writer

The Dynamics of Writing an Article: And How it Applies to Today

The art of writing articles has changed a bit due to the internet explosion. Yes, it still works the same way in many of the traditional venues. But, articles have changed mainly because of article submission sites and blogs.

Many people in the internet world consider blogs to be articles and in some ways they are. Blogs started as bits of information a writer intended to get across in an informal setting. Now, they are actually relied upon by many readers. If you Google a topic, you will find a hundred blogs compared to one authoritative site. And blogs have become very authoritative of themselves.

But, article submission sites such as EzineArticles and AssociatedContent have made it easy for anyone to write an article and get it published. I honestly love the internet and many of its venues for giving everyone the same leverage. There are things that need to be said and it’s critical that they get said at the right time. The internet offers everyone an instant voice for anyone who is willing to listen and I love that.

But, some art gets lost in the process. The years of college a journalist goes through and all the discipline that a writer suffers is thrown out of the window when just anyone can step up to the plate. People forget or were never taught the basics of article writing. [Read more…] about The Dynamics of Writing an Article: And How it Applies to Today

Generating Interesting Articles and Titles – Part Two

Delving into parts we should not have to reach….colon cleansing made “interesting”

My previous post provided some generic formulae widely used for generating articles and titles that readers are attracted to. As a professional writer, you are not always in a position to pick and choose your assignments and you may be faced with producing content on the most unsavoury of topics. In this instance, I recently had to deal with an assignment on colon cleansing, and though the memory still haunts me, the writing show must nevertheless go on.

Previously, I dealt with “How to..” Lists and quoted a “Study” as a way of generating titles and articles. I will finish this off here, with three more general formula techniques.

Mistakes That Ruin Your Writing Credibility

picture of an erazer

The following are the most common mistakes that people make when writing for fiction, a manuscript or looking to promote a book title.

Poor grammar, spelling, typos and usage

One of the basic aspects of writing is being grammatically correct, without making silly spelling mistakes. The single most common error that people make is the usage of the passive voice. In passive voice, nothing is ever anyone’s fault, because people do not do things. Things happen to people. “Bobby ate the pizza” is active. “The pizza was eaten” is passive. Note that the action of food and the food is more important than the character in the passive voice. When writers are unsure of themselves they often drop into the passive voice. Along with this, people often make mistakes in the usage of tenses. Immature writers will begin stories in whatever tense they want, and not maintain logic in their use of tenses.

Generating Interesting Articles and Titles – Part One

Colon Cleansing is not a pleasant subject but……..

As a writer for hire, you may have some choice over your subject matter, but realistically you’ll take any work that pays what you are looking for. It’s a stark choice between paying the bills or not and like someone said, “I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor and of the two, being rich is better!”

So you have an assignment to deliver articles on a mundane or less than interesting subject and now you have to come up with content that will attract readers and promote your client’s objectives for creating the project. This is where you can start employing some generic approaches for developing articles that can be adapted for pretty much any subject. Looking through these examples, you will probably start recognising the general formulae for many of the articles and content that you come across on the web.

Here’s our subject then – colon cleansing – this is a real project I worked on recently and frankly, it’s a pretty disgusting and distasteful topic, which I knew almost absolutely nothing about when I was given the assignment. Now, how do we go about generating article ideas for flushing out your insides?

What Not To Do When Writing For Children

Yesterday I was going through a book written for children. Interesting, but not captivating enough. Writers make the mistake of underestimating the quality of work when it comes to writing for children. That doesn’t make sense, as right from the beginning children should be accustomed to reading quality writing. Hence, I would like to enumerate 7 points on what not to do when it comes to writing for children. If you’re interested in writing for teenagers then see my previous post on writing for teens.

Never underestimate children’s capacity and use of kiddish language

Remember that you are writing for children who are often more shrewd and clever than what you were as a kid. After all, the internet, television and computers have widened the range of information and knowledge that is available to them. Nowadays, even children expect quality and substance when they read.

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.
[Read more…] about Characterisation And Its Uses