May 19, 2012

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Improving Your Editing Abilities

Wanting to become a better editor? Here is how you can improve your eye to catch even more grammar mistakes, as well as improve your ability to reorganize a writing sample.

Study your grammar rules. You cannot be a good editor if you do not understand the basic rules of grammar. You need to be absolutely certain of these, so pick up a copy of the MLA, APA, or Associated Press style guide and learn the rules for commas, capitalization, and other punctuation matters. Whatever type of editing you are hoping to do will change what style guide will be the most use to you. The MLA style guide is used by English Academics, while the sciences generally rely on the APA. Associated Press has its own rules for journalism as well. The Chicago Manual of Style is generally a good overall guide, but you will want to look into other guides for more specific fields.

If you are working to improve your editing abilities for a certain company, you should be aware that companies will generally have their own style guides on how to deal with newer words, like the capitalization of “internet,” or if “email” is hyphenated or not.

Practice Editing. The next thing you need is to get plenty of practice editing papers not only for yourself but for your friends. If you are near a college or have friends in school, they will be more than willing to let you breeze over their work for grammer errors and other gliches. You might also consider looking for an internship as an editor or assistant editor, as this will give you excellent expereince under supervision.

Challenge yourself. If you are really serious about editing, you may want to look into buying a textbook to take practice tests, or signing up for a class. This will allow you to check your editing abilities, and can give more structure to your editing improvement. Finding a good teacher who has excellent expereince is the best way to improve your editing, making sure that you are learning the right material and methods.

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Tips for Writing a Romance Novel

If you find yourself daydreaming about people and situations that seem much more interesting than daily life you might just be the right kind of person to write a romance novel. Although it is not easy, writing a romance novel is possible if you have the basic writing skills and know the basics of romance writing.

The first thing you need is to believe that true love is possible. In order for your story to be believable to your readers, you need to believe it. Romance readers read them because they believe in romance and like to become emotionally involved in what they are reading about. If you write with a tongue in cheek attitude it will come across in your writing and not be believable.

It is important as a romance writer to believe in the intelligence of your readers. Don’t write write down to them as if they are uneducated just because they enjoy this kind of fiction. Most romance readers are well educated and enjoy reading to escape from their regualar life.

Romance novels are based on strong characters. They should be real and have some depth. If you give them some special quirks and make them more than one dimensional.

Romance novels need some kind of conflict. There needs to be something that keeps the character’s apart even though they are made for each other and are drawn to each other. The conflict must be something big enough for the reader to wonder how they will ever be together. You also need to develop their relationship to a point where we know they will be together in the end because they belong together.

Romance writing also has strong scenes. The story should be told in a series of scenes that are vivid enough for the reader to be a part of them. Write so the reader becomes a part of the story

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How to Structure a Short Story

Writing a short story is a great way to get started in a writing career. Since they are not as involved as a novel, you can work on your writing style and your writing technique and perfect it before getting involved the in years of work it sometimes takes to write a novel.

All short stories have the same basic elements.

  1. They have a main character, or a protagonist.
  2. The protagonist has a problem that needs to be solved.
  3. There are issues presented that lead to the problem and contribute to it as well.
  4. The problem is resolved.

Every story needs some kind of message or meaning throughout it, and this is what the whole story is based on. All of your characters, your plot, and your setting is all based around this message. As you write a story you should make sure that everything you write is related to the message.

It is important to keep a short story short. It is not necessary to add a lot of descriptive writing in it that are not necessary. Short stories should follow a just one narrow line of a subject. Once you decide what the point of your story is, stick closely to it.

There are also a few other things to keep in mind when writing a short story.

  1. Stay within a short time frame. Since it it only one event in your characters life, it could take place in just a single day if that is enough to get your point across.
  2. Keep the number of characters to a minimum. Three main characters is enough to keep track of without distracting the reader from your message. Decide on characters what are important to your story and just stay with those.It is also not necessary to give a detailed background on these characters.
  3. Choose your dialogue carefully.
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Improve Your Writing By Avoiding Common Grammar Mistakes

There are some common grammar mistakes that many writers make. If you know what mistakes to look for, your writing will be much cleaner and make more sense to your readers.

  1. The subject and verb do not agree. If your subject is singular then your verb needs to be singular as well. This type of error is very common so it is important to check for it expecially when you are rewriting and rewording your work.
  2. Run on sentences. A run on sentence runs two or more independent clauses together. They should be joined together either by some form of punctuation such as a comma or a semi colon, or they should be made into two sentences.
  3. Using the wrong past tense, or not using it at all. It is very common for writers to forget to add the -ed ending to a verb when it should be past tense. Another common past tense mistake is to use the innorect form of the past tense.
  4. incorrect sentence structure. A sentence needs to include a subject and a verb. If it does not include both of these it is considered a fragment and can not stand alone.
  5. Commas. Writers tend to commas wrong several different ways, and they are often omitted completely. Comma’s should be used after and introductory dependent clause, and in between two nonrestrictive clauses. They should also be used between two independent clauses that are joined by a coordinating conjuntion.
  6. The apostrophe. An apostrophe should be used to show posessioin by adding ‘s after a singular or plural noun not ending with an s. If a plural noun ends with an s use the apostrophe after the s.
  7. Pronouns. Make sure that a pronoun agrees with the noun that they are refering to. If the noun is singular then the pronoun must also be singular. If the noun is plural the pronoun also must be plural.
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Tips For Getting Started on Your First Novel

You have been writing for a while, starting with articles and moving on to short stories. You may have been thinking about making the jump to a novel, but the thought of getting started has you frozen in your tracks. Making the decision to get started is often the hardest part. But if writing a novel is something  you want to do, now just might be the best time to jump in and do it.

There are something you can go to help get your book off the ground. First you can set up a schedule of when you are going to write. Decide when your best time of day or night is, and use that time to your advantage.

Every book starts with a good idea. If you have had an idea for a book rolling around in your head for a while then you are ahead of the game. Once you have an idea you need to develop your main character. Before you can write about your character you need to get to know them so give them a name, a gender, and a personality. The character also needs a conflict, and often a protagonists that is contributing to the conflict.

Next your novel needs a plot. It is beneficial to think about how the book is going to move along before you get to involved in writing it. Planning out the plot and how you are going to cover the story will help keep your novel going in a good direction. It is okay to change things as you go, but thinking through the beginning, the middle, and how it will end will make the writing process easier.

Sitting down to get started on a novel can be daunting, but if you make the jump you will soon see the rewards in your writing.

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How to Develop a Fictional Character

The characters are the most important part of a story. Developing the characters and making them appear vivid and alive is crutial to a successful story. There are a few ways that authors can go about developing their characters and making them appear to be real people to their readers.

One way to develop a character is through concrete statements. These would be specifically stated characteristics such as their possessions, their homes, and their specific tastes in cars, furniture, clothes, and friends. These things should also give information about the story as well. For example, does the character live in a penthouse becuase they have a great job, or did they come from a wealthy family?

You can also develop your character through their speech. Both what they say and how they say it can tell the reader a lot about a character. The way they speak can tell the reader about their background and their personality. The use of  humor, will show a different personality than using speech that is coy or speech that is agressive.

The behavior of your character will also give readers insight to who they are. It is important to keep their behavior consistant with the rest of their traits. For example a character who lives in a penthouse will probably not have bad table manners and talk with their mouth full. However, a boy who grew up on the streets may not have the same kinds of manners. How a character behaves when they are under pressure can also be extremely revealing.

What motivates your character will give the readers a good idea of who they are. Again, it is important to make their actions relevant to the rest of their characteristics. It is important for readers to beleive that the character would actually do what the author has them doing in order for the story to work.

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Character Profiles and the Development of a Character

One of the most important things you can do when you are writing a novel or a short story is to develop the characters. It is important to make them seem real and alive. One of the ways that many writers develop characters is to create a character profile for them. This helps the writer to make the character appear real as well as help the author to get to know their character. The better the author knows who they are writing about, even if they are creating them, the more real the character will seem.

You can create a character profile by writing out everything there is to know about the character. The basic characteristics you should include their name, age, nationality, there they live, where they grew up if they are older, what they do, and all of their family. Once you get the basics down you should also go through their physical characteristics and also their intellectual attributes, their emotional characteristics, and their spritual characteristics.

When all these characteristics are written out for you it makes it easy to refer back to them throughout the writing process. It helps you to keep track of what the character has done in the story so they will match and be relevant later on. It is important as the character develops that their characteristics remain consistant throughout the entire story.

A character profile is also helpful during the rewrite stage. If you make changes to your story you can refer back to the profile to make sure you make the same change in their character throughout the whole story. If your character starts out as a happy well ajusted person, and as the story evolves you decide an  event in their life has made them an angry defiant person, you can update their profile to make sure you make the same changes everywhere in the story.

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The Writiing Process

Each writer has their own process that they follow when they write. There are things that each writer does to have a productive writing sesson, but what this means for one writer may be completely different for an other.

There are some general things you can do to get started. For many writers they need to make sure they have a specific spot to write in. This may be an office in their house, or a particular seat at the table. It is important to have a work space though where it is quiet and away from distractions.

A good place to start when you are writing or trying to come up with ideas is jotting ideas down on paper or on a separate document. Write down anything that comes to your mind, and keep going for a certain amount of time. Once you have your ideas on paper it is often easier to get started on a rough draft of a story or paper.

Another part of the process for many writers is walking away after a rough draft. The time away could be an hour, or it could be a whole day. When thety go back and read what they have written it is with a fresh prospective. There may be times when you feel like scrapping the whole thing, or sometimes just rewording what you have written will work.

The revision phase is most often next. When a writer takes their rough draft and makes changes needed to improve it and make it work. From there comes one of the most important parts of the writing process which is the proofreading and editing phase. Proofreading your work before submitting it to any source is essential. It is important to make sure that grammar and spelling is correct, and check to make sure that the writing reads well and makes sense for the reader.

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Writing Strategies

Sometimes just getting started is the worst part of a writing project. If you are looking for strategies you can use there are some things you can do to keep the creative juices flowing.

If you are having trouble getting started, you can sometimes be inspired by just looking out the window. If this doesn’t work you can also try keeping a notebook. As you go about your day you can jot things down that come to mind. There are no rules and no limits as far as what you write. Write phrases that catch your attention, or describe images that you see. You never know what these will trigger when you sit down to write.

Writing on a regular basis is also helpful. Even if you are not in the mood, writing a few sentences or freewriting will keep you on a schedule. Reading is also one of the most beneficial things you can do for your writing. Read anything and everything and take what you can away from it.

Another good strategy is to start with a clear head. Often times a project will get off the ground much more successfully if you do something to clear everything else out of your mind before you start. This could be a walk for some writers, or cleaning out a closet for others. The time you spend doing this can be well worth it if you get down to business as soon as you are in front of the computer. Once you are ready make sure you have a quiet room and are in the right frame of mind to be productive.

Each writer is different and strategies that work for one writer may not work for others. It may take some trial and error before you find a system that works for you. The key is to keep trying and pushing through if it is something you really want to do.

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Active vs. Passive Voice

When writing there are two different ways you can make the writing come across. Active voice means that the sentences are constructed where the subject is doing the action. Passive voice is a sentence that is constructed where the subject is being acted upon. There is a big difference in how a sentence reads when you use active voice vs. passive voice.

Active voice is usually the better way to write in any kind of creative writing or fiction. Active voice tends to be less wordy and get right to the point. Passive voice often comes across as uninteresting and wordy.

  • “David threw the ball to his brother” is active voice.
  • “The ball was thrown” is passive voice.

Passive voice is gramatically correct, but it makes the reader feel like something is missing. In the sentence above the passive voice sentence doesn’t tell the reader who is throwing the ball or where it went. The active voice sentence went straight to the point and told the reader who was doing the action and what they did.

It is not difficult to write in the active voice, but it can take some getting used to. The best way to go about it is to look at your writing and start cutting out words. When you pare down the number of words in a sentence it can easily be reworked into an active voice. You can also look for the use of the words “was” and “by”.

Passive voice is often used in formal, and business writing. It is sometimes used to avoid directly assigning a particular person to a responsibility. For example “Files were lost.” is passive, and no one was directly named as the responsible party. If you want your writing to be creative and easy to read make sure you are using the active voice.

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