Good Writing
February 25, 2007
Good writing is like sex. Two people are involved ? the writer and the reader. Bad sex usually satisfies only one person, most preferably, the writer ? the person who leads. Good sex not only satisfies both people, it pleasures them. So, like sex, writing must have all vital points that reach unto this pleasure ? movement, foreplay, sensitivity, rhythm and climax. When a writer carefully and logically includes all these aspects, the reader is pleasured, satiated and gratified, but when a writer ignores them, the reader feels that the writer is impotent and he abandons him after that one night. Good writing is about making a person desire to read.
It is essential to understand that those writers who write for themselves may possibly be never published. Sometimes, the writing that is hard-worked looks beautiful, mildly interesting but never exact. An ideal reader looks for few details in the entire 60,000 word novel or the 2000 word piece, and that is story and how well it is managed without afflicting it.
Weaving Your Personal Statement Together
February 25, 2007
1. SECRETS TO SUCCESS
2. MAKING A POWERFUL FIRST IMPRESSION
3. AVOID AMBIGUITY
4. MAKING A PROFESSIONAL IMPRESSION
4. BONUS SAMPLE PERSONAL STATEMENT
The failure of the vast majority of students to get admission to their chosen university is one of the great unpublicised stories of our time.
Why do they fail?
Because they think in their terms and do not consider the reader: the admission officer.
They don’t even know they are doing it.
THAT is why they fail to gain a university place.
This article will help you craft a perfect personal statement. Everyone is special and everyone has a personal statement inside them. The main premise of this article is to inspire you. Please don’t feel daunted at the personal statement ? simply write the way you speak and you are half way there.
1. SECRETS TO SUCCESS
Your fist aim is to make sure that your personal statement gets read; start with a powerful selling point that catches the admission officer’s eye. Admission officers usually give each personal statement a quick scan before picking the best for a more thorough reading. Your personal statement must therefore clearly show the most perfunctory reader what you have to offer.
Better Copy: The Interview is the Key
February 24, 2007
Most of us spend our days persuading others to buy our service, product or idea. Here is how to create powerful marketing copy to make your job easier: INTERVIEW YOURSELF.
If you hired a writer to create the copy for you, he/she would likely start by interviewing you. He would ask every question he could think of about your subject and keep probing until he found illuminating answers. You could find a colleague to help in this endeavor. Or, if you are feisty, you can interview yourself.
Write out a series of questions about your subject. (I’ll suggest what kinds of questions below). Then ask your colleague to pose these questions to you and record your answers. Or you can write your own answers down.
The key to interviewing is to keep probing. If an answer doesn’t make sense,say so. "I understand that your clients need to create strategy at the corporate level, but I don’t understand how your software is going to help them do this." If you don’t believe an answer, say so too. Keep asking for further and better particulars until you get answers that interest you and which you believe in.
Ten Quick Tips for Inexperienced Writers
February 24, 2007
One of the biggest problems that inexperienced writers have is simply knowing how to get started. If you’ve unsure of your writing skills, then here are some quick tips to help you get started.
1. Get yourself a thesaurus-or better yet, two of them. These can be tremendously helpful tools when you’re struggling to find the right word. A thesaurus is no substitute for a solid vocabulary, but it is still helpful in a pinch.
2. Avoid using the same word too frequently. This can make one’s work sound repetitive. Again, a good thesaurus can be helpful in this regard.
3. Keep your sentences fairly short, since longer sentences can sound unwieldy. I’ve found that 17 words or fewer is a good guideline. Do remember that this is just a guideline, though.
4. Even as you keep the sentences short, make sure that they flow together well. Sometimes, unskilled writers will simply chop longer sentences up into shorter segments that don’t blend together smoothly. If in doubt, try rephrasing the sentences or adding the proper connective phrases (e.g. "then," "so," "as a result").
Article Writing: Breaking Writers Block
February 24, 2007
It is amazing to see how much we all still dread writing; even a simple letter or memo! When we start talking about an Essay or an Article for publication, it gets much worse. As human beings, we are prone to self doubt, the good news however is; that there is a cure for that. The cure lies in the old adage: “Practice makes Perfect” Once, you can get past the writing of your first article, it gets easier onwards.
This article as the title suggest is about breaking writer’s block. ‘Writer’s block’ is used to describe the situation in which anyone can not seem to get themselves to write an essay of any nature. More importantly, it considers the average Internet marketer with limited funds for any kind of campaign. We all know that if you have the funds, you can hire someone to write your articles for publication by other ezines or article directories. However, if you do have the funds why bother to promote your website with article writing at all? Especially, when availability of funds allows you to run many other campaigns like Pay Per Clicks (PPCs) or Traffic Exchange (TE) campaigns to name a few. Note that the turn around time for the alternative campaigns are much less than that of an article publication particularly when there is a third party involved.
A Few Keys to Writing Effective Dialogue
February 23, 2007
Every writer expends a great deal of creative energy developing a story line and limning well-balanced prose with evocative sentences. That’s what writing is all about, after all. But fiction writers have an additional aspect to creation–effective dialogue. Very few stories, novellas or novels are without dialogue, and for some writers, this can be a stumbling block.
Listen to How People Talk
If you listen carefully to how people speak, you’ll notice that people tend to use shorter sentences in times of high emotion: anger, surprise, awe. “I can’t take this! Get out!” versus “I find this situation intolerable. I want you to leave right now.” They ramble a bit when they’re nervous or confused. “I know this isn’t what you wanted, but I wasn’t sure which way to make the diagram fit best on the page so I brought both copies with me. I hope you don’t mind.” Young children tend to get pronouns confused or leave out articles: “Me go to store with Gramma.” You’ll begin to recognize how different personalities have different word usage and diction. All of these observations can be incorporated in the dialogue you write.
Dont Forget That Manual!
February 23, 2007
No user manual? Surely you jest!
It may seem comical, but it’s a surprisingly common situation. I’ve encountered many companies that don’t provide any user manuals with their products. If they do, their manuals are often horribly incoherent, or else years out of date. It shouldn’t happen, but it happens all the time.
Now, this problem is less common when buying off-the-shelf software or consumer electronics. That’s because these products typically come from large corporations that pay attention to such details. Among smaller engineering firms though, this is a frequent occurrence. In fact, I’d estimate that about half of the small engineering companies that I’ve encountered are guilty of this offense.
I remember how one engineer told me why his company didn’t provide any user manuals with their products. In hushed tones, he said, "It’s because we don’t make any money by writing manuals. It’s not a money-making venture, so our management doesn’t want to waste time on this." An annoyed expression crept into his face, then he leaned closer and said, "We have lost so many customers because we don’t have decent documentation. Talk about being penny-wise, pound-foolish!"
Market Your Ezine Properly, So You Grab Every Visitor To Your Website
February 23, 2007
When marketing ezines, most people use sign-up forms or pop-up forms on a current website. This may not be new to most people, but here’s another spin on it. In addition to your pop-up or basic sign-up form on your site, why not add a page to your site, with a link on your home page, that does nothing but promote your ezine.
You see, many people pass up your subscription form, because they are afraid of SPAM, or they don’t know enough about your ezine. Will it interest them? Or, will it just bombard them with more advertising?
A separate page can explain exactly what the ezine does, promote articles that you have in it, even give a sample issue, so prospects can see what they are getting. Be sure to have several subscription forms on this page between sections of your text, so people have plenty of opportunity to subscribe. Also, be sure that visitors are linked back to your home page, once they’ve subscribed, so they get back to looking at your product.
Any good autoresponder will have this feature, which is crucial, because although you desperately want people signing up for your ezine, you also want them to read your sales letter and, hopefully, buy your product.
Medium and the Message
February 22, 2007
A debate is raging in e-publishing circles: should content be encrypted and protected (the Barnes and Noble or Digital goods model) - or should it be distributed freely and thus serve as a form of viral marketing (Seth Godin’s “ideavirus”)? Publishers fear that freely distributed and cost-free “cracked” e-books will cannibalize print books to oblivion.
The more paranoid point at the music industry. It failed to co-opt the emerging peer-to-peer platforms (Napster) and to offer a viable digital assets management system with an equitable sharing of royalties. The results? A protracted legal battle and piracy run amok. “Publishers” - goes this creed - “are positioned to incorporate encryption and protection measures at the very inception of the digital publishing industry. They ought to learn the lesson.”
But this view ignores a vital difference between sound and text. In music, what matter are the song or the musical piece. The medium (or carrier, or packing) is marginal and interchangeable. A CD, an audio cassette, or an MP3 player are all fine, as far as the consumer is concerned. The listener bases his or her purchasing decisions on sound quality and the faithfulness of reproduction of the listening experience (for instance, in a concert hall). This is a very narrow, rational, measurable and quantifiable criterion.
Five Keys To Leaner and Meaner Copywriting
February 22, 2007
Grab ‘em and don’t lose ‘em. Every marketer knows that one. Human beings have very short attention spans, so you can’t afford to waste your prospect’s time - give them the good stuff and then let them go as soon as you can. Writing effective marketing material is all about writing crisply with just a handful of words.
Clean writing isn’t an accident, but is instead the result of the careful application of certain principles and tools. Try these five techniques for crafting leaner, meaner, more effective business copy:
Avoid modifiers. Modifiers change the meaning of other words; the most common of these are adverbs and adjectives (words that describe verbs and nouns, respectively). They’re used when the writer feels that the noun or verb needs a little something extra: “the shining sun”, “run quickly”, etc. Get rid of as many modifiers as you can and choose nouns and verbs that stand on their own.
No lazy words. Every word should be doing real work, conveying necessary information and supporting other parts of the piece. Think of your sentences as support beams and rafters in a building, and analyze the piece word-by-word: are there any nails sticking out of boards? Anything that’s there purely for show? Anything that doesn’t strengthen your writing weakens it. Strip your copy down to its most essential parts, and throw out the words that are sleeping on the job.
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