Advice for Authors and Writers

Characterisation And Its Uses

What is a character?

The writer uses many ways to convey the nature of a character. It’s quite obvious he is unable to attach a photo of his character to a book or manuscript. However, there are ways in which a character can be described and written about that enables readers to visualize the character and create an impression of that character’s behavior. Firstly, when the character is physically described, the writer wants the reader to create a faint picture of the character in their mind.

As an example, I have taken a brief excerpt from ‘Angels and Demons’ by Dan Brown. (Read more here.)

Although not overtly handsome in a classical sense, the forty-year-old Langdon had what his female colleagues referred to as an erudite appeal-wisps of gray in his thick brown hair, probing blue eyes, an arrestingly deep voice, and the strong, carefree smile of a collegiate athlete. A varsity diver in prep school and college, Langdon still had the body of a swimmer. A toned, six foot physique that he vigilantly maintained with fifty laps a day in the university pool.

While reading the passage above, the reader imagines that Langdon has an athletic body, toned and well looked after. Now, that was easy, was it not? It didn’t need a model to explain the way he looked and it didn’t need a painting or sketch that would visualize him. We can also identify that he trains quite hard to maintain his athletic look.
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Writing: A Career Scope

Writing as a career has no boundaries. An affinity for writing is something those who wish to begin their career as a writer should have. Other necessary traits include the ability to express ideas clearly in writing, self motivation, creativity and curiosity to know more and write more.

To begin with, editors and authors are generally first choice when it comes to choosing a career, but writers with a technical background can also specialize as a technical writer. A technical writer develops technical materials, such as equipment manuals or operating and maintenance instructions. Most technical writers work with engineers or other techie professionals on technical subject matters to prepare written interpretations for general readership.

A creative writer, a poet, a lyricist, a novelist and a screenwriter, create original work—such as prose, poems, plays and song lyrics; most of these are either for performance or for publication.

As a writer of non-fiction, you will have to put a lot of hard work into research of the specific topic that you have been given to write about. Information has to be gathered through the internet, newspapers, magazines and other print media, personal observation, interviews and most importantly the library.
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Going Off At a Tangent

Twisting ideas to promote your client

By now, if you have been reading my posts, you will have gathered that I am not a so-called “creative writer”. I do not produce literature. I have no burning desire to write a novel, unless it’s guaranteed to be a bestseller ,which will keep me in the style to which I sincerely wish to become accustomed. I am a commercial animal, I write for pay and I look at writing as a means to earn my living and to form the bedrock of a business I am building.

That said, it does not mean that I am not imaginative nor creative with the ideas that flow and am used to delivering work products for my clients. It certainly does not follow that I am in any way less passionate about what I am doing, while I also have a fierce pride in my work, and delivering the very best I can provide for clients. Some of my work is “mindless pap” as I often say to enquiring friends and family and in my honest opinion it is just that – advertising and promotional rubbish. Nevertheless, it is good advertising rubbish and I can say that because it performs the task that my clients wish to achieve and I get paid for producing it.

Today, my work for the most part is not “mindless pap” as my clients and the projects have become more interesting. Writing assignments has started to exercise my mind and imagination to a greater extent, than figuring out how to get 800 words on a paper dealing with Japanese “Geta” shoes, or producing a dumbed down series of articles on alternatives to Viagra. Even when you are confronted with a topic that readily lends itself to a simple churning out of some more advertising rubbish you can exercise your imagination and tackle the subject from a different perspective. I firmly believe that the confidence I have acquired in two years of commercial writing has encouraged me to take alternative approaches to handling a client topic.

Earlier this week I had to write a series of blog posts for a site called Your Health Reporter which promotes alternative therapies, amongst which is the use of a slimming pill derived from a cactus in the Kalahari Desert, Hoodia Gordonii. Your Health Reporter, is a relatively new client for me and initially I started off with the “Lose the keg and get a 6 pack” style of posts for the slimming and fitness products that are being promoted. Last week I altered the style and that produced some incredible results.

Online Writing Showcases

Squidoo & Zimbio

There are so many writing resources online that you can’t shake a stick at them all. When it comes to getting yourself noticed there are some online tools that are invaluable but they will take some time and effort for you to acquaint yourself. There are two sites that I’m going to deal with in this post – Zimbio and Squidoo. I use both of these sites frequently to promote articles and clients because they deliver traffic to the sites and blogs my writing is promoting in turn. Better still, both of these sites are completely free, indeed with Squidoo there is the opportunity to actually make passive revenue from the site.

Zimbio provides an article and wiki showcase where you can post up an article, edit the presentation to include headers and footers with hyperlinks to other web pages, such as your client web landing page or blog post. Zimbio provides a platform for submitting articles and blog posts, which are then blended in with “real” journalism and media while allowing for syndication of your work. Here you will find news and media output from recognised writers, TV, newspapers and magazines running alongside bloggers, active writers and non-professional sources, while readers are able to rate content and help good work gain wider exposure.
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The Loneliness of a Long Distance Writer

Are words best written alone?

I’m pretty sure that my title is not an original one. Writing requires concentration and effort especially if like me, writing has been something to do as part of a job rather than something performed for pleasure. The truth is that as a professional writer, and by that I mean I write for a living, my working life is spent alone with no colleagues to bounce ideas around and joke with at the coffee machine. I never get to see my clients as they are dotted around the world as far afield as North America, the Far East and Australasia, so email and Skype are the communication tools.

Does any of this matter with your writing?

Unless you are a hermit by nature, the straight answer is “Yes” it does matter.

The First Draft: Writing With Precision And Passion!

Often, potentially brilliant pieces of writing are discarded because they seem amateurish and lack a ‘final polish’. We often end up spending very little time minute details, as silly mistakes can make even an amateur’s work look like one written by an expert, so long as it is edited correctly. Do not let your manuscript be an example of sloppy work, deep down you know that there is always room for improvement, even when you think you have given it your best shot.

Free your work from errors, even if you feel that you should leave your work, you might not notice that blatant mistake on page 54. Typing errors and bad sentence construction can serve as a source of humor to your editor, but it will never make them accept your work. I am sure it is more important to you to be accepted rather than to make people laugh! Hence, make sure your work is free from spelling and grammatical errors. The readability of your work will diminish if your writing is laden with them.
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