Writing, Among Other Things

Author: NeoBluePanther (Page 35 of 47)

Short Story Writing Contest

Contests are always exciting. They give you a chance to pitch yourself against others like you, and help you know where you stand among your peers. They can help you realise your weaknesses, and strengthen your strong points.

Claire, at Bebo Author, is holding a short story writing contest on her site. The detailed rules about the contest can be seen here .

I think I am going to submit a story for the contest, but I am not sure as I have a few things coming up in the days to come. The contest runs till 21st March 2008, so there is still some  time to go!

Meanwhile, I would like to wish the Best of luck to Claire for her contest, and to everyone else who participates in the contest!

Article Writing Tip-2

Always keep the reader in mind, but choose a subject you are comfortable with.

Writing should come naturally, they say. And I agree with them. But not all writers are lucky enough to write what comes naturally to them and, then, get paid for it.

Even if you don’t write for money, I am sure you write to be read. And for that you have to write about something that would be of interest to a potential reader.

While you are choosing the subject, you have to ensure that what you have chosen does not fall outside your comfort zone. Sometimes it is easy to get carried away.

A perfect example would be all the money making blogs out in the blogosphere. Just because there is an audience that is dying to read about making money online, you don’t have to start writing on the subject.

On the contrary, if there is something that you are an expert at, you might create an audience for it, even if none exists.

Don’t you agree?

Article Writing Tip – 1

As some of you might know I am associated with an online magazine (The MAG) and as an administrator I am receiving contributions to be published on the site (In case you are interested in having your writing on The MAG, you can email me at editor@themag.in ). So, a friend suggested we should have a set of tips for anyone who is aspiring to write an article for The MAG. And since these tips could be handy even for bloggers,  I decided to post them on my blog – one tip at a time.

Giving your article an attention grabbing but relevant title is one  of the  most important things you can do to get your article read by as many people as possible.

In “Superman Returns” Lois Lane gets a Pulitzer for her article “Why the world does not need Superman”.  This is an effective example of using a title to grab the reader’s attention and get him to read your article.

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Writing a story in serial form

For some reason I thought the idea of posting a story on my blog was a good idea.

Since the story was long, the obvious thing to do was break it up in parts and post it in serial form, which, I thought, was another great idea.

But my experience with the story I posted ( The Bank Robbery) tells me otherwise.

The reason could either be that the story I wrote was not good enough to compel the reader to go back to the start and follow the story to the end, or it could be that the idea of writing a story in serial form on a blog is not a good idea.

I think a better way to showcase your writing on your blog is to have a separate page for it. What do you think?

"How To…"

There is something about “how to” books that grabs the reader’s attention and makes him want to buy the book. I think my first “how to” book was named ” How to become a writer?”

Needless to say, that book did not help me a lot. Was it because the book was not good or because I was too young to understand it then, can be debated. But, the book was not a complete waste of money.

At that time whatever I wrote was in long hand. The book said if you are aspiring to be a writer you should have a word processor, or at the least a typewriter. Since buying a computer was not even a option, I began to look for typewriters.

I began to save my pocket money in the hope of buying a typewriter.  Every time I saw an advertisement in the paper for a typewriter, my eyes would be filled with a deep yearning. Of course, I couldn’t tell about my desire to my parents because writing to them was merely, “a waste of time”.

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