 Your new post is loading...
Your new post is loading...
It is almost upon us! Yes, your favorite annual torture device writing festival is nearly upon us, where thousands of intrepid novelists will set aside November cheer in favor of tearing up their laptops in an effort to write a novel in just one month. It's called NaNoWriMo, and it's quite something. Are you ready? You sure? Here are some links that may help. First off, all of my best tips are written up all nice and polished-like in my guide to writing a novel, otherwise known as How to Write a Novel: 47 Rules for Writing a Stupendously Awesome Novel You Will Love Forever. (That link is to Amazon but it's available in All The Usual Places online.) If you prefer your advice in the free form (as in, it doesn't cost anything), here are some links to get you started:...
One of the reasons writing a great novel is so challenging is that there is no obvious starting place. Is it a character? A premise? A theme? A single sentence that won’t get out of your head?
While that argument continues to rage, what remains in less dispute is this: there are a set of principles and essential elements that, before the story works, you need to get right. With that in mind, this series introduces – reintroduces, actually, since these are the foundation of this body of work, and my three writing books – ten of those essential elements.
Today’s post defines and explores the one that is in the running for that Square One focus….
The key to an emotionally engaging headline? Context Words: a group of 1,072 words in the English language that can increase a person’s interest and attention in a specific message.
Context Words were uncovered through EEG testing and something called the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient, a way to measure the correlation between two variables. In this case, we were looking to understand the relationship between word choice and the brain’s emotional response.
We’ve split the Context Words into four categories: insight words, time words, space words and motion words.Insight words provide more detail, i.e. closure, admit, inform, think. Time words refer to a point in time, i.e. after, fast, long, prior. Motion and space words help us understand where something is happening, i.e. appear, replace, arrive, enter....
When you can send a prospect a well-crafted article that addresses his exact question, you've got a powerful tool. You'll get extra points if it's published in a major news source in your industry or has high engagement via social media.
So what is the best way to actually get pen to paper (or fingers to keys) and start laying out some prose? Given my seventh-grade love for alliteration, here are the five steps I use when trying to bring out my inner Hemingway: Environment, Exploration, Extraction, Expansion, and Editing....
...Below, we’ve excerpted twenty good reads he recommends for budding writers. These are books, King writes, that directly inspired him: “In some way or other, I suspect each book in the list had an influence on the books I wrote.”
To the writer, he says, “a good many of these might show you some new ways of doing your work.” And for the reader? “They’re apt to entertain you. They certainly entertained me.”..
Thriller writer Alex Marwood shares some of the techniques that have helped her become a best seller.“Writing is a profession, not a hobby. To succeed, you have to prioritise your work over other things. That’s really difficult before you’ve been published – but writing, and writing well, takes so much time and frustration, you have to have the guts to stick it out.”...
We weren’t all born to love verbs and spend hours toiling lovingly over word order and yet as small business owners and marketers, one of the most important hats that we necessarily wear is “writer”.
If you don’t consider yourself a writer, aren’t entirely comfortable with the writing process and can’t outsource to a professional, that doesn’t mean you’re dead in the water. Nor does it mean you should shrug and put out subpar content because, “Hey, I’m not a writer. That’s as good as it gets.”
Try one or more of these techniques the next time you put pencil to paper – or fingers to keyboard – for writing that has a whole lot more marketing punch....
|
The Challenge is Simple. Day One: 3,000 words. And then each day after that add 1,000 words to the amount needed. Seven days, if my math is right, I will have a 42,000 word novel. 3,000… 4,000… 5,000… 6,000… 7,000… 8,000… 9,000 words. 7 Days. Day Seven (9,000 word day) Got the book done!!!! The goal today was at 9,000 words and needed to be the focus of my day because I had no idea how many words I would actually need to end this book. I had 3,000 words in the bank, so that helped the worry some....
1) Stephen KingIf you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut.
2) Suzanne CollinsAll the writing elements are the same. You need to tell a good story… You’ve got good characters… People think there’s some dramatic difference between writing ‘Little Bear’ and the ‘Hunger Games,’ and as a writer, for me, there isn’t.
3) George OrwellFor a creative writer possession of the ‘truth’ is less important than emotional sincerity....
Your headline is the first contact with your content, and must grab your target audiences’ attention. At this point you have no control – the reader does. They either click the link to your content or they don’t. The job of the content creator is to make sure that they choose the first option, and read and share your carefully crafted content.
How much time do you spend coming up with a killer title? Reading stats like this one by Copyblogger should make you sit up and take notice.“
On average 8 out of 10 people will read your headline but only 2 out of ten will read the rest of your content.”....
Since finding a way into your readers’ hearts and minds is your goal, you can exhaust your brain trying to find that perfect connection. As a result, instead of producing the perfect piece of content, you accomplish very little or nothing at all.Several years ago, I discovered a writing trick that helps me overcome these types of perfectionism problems.It’s called free writing....
When we asked you to nominate your favorite writing blog as one of the top 10 blogs for writers, we got over 1,100 nominations! Wonderful to see how passionate readers are about their favorite writing blog.
It’s great to see some very interesting new blogs amongst the winners! Of note is that quite a few blogs in the top 10 are associated with author platforms. Make sure you visit all the top 10 blogs to get to know the new crop of top writing blogs....
There are two kinds of people: Those who think they can write, and those who think they can’t. And, very often, both are wrong. The truth is, most of us fall somewhere in the middle. We are all capable of producing good writing....
Words matter. Your words (what you say) and style (how you say it) are your most cherished (and undervalued) assets.
Yet, so often, they are overlooked. Think of this way: If a visitor came to your website without its branding in place (logo, tagline, and so on), would he or she recognize it as yours? Are you telling your story there from your unique perspective, with a voice and style that’s clearly all you?
Here, in no particular order, is what I’ve learned about the necessary qualities of good writing (or content, in our digital vernacular), based on my own 25 years’ working as a writer and editor… and even longer career as a reader....
|
![How To Write Blog Headlines People Will Actually Click On [Report] | Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight | Scoop.it](https://img.scoop.it/jkp-bpBmT9Ah-po9NzXTJDl72eJkfbmt4t8yenImKBVvK0kTmF0xjctABnaLJIm9)
Ready for the annual novel writing competition - NaNoWriMo? Tips and tactics from Nathan Branford.