punchy points and your position was clear. In the less popular article, it came across to me as if you had no strong views or did not want to offend anyone or did not want to say anything contentious. It was literary blancmange. As articles go, it was okay but it provoked no strong feelings in me.

I know nothing about gaming and intend to learn nothing more than I already know. That having been said, I could see immediately that the more popular article struck positions. Where you have a position, you create the opportunity for someone to agree or disagree and to want to say so publicly. Where you say nothing contentious, no-one will comment because there's nothing to support or oppose.

Finally, I don't know the terms of your commissions. Are you being asked to write a balanced article to inform readers or should you perhaps deliberately throw in something for them to kick against? I often find that articles are the starting point of knowledge because expert "civilians" chip in with their particular areas of expertise.

If your commissioning editor wants to have a website where he is the "expert" delivering received wisdom to the readers, your writing style will obviously have to conform. However, if the aim is to attract traffic for other reasons (advertising or whatever), then maybe you should think about writing slightly more controversial opinions. You do not need to be rude about it as the American "shock jocks" so often are - but give people some meat to tear apart with their teeth. You don't have to believe everything you write but perhaps you should write more to provoke debate and less to give a completely balanced opinion.

Finally, before rushing off to change anything, work with your commissioning editor to determine what it is your writing is expected to achieve. I am willing to bet that even some of your commissioning editors haven't fully thought that one through!

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