The freeCodeCamp Medium Publication Editor Handbook

If you're thinking about writing articles for publication, the editor of freeCodeCamp.org, published by Medium.com, has written a handbook that will help you plan and organize your articles. While it's written for writers working at Medium.com, it should be helpful to any freelancer writing an article.

Here's a small part:

Regardless of the type of story — news, feature, tutorial — they should all strive for the same virtues:

Substance. The story should bring something meaningful to the table. A writer’s story about the Commodore 64 their parents bought for them in the 1980s might be of great interest to them personally, but will it be relevant to a typical reader? Will they walk away with something useful? On the other hand, pretty much all of our readers would benefit from learning more about the job interview process, or gaining a better understanding of how CSS works.

Accessibility. The story should be as easy for a layperson to understand as possible. There are practical limits to how simple an explanation of a mathematical concept can be, but few writers even begin to approach such limits. A thoughtful communicator can channel their inner Einstein or Feynman and make many complicated concepts relatively easy to understand. But this does take effort.

Brevity. People are busy. A story should be as short as possible, but no shorter. We can often trim fat without sacrificing much in the way of meaning. We publish plenty of longer stories, like my story on the history of the open internet. I spent 3 months researching it, and it was originally going to be a book, but I was able to cut it down to the point that I could express it in a 26-minute read. Maybe there’s room to cut it down even further.