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Backstories Help You Write 3 Dimensional Characters
by Mervyn Love
A character’s backstory is important whether you are writing a short story or a novel. With a short story it can be less in-depth than for a longer work, but it will raise your readers interest when you present them with a character they can believe in. In fact, that is the secret really: If YOU believe in the character, the chances are your readers will as well – and vice versa.
Write to Excite, Delight and Entice
by Suzi Elton
When you do your business writing, consider incorporating the principle of Excite, Delight and Entice. What this means is that you emotionalize your writing in such way that your readers cannot only picture themselves living a more satisfactory life, but can feel the excitement and satisfaction they would have. This produces a strong pull to explore working with you. In effect, they say to themselves, “If s/he knows enough about what I want to write like this – like they know me and my problems – I REALLY want to talk to them about what they do.”
Reading Evolution: My 2010 Reading List
The most gifted item this past year? The Amazon Kindle.
Years ago, I bought a Palm Tungsten C, which at the time was on the forefront of the technology frontier. It was a fantastic little device that could connect to the internet, manage a calendar, play videos, listen to music, play video games, and had more than 10,000 other little applications that programmers made for it. It could also do one other thing: read ebooks. This was long before the PDA smartphone really got going, when netbooks were just a dream.
Creative Writers- Can You Write Good Transition Sentences?
Author: Deborah Owen
Creative writers and journalists sometimes have the problem of smoothly transitioning from one paragraph to the other, especially when they are changing the subject. This is a learned skill that is not hard to master. By the time you read this article, you will fully understand the trick to it.
When we writers hop from one topic to another without a transition sentence, we “jar” our readers. While sentence transitions may be the last line in a paragraph, they are more commonly used as the first line in a new paragraph. They are like a bridge, connecting one idea to another.
The Classics 101: The Crossman Ten
Classics. I have been talking a lot about classics recently. Classic movies. Classic World Series. Classic bands and singers. And classic books.
As I went through college, I always imagined I would end up being a high school English teacher. Maybe even a college professor. And one of my main duties would be picking a reading list for my students. As I thought about it, my temptation was to choose books they would enjoy reading.
Bruce Golden
When I first started editing the Opinion Guy, I came across the writing of Bruce Golden. His short stories always fascinated me with their strange and intuitive perspectives. His ideas were good and he was creative in the way he got them onto paper. His books are just as good. I consider him a thinking [...]
Submission Tips From an Editor
Of all the articles I have written for writers, this one is probably the one I wish they would take to heart the most. What follows are simple, seemingly common sense words of advice coming from an editor who has read thousands of submissions. However, everyday it seems I get stories or submissions that would benefit from this advice.
Editors are mostly hardworking folks who spend much of their time pouring over the written word of fledgling writers. It is not a glorious job; the writers get all the credit, the fame, and the wealth when things go well. And when things don’t, well editors get all the blame and bad eyesight.
A Writer’s Gameplan: Developing Plot That Kills
When I talk to writing students they say that merging a good character with an interesting plot is one of the hardest parts of writing. I agree. A good character is only really as good as the situations he is written into, the experiences he gets to have, the conflicts he struggles with, and the [...]
