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A Brief Guide to Writing Short Stories Effectively (writing short stories) A short story is basically a condensed version of a book or a rapidly progressing story. It has fewer characters than a novel and covers less amount of time. A short story generally is around 6,000 words or 6 pages. Do your research and organization before you begin to write. Outline your plot and the background. Make sure they make sense and flow together. Individually list the events of the story in the order in which they occur. Create your characters. Not just their name and role in the story, but as if they were real people with real lives. By creating more information for your characters you will get a sense of what they would do or how they would be and convey that to your writing. By creating an outline you will have a point of reference to look back upon and make sure you have included all vital points of the story. When writing a short story, you will need a captivating first paragraph. You have roughly 5 to 7 lines to appeal to your reads unlike novels that have the whole first chapter. This can actually make or break your story. You will need to grab their attention and keep it to make them want to read more. By starting the plot in the first few sentences it will make people want to know more. They will keep reading to find out who is involved and why. Keep the timeline of events brief. You are writing a short story and the timeline should match that. A timeline of a day, a week, or maybe even a month is generally the span a story should cover. Use character dialogue as a way to move the plot ahead. In a short story there is no time for general chitchat. By using the character dialogue you are deepening the plot as well as moving it along. Do not add unnecessary characters. By adding them you are wasting time one someone that is not linked to your story or its plot. Provide swift and precise details to keep the story moving. Elaborate descriptions of characters, plot, or surroundings will only waste your words and are not essential to making a good story. Use short words instead of phrases that mean the same thing. Building to the climax should be most of the story. Keep the conflicts building to the climax simple and easy to understand. You writing should be able to evoke the following emotions empathy, pain, hurt, despair, surprise, and desire just to name a few. Since the story is only a few pages long in its entirety it is necessary to maintain consistency through out the beginning, middle, and end. Make sure the dialog and plot complement each other. Keep the same point of view through out the story. You are almost ready to be published. After completing your own proofreading and editing, let someone else read it, a neighbor, your spouse, colleague, or a close friend. Even if they are not writers themselves they will be able to help point out any grammar errors. They will be able to tell you if something just doesn’t make sense. You are trying to fit a lot of captivating information in a small space; it is easy to leave something out. Something you may not catch because you know what is supposed to happen, while your will not. By following these simple rules, you will be able to write a short story that is captivating and effective. Writing short stories isn’t for everyone. Many writers like more detail and for short stories the space is just not available.

The Definition of Writing Styles Depends on Who is Defining Them (writing styles) While researching this topic, you may have found many different answers to what are the different types of writing styles. No two answers were the same. They range anywhere from your personal way of writing that is your writing style to formal and informal. Many people feel the best answer to what writing styles are the those will be outlined below in this article. You can decide for yourself if this definition suits your. The term creative writing covers a range of writing areas. Poetry, fiction books, short stories, and screenplays are considered creative writings. Any writing in which is not strictly non-fiction would be classified as such. Journalism and news reporting are forms of Expository writing. The purpose is to focus on one topic and inform the reader by provided the facts. These writings can be seen in the forms of travel brochures, professional journal, business reports, and new paper articles. Descriptive writing is what gives you the mental pictures of what we have read. It uses a lot of adjective and adverbs to describe things. When descriptive writing is very good you can close your eyes and know exactly what the author is saying. The kind that makes you taste what the characters and see what they are seeing. Analytical Writing is a writing that focuses on a topic and then verifies the purpose of it. It is often taught school age children through out the years because it is something they will use in their life. Book reports, conference papers, thesis, essays, and dissertations are all academic writing. It is created using a third person point of view and deductive reasoning supported by facts. Its purpose is to show a clear understanding of a subject by presenting information. Technical Writing is used in owner manuals, how to guides, magazine articles, and design specs just to name a few. Its purpose is to take complicated technical information and turn it into something the intended audience can understand. Technical writing usually deals with electronics of all sorts, chemistry, robotics, and finance. Any kind of writing that has to do with business matters is considered business writing. It is concise and to the point. Your intended audience wants to know what happen and why, but with minimal detail in between. An active voice is necessary in business writing. It keeps people focused and shows that you are in control of situations. Correspondence is the writing of memos, letters, or emails between people. It is a message that is sent between two people or groups of people. To provide facts and statistic and having the ability to influence your readers with your words is persuasive writing. This is used for products ads, political campaigns, or any kind of promotion. It is not necessary to prove why something is else is wrong or bad you just need to prove why your promoting is better. Narrative writing is use to tell a story or list of events that have already happen, might have happened, or could happen in the future. These writings may include novels, poetry, short stories, or a number of other things. A lot of times many of these styles are meshed together in our writing. Business writing and technical writings are often one in the same as are academic writing and analytical writing. With the overlapping of the styles it hard to define one writing style from another, you can guess it is all a matter of the point of view you are looking at it from and your opinion.

Big Time Experience with Small Time Publications (writing newsletter articles) When you start writing, you may have ambitions of getting your name on the front page of newspapers and on feature stories in magazines, but you will soon find out that it takes time to get there. Even the best writers have to make their way through the ranks before making it to headline status. Don’t be discouraged though. Even though you may have been rejected more times than you could have ever imagined, there are still many places that will be accepting. Even if you feel like you’ve exhausted all of your creative power, there are publications that are ready to help you develop even further. The buildup is not leading towards riches or fame, but writing newsletter articles can be a great step in that direction. The first thing that any writer should realize is that there is more to learn. Even knowing all of the grammar and all of the clarity rules will not make you a good writer. Only experience can bring you to that place. Newsletters are a great place to start getting cleaning up your writing and to start learning to write for different audiences. Who Prints Newsletters? Why are newsletters such a great place to start earning publications? There are plenty of organizations and groups that print them. The printing money and the circulation are already in place. The other great thing about writing newsletter articles is that there is almost always a high demand for newsletter writers. The pay is not great and is most often non-existent, but the newsletters must go out all the same. Hit up any organization in town that you know prints a newsletter. Some of the printing is done nationally for the larger organizations, but many will be done locally. Try volunteer and non-profit organizations as well as university and church groups. These organizations will all have news that they need to get to the public. Many of them survive based on public donations. What that means for you is that there is plenty of demand for talented and interesting writers. The Expert in Print If you have any sort of claim to expertise along with your writing skills, you will be a fantastic candidate for writing newsletter articles. One great draw for a reader is the pull of a well researched and authoritative article. Imagine the thrilled group of environmentalists when you approach them with evidence that the developmental process for non-stick pan coating is connected to the decreasing population of Asian tortoises. You’d have a job in no time. Regardless of whether or not you got paid for your work, you can expect that you’d get repeated assignments, growing experience and bylines galore for your next step of job applications. Being knowledgeable about a certain subject will give you many writing opportunities. If you have any experience in a subject area, be sure to add it to your resume. As you write newsletter articles, you’ll only add to you’re your expertise. Other Newsletter Articles If you don’t necessarily believe that you have an area of expertise that is not a problem. There are many other ways to get into writing newsletter articles. A big part of newsletter content is just content. Newsletters need to be made up of interesting and varied articles. There are usually volunteers that head up the projects and they in turn hire various writers to fill in the titles that they choose. If you can be flexible in your writing and if you can find a newsletter that works with a topic you care about, you will be well on your way to building your resume with bylines and great circulation. Writing newsletter articles will probably not be a career in itself because of the low pay scale, but it will take you closer to a lucrative writing career. Think of writing newsletter articles as a type of community service. Even after you have added paying pieces to your repertoire you may continue to write for the newsletters that you care about.