What Goes Into Writing A List For ScreenRant

While the list format has always been around, with the rise of viral trends in the past fifteen years, lists have really taken off as an art form of their own. A successful list article can have an outsized impact on a site’s traffic and engagement thanks to its versatility. If well-written and engaging, a list can reach a much wider audience than many other article formats with a narrower focus. But lists aren’t simple things to write – a lot of work goes into how we write lists at ScreenRant.

Behind every list is a thoughtful editorial process that blends ion, research, and data-driven insight, often from Valnet's in-house created tools, to ensure the content resonates not only with fans but also with the ever-evolving demands of online consumption. Our team continuously monitors search trends, audience behavior, and engagement metrics to identify ranking topics that are both timely and evergreen. A list may be driven by a recent film release, but it’s also shaped by what audiences are actively searching for, clicking on, and discussing online. Done right, a single list can have a big impact on our site.

The Impact Of A Great List Article

By its very nature, a list is more flexible than other topics, and generally more evergreen. While an article recapping an episode of a TV show will only be relevant for a few days after the episode airs, or a movie review will only be relevant around the time of the movie’s release, the window of relevance for a list is much wider, if not permanently open. As such, lists create hits for both Google Search and Google Discover, making them the perfect complement for more topic-specific op-eds and pullouts.

Lists get shared on social media at a higher rate, too, thanks to the natural curiosity gap they create. Whether someone’s merely mildly interested to see which selections make a list or they come away with strong opinions about the author’s inclusions or ranking, the debate around a list is always part of the success story. A great list makes you think, and including them as part of a publishing plan rounds out a site’s editorial coverage.

The beauty of the list format is that it doesn’t constrain you to one type of writing, offering a variety of articles for readers. Lists span the spectrum from the playful to the serious. They can spark debate about game mechanics, help someone find their next favorite TV show or book, or even teach them something they never knew about their favorite movie, as the examples below show:

What Makes A ScreenRant List Different

What sets a ScreenRant list apart is the unique approach taken even before the first word is typed.

Coming up with a broad, general angle for a list is easy – but that doesn’t mean it will perform well. If it’s not a topic that people are interested in, they won’t be inclined to read and share. If it’s an angle that has already been covered by multiple other sites, then your own list is less likely to rank in Google or be one that readers haven’t seen before. If it’s too niche an angle, then you limit your potential audience.

Thus, it’s important to combine gut instinct with data. ScreenRant makes data-informed decisions in everything we do to see what readers are interested in and what people are talking about, and lists are no different. This can involve using analytics to look at historical trends for certain topics, or heading to Reddit and other social media platforms to see what people are buzzing about. Parent brand Valnet’s internal tools including Google Analytics alternative Sentinel take this a step further, providing real-time performance dashboards, search trend reports, and predictive data models that editorial teams rely on daily. These tools help identify not just what topics are hot, but which angles and keywords are gaining traction. This allows our teams to prioritize ideas with the highest potential to resonate, rank, and reach wide audiences. By focusing on angles that people are actually interested in and searching for, it ensures that ScreenRant lists give people exactly what they want – sometimes even before they know it.

But coming up with a solid angle is just the first step to writing a list. Writing a great list requires a broad knowledge base or keen research skills, and often both, which is why we look to writers with expertise in specific subjects to write specific lists. It also requires thoughtful consideration to incorporate personal, informed opinion with generally accepted truths. No list should ever just regurgitate another site’s list or parrot general consensus. That’s a lazy list, and no one wants to read that.

Still, there are indisputable facts; a list ranking the best mafia movies of all time, for example, would simply not be taken seriously if it left off The Godfather or placed it dead last in the ranking. A roundup of the greatest horror books of the 20th century would be dismissed if it were populated by books no one had ever heard of and few people had read, but Stephen King and H.P. Lovecraft were nowhere to be found.

Going completely against the grain and being a contrarian simply because one can, rather than engaging readers, only serves to undermine a writer’s authority. That’s why a ScreenRant list starts with a strong opinion that's balanced with nuance and expertise before our writers - or editors - even sit down to write their list. Writers and editors will talk through the idea and the entries, sometimes with ionate debate, bouncing ideas off each other to make sure every entry on a list is as strong as possible.

Content Value Makes ScreenRant Lists Even Better For Readers

One added bonus in ScreenRant articles, including lists, is the inclusion of “content value.” While any site can write a list, and even write a list well, ScreenRant strives to enhance the reader experience by offering supplemental content that goes beyond the basic text of the article.

Our thinking doesn’t just stop at what we write, but what we add to enhance that writing. The ScreenRant mindset is that a reader should be able to find any information they need and have every question they might have answered by the article – we want to be a one-stop shop for our audience. Thus, what other sites may see as unnecessary bells and whistles, we see as a fundamental part of any complete list.

Our custom info tag cards, for example, help a reader scan and get all the basic information they need about a movie or TV show, including synopsis, cast, director, release date (or number of seasons), and where it can be streamed online. This is especially useful in any recommendation list we write. After all, if a reader is intrigued enough to check out one of the recommendations on the list, making it even easier for them to find that movie or TV show directly is a simple way to enhance their experience rather than making them search for the information themselves.

Including trailers in our lists also gives readers a taste of what’s in store for them, should they take our recommendation. Video clips also provide necessary context for other kinds of lists; a list ranking the best fights in Hong Kong action movies would be wholly incomplete, even frustrating, if it didn’t include clips of every fight for readers to watch and judge for themselves.

Other forms of added content value can give readers something they're looking for before they even know it. A list ranking the most successful Marvel movies of all time, for example, could benefit from a table listing all the movies on the list, their budgets, and their box office totals to give readers a quick and easy visual representation of the data, clarifying the more in-depth analysis in the article itself.

Notes and tips are also a great way to include little elements inside an article to offer even more for readers. Perhaps a writer came across a really interesting trivia fact about a movie that’s relevant to a list they’re writing. Including that as a standalone note gives readers something fun they didn’t expect. The same goes for tips, which come in especially handy for gaming how-to lists. All of those are just a few examples of the added value ScreenRant includes in our lists to make the reading experience more engaging and informative.

We Update The Lists Themselves So They’re Always Up-To-Date

At ScreenRant, our ranking lists are dynamic. We regularly update high-performing lists to ensure they remain accurate and reflective of the current conversation.

Our diligence in making sure we’re on top of the latest trends doesn’t just stop at thinking about how we frame and write new lists, but also ensuring that our old lists are kept current. A list published in 2022 may be revised in 2025 with new entries, revised rankings, or updated commentary, depending on what’s changed in the franchise—or in the broader pop culture zeitgeist. That update may be as simple as swapping outdated backlinks for more current ones and ensuring that all the added content value is relevant. Or it may require a brand-new update to maintain its relevance and accuracy. For example, our list mentioned above ranking every Stephen King novel gets updated every time he releases a new book – and it doesn’t matter that he continuously releases books. It gets updated every time, because that’s what readers are looking for. It’s part of our best practices as editors to keep an eye out for any list that is outdated or could benefit from a fresh polish.

ScreenRant Also Regularly Updates Its List Strategy To Stay On Top Of Current Trends

Of course, our best practices don’t matter if we don’t regularly review them and make sure they’re as up-to-date as possible, which is exactly why ScreenRant consistently updates our list strategy.

This includes everything from topic performance reviews to overhauling the format of our lists if needed. As with everything we do, we use data to determine if and when we need to make changes to how we write and structure lists.

While some topics are truly evergreen, others that were once considered evergreen may no longer be viable topics that people are interested in. An interconnected TV universe of multiple TV shows that runs for well over a decade may be extremely relevant in the years the shows air, and perhaps even for a few years after. But if it doesn’t have true staying power – that is, if people were only interested in it when new episodes were being produced – eventually, your readership will move on to other, newer shows to engage their interest. It’s likely time to retire that topic, and the data will show it.

Beyond updating what we write about, we also update how we write about it and present it. For example, when we found that more personal, first-person angles tended to get higher engagement and reader responses, we opened up our policy on headline angles to reflect a more flexible approach to framing list headlines. Doing so served what was best for the reader and the target audience rather than necessitating our writers and editors to stick to a strict headline format simply because that’s how we’d always done it.

Likewise, we discovered that, despite conventional wisdom, our readers were more than willing to read longer lists of over 1,000 words - in some cases, much longer. The modern trend is to go ever shorter, with sites assuming that in our social media era, people have shorter attention spans and that any content created or articles written should be as brief and snappy as possible to keep their attention.

That’s simply not true, and our data showed it. If a list is well-written and engaging, people will read it. What’s more, they prefer it, wanting the full picture when it comes to lists that require a little more background context for each entry. It’s especially true of rankings, as well. Our audience really appreciates it when our writers of a ranking show their work, so to speak, laying out a solid and thoughtful case for why each entry is included and why it ended up where it did in the ranking.

Threads & Comments Create Even More Fun Engagement & Debate

Lastly, we’d be remiss not to take advantage of the nature of lists as conversation starters. More than any other format, a good list sparks debate and discussion. It sparks comments and engagement among our readers, not just with the writer, but between each other. Movie and TV lovers have strong opinions, and they love to share them. The truth is, people will just as often read a list simply to see if the writer agrees with them as to see if they agree with the writer.

Read More Threads:

Are you still upset about Henry Cavill's The Witcher recast?

I'm convinced Tom Holland's Spider-Man will be in Avengers: Doomsday now that it was delayed.

That’s why we look at threads and comments as an incredible opportunity for even more engagement after our readers finish reading a list. While we request that commenters follow community guidelines for behavior, we love to see a good debate that remains respectful to the writer and other commenters. Often, a reader will leave a comment that generates a whole new discussion, all of which proves the point that readers care about lists, deeply.

Our job is to inform and entertain, providing the pop culture enthusiasts who read our articles with reasons to keep coming back. We’re building a community at ScreenRant, and lists are a big part of building it. That’s why we’ll keep writing lists at ScreenRant as long as readers keep reading them.