A few weeks ago, I wrote about the importance of having a book cover that entices the reader to pick up your book or in the digital age, click on the link for your book. Now that the cover has done...
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A recent Craigslist job posting invites readers to apply to write twenty or more 1,000-word online-marketing articles per week. The pay rate? Twenty dollars per article to start, thirty dollars each after the first ten articles, and forty or fifty dollars apiece after a couple of weeks.
Steve Tuffill's insight:
Everyone is trying to make an easy buck. But this work should be carefully considered. The work is definitely a volume stream rather than a quality stream requiring thought and care. People attracted to this kind of work are desperate and probably unable to find quality decent-paying work anywhere. So the work will inevitably end up as being substandard because of the incredible volume being requested. Delete the scoop?
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Everyone loves a success story, especially when it results from years of hard work and the protagonist has struggled from the depths of despair. This story type is so beloved, that it is Charles Booker's second plot type of seven: Rags to Riches.
Steve Tuffill's insight:
Good stuff if you are ever lost for a plot...? Delete the scoop?
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Efforts to make your writing more concise are admirable, but although some words and phrases won’t be missed or fewer or shorter words can be substituted, others may serve a useful distinction.
Steve Tuffill's insight:
There is something to be said for keeping your words and sentences nice and concise! Delete the scoop?
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I am a fervent believer in Wittgenstein’s maxim that “Of what we cannot speak, we must be silent.” I’m not totally sure what that means, and I’d like to explore that at some point, but the world...
Steve Tuffill's insight:
It's the words that all add up to something... No words - silence! But then silence could be viewed as the white space. What do you make of that? Delete the scoop?
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Anthropologists find that the use of "emotional" words in all sorts of books has soared and dipped across the past century, roughly mirroring each era's social and economic upheavals.
Steve Tuffill's insight:
Are we getting angrier? If the information here is to be trusted, yes...
The other side of this study measured "peaks and valleys" in periods of positive and negative moods through word usage and these have correlation that is not hard to understand at all. 1940 is an all-time low and 1910 is an all-time high that we are beginning to approach again now (although the graph cuts off before the start of the 21st Century). Delete the scoop?
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Confusion often arises as to how or whether to punctuate appositive phrases, which are descriptions that identify someone or something named in the same sentence.
Steve Tuffill's insight:
Punctuation can make or break a sentence and appositives are bound to trip you up some of the time... Delete the scoop?
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Each of the three sentences shown below contains a minor error that nevertheless muddles the intended meaning. The discussion following each example identifies the problem and sets up a resolving revision.
Steve Tuffill's insight:
Muddled, therefore as clear as mud...! Delete the scoop?
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How do you write around the outmoded usage of the pronoun he or him when a male is not necessarily the subject of the reference? Here are ten strategies -- none ideal in every circumstance -- for achieving gender neutrality.
Steve Tuffill's insight:
Illustration is copyright Gam Atelier (http://gammatelier.free.fr/page.php) It is really amazing that this is still an issue in 2013! I generally tend to use number 5 through 10 most of the time to get around this one... However, all of these workarounds are very useful! :-)
Judith van Praag's comment,
March 16, 1:51 PM
Aside from the 10 points I'd say the above cartoon allows writers to use their imagination showing the reader the shape of things, animate or not.
Judith van Praag's curator insight,
March 16, 1:56 PM
The 10 points aside, I'd say the cartoon above allows a writer to let lose imagination on how to show the reader the shap of things. For instance, talk about the folds in the fabric, or the lack thereof, suggeting the "filling" by association. And by the way, a percentage of readers is going to like the description of the loose fitting garments on the left, while the others may feel more attracted by the filled in character. Take your pick, you'll only please a few readers all of the time. Delete the scoop?
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Writers are given 8,736 hours a year to write. Making the most out of writing time requires flexibility, determination, ingenuity and grit.
Steve Tuffill's insight:
We don't have long on this earth... better make the most of it! Actually, I disagree with many of these "rules". They have come from someone who obviously does not live in today's electronic world. I couldn't write a lot of my material without the Internet, and I carry a Phillips Voice Recorder to dictate quick notes as I am going. (I rarely write or scribble notes. But it is great to have a paper and pencil in case the battery is dead. But you always carry spare batteries, right, Steve?) Often, going to lunch somewhere gives me a wealth of different characters to observe, frequently including the waiters and front desk staff! Delete the scoop?
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Why is that despite the fact that the English language has hundreds of thousands of words, we have no single-word term for many emotions and other concepts that are specifically represented in other languages and that would be beneficial for...
Steve Tuffill's insight:
The only thing I can add to this learned observation is that English is actually formed from root words in many other languages. Delete the scoop?
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If you find yourself making any of the following types of errors, general or specific, brush up on your writing with grammar guides and usage handbooks and/or any or all of the other strategies mentioned at the end of this post.
Steve Tuffill's insight:
Have you tripped over that banana skin today? (It is just waiting around the corner in copywritingville!) Delete the scoop?
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Customers don't want marketing drivel from businesses. They want engaging experiences. They want immersion into story. They want to feel things that only certain imagery can summon. In a world of i...
Steve Tuffill's insight:
This tale has been told a zillion times! I think by now, we should be getting the message... Delete the scoop?
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Steve Tuffill's insight:
Editing can always be improved. The big question is how much time can we devote to this really important and daily exercise? Frequently it is a trade-off between time and quality...
Judith van Praag's comment,
March 1, 10:38 AM
The more you pay attention to editing, the faster you see the problem and how to solve it. This said, you just hope your writers know how to dissect a sentence :-)
Steve Tuffill's comment,
March 7, 11:26 AM
That is so true, Judith! So it is less of a trade-off than an effective time-saving habit! :-)
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Should all verbs in a sentence be consistent in tense? Tense shift is often essential, but it’s sometimes unnecessarily discouraged.
Steve Tuffill's insight:
This is good advice! A little thought will pay dividends when considering an edit based on tense agreement. Not all of these are valid and it really largely depends on the sense of the copy. Delete the scoop?
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Writing is simply a matter of expressing ideas, but as we all know, it’s not so simple after all. One challenge is to coherently connect those ideas.
Steve Tuffill's insight:
...just a way of getting from one point to another. Delete the scoop?
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Steve Tuffill's insight:
In the words of Courtney Worth Young: "Inspiration is like falling in puppy love for the first time. It is wonderful. New. Makes you feel like you are 16 again..." I think we all need not only to be able to be aware of the existence of these feelings but also to be receptive of them. Delete the scoop?
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When are designations for historically significant phenomena treated with initial capital letters, and when are the names rendered with lowercase letters? Exceptions, as always, are available to confound us, but the rules are fairly straightforward.
Steve Tuffill's insight:
A lot of this has to do ith what my history professor would speak of when discussing concepts of word use. For example, he would make this distinction by saying things like "communism with a capital c, as opposed to plain communism..." This clarified the way of expressing these things in essays enormously... Delete the scoop?
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Steve Tuffill's insight:
The master of story-telling, K M Weiland, once more drops some useful hints on fiction-writing. She makes a couple of really useful points here... Delete the scoop?
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Epic storytelling has a certain formula that can produce a killer product.
Steve Tuffill's insight:
I feel sure that we can all produce a "killer" story. We just have to know the approach. Here, Codey Amprim has unlocked some of the best techniques for producing a tale like the epic one by Joseph Campbell! You won't be disappointed with these four plus suggestions. Amprim has done a good job of capturing some of the essential elements of a ripping read! Delete the scoop?
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Steve Tuffill's insight:
Logistics and juggling points of view, explained by the expert story-crafter, K M Weiland. Great video to watch and some good ideas for getting this right. Delete the scoop?
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A variety of terms distinguish the kinds of languages and vocabularies that exist outside the mainstream of standard, formal language. Here are twelve words and phrases that denote specific ideas of language usage.
Steve Tuffill's insight:
Linguistics 101... Delete the scoop?
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These rules were originally tweeted by Emma Coats, Pixar's Story Artist. Number 9 on the list - When you’re stuck, make a list of what wouldn't happen next - is a great one and can apply to writers...
Steve Tuffill's insight:
All of these are worth a second glance...! Delete the scoop?
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Wonderful and highly inspirational video. Reminds us all to strive for authentic and purposeful communication. So choose your words wisely. They are extremely powerful.
Steve Tuffill's insight:
If nothing else, relax into these images in the video and realize that words that are strong and meaningful actually get real results. This really makes the point that other media messages fail to make! Delete the scoop?
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Steve Tuffill's insight:
More gems from the experts at storytelling... Delete the scoop?
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Bullet lists -- distinguished from numbered lists in that they do not imply a priority or chronology in the order in which the list items appear -- are useful for when a list becomes too unwieldy to be formatted in line (within a sentence), but...
Steve Tuffill's insight:
Here are some really useful tips on how to get this sort of construct right first time every time! Delete the scoop?
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