Archive for category Non-Fiction Writing

How to Write original Content in Articles and Blogs

Nov 13

Posted by Rocky Cole in Freelance Writing, Non-Fiction Writing, Writing 101, Writing Craft | No Comments

silhouette of writer thinking
When you start to closely examine both print and electronic periodicals, it becomes apparent rather quickly that there is a lot of repetition in the material being published. It’s not plagerism, but the way the professional, commercial writing world works. What often happens is that a writer will come up with an original idea and will write a good piece and then numerous other writers will see that first piece and then have and “ah-ha” moment and work up a similar piece, often taking a slightly different angle or attempting to put their particular spin on the first writer’s idea.

Now there is nothing wrong with this per-se, but wouldn’t it be better to be the writer who comes up with the first, original idea? Of course it would, and if you can consistently be that original writer, then publishers and editors will start coming to you rather than vice-versus. Now being that original, highly sought first writer is an enviable position to be in, and the goal of every writer who wants to work consistently.

Here are three tips for writing original content for articles and blogs:

1. Come up with a good question and then seek to answer it. In other words, this is in opposition to the adage, “Write what you know.” You could frame this as “Write what you want to know.”

For example, “What is the benefit of funding a manned mission to Mars?” I’m not an expert on space exploration, but I do recall that there were many every-day benefits and things we use every day that came from the race to the moon. I could explore the history of those developments and then see what a new “Mars Race” might engender.

2. Come up with an intriguing headline and then seek to write around it.

In fact, if you don’t have time to write a story or do much research, just brainstorm some good headlines. Such as, “Race to Mars Brings Benefits to All”, or, “The Moon Brought us Saran-Wrap, What Will Mars Bring?”. I know that often I will come up with a headline and as I write the story I will discover new information that will fundamentaly change the piece I am writing. That is to be expected, even relished. It is a key part of the creative process.

3. Begin without doing much research – just write.

If you are going for original content or a new and unique perspective, then begin without coloring your view with someone else’s ideas. Once you have a premise and an angle that you are writing from, by all means go back and fill in blanks and change things based on subsequent research, but at the start, draft a framework based on your own thoughts and ideas. What we are trying to do here is come up with an original piece of content that reflects “your” unique writing style, voice, and perspective. If you immerse yourself too much in the words and thoughts of another writer up front, you tend to sound (or read) too much like the other writer.

Whether you are writing about yoga, politics, child-care, or the latest developments in neuroscience, you can craft original content by starting with your unique view of the world and then moving out from there. How would “you” say it. That is always an original place to begin.

If you want to bounce a writing idea off of me free of charge contact me at rocky.l.cole@gmail.com. I enjoy working with new writers and offering advice – be it sage or not-so sage.

Writing 101 – Start With the End in Mind (Write to Educate, Entertain, or Preferably Both)

Oct 27

Posted by Rocky Cole in Non-Fiction Writing, Productivity, Writing 101, Writing Craft | No Comments

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What I am going to tell you here will be obvious to some readers, but to others, perhaps not. There are two objectives that any piece of writing has, only two, and this is true for either fiction or non-fiction.

All writing exists either to:

1. Educate (self or others); and/or,

2. Entertain (self or others).

That’s it. That is the bottom line. You can think about any piece of writing from the cave paintings in Lascaux France to the operators manual for the Superconducting Supercollider, and they were all written to educate or entertain. My view is that if the writing does both then it is better.

So what has this got to do with keeping the end in mind? What I mean is, have a clear objective when you start writing something, whether that objective is written down or just in your mind. A clear objective, a destination, saves time and makes your writing better. Let me give you an example from my own work.

One of the things I do as a freelance writer is craft regular features for a website devoted to United States soccer. The site covers Major League Soccer (MLS), the United Soccer League (USL), and Women’s professional Soccer (WPS).

Now the owners of that website are in business, and to make the site interesting and useful enough for consumers to go there and keep coming back they need good content. In other words, there needs to be something useful and interesting that the site provides, ergo: It needs to educate and entertain.

See where I am going with this? So, when I sit down to craft an article for www.soccerhype.com, I go through the following process:

1. What is it that my readers need to know today? What do they care about?

Okay, the MLS playoffs are about to start, that’s what I will write about.

2. What do they need to know about the playoffs?

Hmmm, well, they need to know who is playing who and when the games are… I will put that in.

3. Besides the essential facts, what can I tell them that they don’t know? What would be interesting or entertaining?

How about if I tell them why each game will be good… how the teams got where they are and what to look for in each game.

Okay, with that in mind I am ready to start pulling the facts I need to relay, like teams playing each other, times and so forth – Educate. Then, I seek to answer the more esoteric questions in an interesting or humorous way – Entertain.

Got it, it is as simple as that. If you can find something the reader doesn’t know already, or an interesting viewpoint that gets him or her thinking, then you have done the job. And while my example is about doing a non-fiction piece, the same basic rules apply to fiction. You want to educate or entertain the reader and take them places they have not already gone. I will write more on how to apply this to fiction in another post.

Find a Process for Your Writing and Trust the Process

Oct 19

Posted by Rocky Cole in Fiction Writing, Freelance Writing, Non-Fiction Writing, Productivity, Writing 101, Writing Craft | No Comments

writingprocess

Have you ever had a wonderful plan to write something, a scene or a section of your fantastic novel, and then not been able to carry it off? You know, you are on a long drive or out running errands and stuck in traffic and it comes to you, “Eureka!” you cry, “now I have it!” The scene is crystal clear in your mind, your characters performing just as they are supposed to, the scene vivid and alive in your mind. You might even find yourself laughing to yourself as you drive, or speaking the dialogue aloud. Satisfied, excited, you go about your business assured that the next step in your story is all but written.

But then, reality strikes. You run the errand, pick up the kids, answer the phone, make dinner, watch some TV, and go about the day not thinking about the epiphany you just had. By the time you sit down at the computer or at your desk with your notebook, the idea seems vague, unclear, and it doesn’t have the heat and vibrancy that it did when it initially hit. So what do you do? How do you keep the heat and color in the images that seemed so real and clear when you were sitting in the traffic jam?

One thing you can do is try and get to the writing as soon as possible after the idea hits you, even if it is just to jot down the idea with some rough images and some of the words that came to you so clearly. Your writing is just as important as the other aspects of your life, and great ideas don’t come that easily. Treat them with respect and give them their due.

Feet and Neo So you are piling up random images and scene ideas in a notebook or on the back of envelopes, what next? Use these images, tidbits, notes, and random snippets of scenes and dialogue to create a “working outline”. I used to not be a big believer in outlines, but as I have written longer stories and realized that consistency and plot matter (at least to me), I understand that notes and outlines help keep the story on track. The notes and outlines I use now bear no relationship to the Roman numerals, big and little letters and numbers of elementary school. Instead, my outlines are more of a rough and fast spilling out of the story. I write them in order to keep the facts and happenings of the story straight, sometimes leaping ahead, sometimes using abbreviations, and never worrying about spelling or grammar. The key, get it down fast and loose. Style doesn’t matter, just get the story down… cleaning your writing up and finding the perfect way of saying things is for later.

Finally, what do you do if you haven’t been able to jot your random brilliance down and get it into your working outline? If you live in the world that I do, then even getting a chance to jot down some notes may not be all that easy. Of course now I have learned to carry a notebook around all the time so that when these inspirations strike, I can at least get something down. Yet every now and then, I find myself adrift without my trusty notebook and pen. So what then? My answer: Trust the process. Just sit down and start to write. The idea may not feel as fresh and new as it did when you were sitting in the car stuck in traffic with no way to record it, but just sit back and relax and start to write. Trust the process and things will be fine. After writing a few lines the original feeling might come back or maybe something better or just as good will arise. Just sit down and write.

How to Tame an Out-Of-Control Writing Project in 20 Steps

Oct 16

Posted by Rocky Cole in Fiction Writing, Freelance Writing, Non-Fiction Writing, Productivity, Writing 101, Writing Craft | No Comments

Paper

A writer friend of mine recently had a dilemma about a novel she has been working on for quite awhile. She’d written close to 700 pages of material and felt the story was bogged down but had some great scenes and parts. She wasn’t sure if she should abandon it and begin again. I could sense the pain her thought of abandoning this project was causing her. Giving birth to a novel has been described as similar to giving birth to a child, after all. And, as she’s said, the novel contained some really good stuff. Because we’ve all been there to a greater or lesser degree, I suggested a step-by-step strategy to perform some dramatic surgery on her unwieldy novel. Some other writers appreciated my response, so here it is. If it helps, fantastic… if not, there is always the Michael Chabon solution.

Dear Joyce, Michael Chabon had over 15,000 pages of his follow up novel to” Mysteries of Pittsburgh” that he tossed because he got similarly bogged down with no sign of the novel ever ending. His unpublished behemoth is called “Fountain City”, by the way. Chabon was loathe to stop, but he set his novel aside and wrote the bestseller, “Wonder Boys” in a relative short time. The moral: Maybe setting an unwieldy novel aside isn’t always a bad thing. However, there is another option where you may be able to salvage the “good stuff” in a different form. It won’t be easy, but here is a systematic approach to perform major surgery on your manuscript. CAUTION: This is NOT for the weak of heart!

1. Consider what you have now as not a novel, but a cauldron swirling with ideas. This is the start of finding some characters and the bare bones of a story.

2. Print out a copy of what you have with the pages numbered (regardless of how it is set up or your previous vision) just number 1-700.

3. Divide your stack into ten sections – okay, maybe 20 sections in this case (you do have 700 pages after all).

4. Tackle one section at a time and DO NOT look at them in chronological order. Repeat, DO NOT look at section 1, then 2, then 3. Do them randomly, 20, then 5, then 7….

5. Get a pack of colored highlighters (red, yellow, green, plum….)

6. Assign a color for dialogue – blue, a color for description – green, a color for just good writing, et cetera. Use whatever categories are important to you, but not Exposition, please.

7. Go through one section at a time and highlight the best bits under each category. Remember, do the sections out of order and take a good break between sections. You are looking for the best bits, not the okay bits, not the good stuff, the absolute killer dialogue and description and writing.

8. When you are done with the highlighting, re-type it from scratch under the categories (dialogue, description, good-writing, action…). Yes, I said re-type it.

9. Now, pin the pages to the wall and see what your absolute best stuff is and organize it in a fairly logical sequence. You know, Bobby meets Sarah for the first time… dialogue between Bobby and Sarah… Description of the car accident… dialogue of police officer and Sarah. This is where you will start to see gaps and connections.

10. Now, look at the wall with all this stuff in order and write an outline and a chronology of the story (these are two separate things). The outline may include what you have on the wall, and it will also have scenes to be written. The chronology will keep this all straight when you move to a first draft. (A chronology is a timeline of the whole story and will include things that are occurring “off-stage”; such as: 15 October 2009; 11:59 PM; Cole rushes to post-office to mail taxes as six-month extension expires.)

11. Now, take the bits you have on the wall, and the notes for what you need to have in between the bits and place these in the correct chronological order and make notes in the document of where you need to write a new scene or a connector between scenes.

12. Do any additional research or free writing to get down what needs to be written in the missing parts. It is okay at this point to re-imagine dialogue or description, but don’t try and do finished prose. What you have now created is what mystery writer Elizabeth George calls a “Full-Outline”.

13. Print this full-outline out.

14. Go drink a margarita and have a spa day.

15. Sit down.

16. Open a new document. Yes, I said a new document.

17. Pin the first five or six pages of the full-outline on the wall in front of you and have the proposed chronology within arms reach. (The chronology will help when you have to recall where your characters are and what they are doing at any given time.)

18. In the new document start writing your draft from start to finish using the full-outline and the chronology as a guide. DO NOT REWRITE. Just write from start to finish with the full-outline as a guide, incorporating your previously written best stuff in the draft.

19. When you finish this draft you will be about at third draft stage.

20. Refine this, publish it, become famous, and mention me in the credits.

Writing 101 – How Much is that FREE Cat Tower? …. or, Why People Write

Oct 12

Posted by Rocky Cole in Fiction Writing, Freelance Writing, Non-Fiction Writing, Writing 101, Writing Craft | No Comments

Cat Tower There are many reasons people feel drawn to write. Why did the first of our ancestors pick up some burnt sticks and scrawl images on cave walls or make marks on wood and stones in the forests of the Celtic isles? My experience tells me that there are two elemental reasons people write:

1. To learn more about themselves or their world. The writer E. M Forester once said, “How will I know what I think until I see what I say?”

2. To release some creative impulse that is inside of them. Another way to say this is, to entertain the self or others.

Writing then, is to educate or to entertain. Of course this is a simplification, but writing is something that seems more than a distraction for people who are bitten by the writing bug. In fact, people who are “writers” – published or not – would be writing anyway. It’s like the woman who came up to me at my garage sale two weeks ago and asked, “How much is that cat tower?”

“You mean the one with the big ‘FREE” sign on it?” I said. “Since it’s free, I’ll give you a dollar to haul it off, but that is as high as I’ll go… okay, I’ll give you two.”

In other words, most of us would write anyway, or pay people to be able to write. And, in fact we do, if you look at the money we spend on supplies, computers, books on writing and conferences. But then again, if we weren’t writing, what would we be doing to make sense of our worlds and get these pesky stories and feelings out? Alas, it is the curse of the writer, to write, always to write. But what a splendid curse indeed. I’ll pay my two dollars for that cat tower.

Cole Writing

Writing with precision and passion