Tips and Techniques

Description

Don't keep all that hard won writing experience to yourself! Share! Or "borrow" from somewhere else if you have to.

Dissertation Analysis

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How to Customize Your Essay to Your Purpose?

Submitted by kellykevin on Tue, 09/27/2016 - 12:18am

Writing is a trick and most challenging task. The first step before starting your essay is that you should know who your audience is. To which section of the society you want to deliver your thoughts, or who are the people whom you want to influence or impress through your writing. This understanding is very essential because this will help you in selecting the tone, the language and the information for your essay, so that it grabs the attention of your targeted audience.

Mostly the essays which are written by various writers are expository, descriptive, argumentative or narrative. Depending on the writer's reason behind writing the essay, it can be entertaining, informative or persuasive in nature. Let’s understand this with an example; suppose you are writing an essay on why young children should not be allowed to use Facebook, then your essay will be of both informative and persuasive nature. You will first have to inform the readers about the various issues which occur with younger generation due to the use of Facebook, and then you need to persuade them by explaining your opinion. If you have any confusion with your writing then seek help from the custom essay writing service, you can get outstanding help from the professional writers here.

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One Space or Two

Submitted by camidon on Thu, 01/29/2009 - 9:44am

Our web site states:

"Text should be on one side of the paper only. On word processors, left justify text. Double-space between lines of text. Indent paragraphs, but do not leave an extra space between them. Leave two spaces (not one) between sentences. Do not use italics; Underline text that should be italicized. Use two hyphens (--) to represent a dash, and space out ellipses ( . . . not ...)."

This is, by all means, the old publishing industry standard (as much as one has ever existed). However, this standard was really set before the advent of the computer word processing rennaissance. As the old publishers and editors die or retire, a new younger generation is replacing them.

How much of this has changed? I ask because SCBWI-MI (The Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, Michigan chapter) has had multiple discussions on just one of these "standards": Do you put one space or two spaces between sentences? The old "standard" and our web site states "two spaces (not one) between sentences. Michigan members of SCBWI adamantly assert one space (not two) is correct.

Admittedly, I am no longer as aware of the speculative fiction markets and standards as I once was, having recently snuggled into the children's market. However, I doubt that the two markets really have different standards.

Does anyone have any thoughts or recent editor input from the speculative market side of things on this "space" issue?

It seems like a simple $*@$! question. One space or two? One lump or two? I feel that I've invited you all over for aftenoon tea.

In my view, you always have to check with the agent/editor/magazine/publishing house first. If they have a preference, follow it. If they don't, use the standard.

Mary Sue

Submitted by DaveK on Thu, 05/24/2007 - 1:51pm

Here's a term--Mary Sue--that I hadn't heard of and a link to a test to see if your character is a Mary Sue.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Sue

http://www.ponylandpress.com/ms-test.html

The test includes some questions about a character that I hadn't even thought of (no big surprise to Chris). Anyway it's fun and could be revealing. The one character I passed through this scored a 1 but it probably should be higher.

The Snowflake Spreadsheet

Submitted by DaveK on Tue, 02/06/2007 - 4:32pm

Two years ago I did an extensive outline for Nanowrimo. This last time I did a poor one. In my attempt to cleanup what I wrote this last time I decided to start with the Snowflake Process. http://www.rsingermanson.com/html/the_snowflake.html

I have taken the steps of the snowflake process and put each step (approximately) into its own sheet. I am using this to help with my current project and as I go through each step I tune the sheet. I'm at step four now.

If you are interested drop me a note and I can send you what I have done so far. I welcome any feedback but working on the sheet takes a lower priority than writing.

Dave K

Brainstorming and character worksheets

Submitted by DaveK on Thu, 09/07/2006 - 1:23pm

I found these two pdf worksheets while browsing the web. I think they came from the Liberty Hall site - http://www.libertyhallwriters.org/ .

Dave K

P.S.

The brainstorm sheet is for their flash writing challenges. You get an idea (their trigger) and then 90 minutes to write 1000 (?) words. But it should be useful for any short story. In my opinion the character profile is needed for longer stories or for reoccuring characters in shorts. But then I'm not much into character development.

Online writing book

Submitted by DaveK on Thu, 09/07/2006 - 1:13pm

Holly Lisle - http://www.hollylisle.com/ has a copy of her book _Mugging the Muse_ available online at http://www.envisionsoftware.biz/hollylisle/muse2-new.pdf .

It is in pdf format and 942 Kbytes. It's 200 pages long and a reasonable way to procrastinate while still pretending that you are writing. In addition, her site contains a lot of information on writing as a business. Some of the info is in the book and some is new.

Dave K

Prologues and other links

Submitted by DaveK on Thu, 08/24/2006 - 6:49pm

Chris and Jana submitted some work that included a prologue. I jumped on them a bit. (Of course you can be sure that my next submission will include a prologue.) But I did some research and found the following link which talks about prologues.

http://www.writing-world.com/fiction/prologue.shtml

This article describes four reasons for a prologue which are: "future protagonist", "past protagonist", different POV, and background.

I also found the folowing which I found interesting:

An agents home page:

http://www.nelsonagency.com/contactus.html

A blog from a F&SF editor:

http://www.tuginternet.com/jja/journal/

A list of the top ten writing and publishing blogs:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/52495/top_ten_blogs_about_writ…

And two writers home pages:

http://www.dansimmons.com/index.html

http://www.tarakharper.com/home.htm

So quit writing and waste time on the internet. What kind of writer are you?

Spell checking SF character names

Submitted by DaveK on Thu, 08/24/2006 - 6:36pm

OK, I started a story that uses character names that are your typical SF names--not found in any dictionary. I got tired of my word processor (Open Office) underlining in red all those names. But if I turn off checking then if (actually when) I typo a name I'll never know. So I hunted around and figured out how to create my own dictionaries. In Tools -> Options -> Language Settings -> Writing Aids you can create your own dictionary. I chose to create one with a similar title to the story. Now when I create a new character I add his/her/its name to that dictionary and I can be sure that every time I use that name it is correct.

The one downside is that the dictionaries are constant across all files so each story needs its own list of names or terms and you have to change which dictionaries are in use manually for each story. But now I won't have to check each underlined Kaanal to be sure that I didn't spell it Kaanla in one spot.

This is for Open Office but I'm sure MS office has the same capability. Maybe some one can reply with the method needed in their favorite editor.

Visual Novel

Submitted by DaveK on Mon, 07/24/2006 - 1:49pm

To be brief, Blade Engine at http://www.bladeengine.com/ has released their game engine for free for use in visual novels.

It is probably best if you look at their web site for more information as to what a visual novel is. In short it is a computer game with very little input from the player/reader.

I wonder if this might not be the future of novels. Once everyone has a cell phone with a reasonable display and memory why not simply sell licenses to a book or movie and the cell phone downloads the next chapter as needed.

There are other game engines available. Torque from gragegames.com, blender, just google game engines for a big list. Even flash from macromedia could be used. (If you are interested in flash check out koolmoves.com.)

Dave K