Giving Your Idea Form

Giving your idea form, but how, you may be wondering, do I get from a good idea—with a few rough notes scribbled on paper—to a finished product—the written manuscript? One way is to give your ideas form by thinking of a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Story Article

Problem: Beginning Lead or hook
Complication: Middle Development
Solution: END Wrap-up

Since a whole is the sum of its parts, it can be easier to think of the parts of your story or articles first, breaking your writing down into small workable segments as you outline your ideas.

Fiction

Step 1 Fine-Tune Your Idea

Try jotting down your story idea in one sentence. This is a quick way to bring your idea into focus and to test it for human interest.

Some writers call such a one-sentence idea a “headline” or putting their story into a nutshell. Get to the core of what your story will be about—without any of the trimmings. If it seems hard to find this core at first, keep working at it.

Step 2 Turn Your Idea Into a Story

What makes a story? People tell each other stories all the time—what happened on the way home from work, what a neighbor did, what the grocer said, how a co-worker reacted—but if these stories were written down they wouldn’t qualify as good fiction. Why? Because they are only incidents.

We see or are involved in incidents continually. An incident doesn’t have a plan—it just happens. Incidents can be funny, dramatic, heartwarming, even horrific. But they are still incidents. They make for good conversation but not good fiction.

Here’s an example of a wonderful incident:

Late on a cold November afternoon, a girl got on a New York City bus. She was loaded down with luggage: a heavy backpack, two big suitcases and a long cardboard tube that might have contained a large poster. She was puffing with exertion as she hauled everything up the steps. The driver shouted, “You can’t get on with all that.”

The girl ignored him, quickly dropping her fare into the farebox and trying to disappear down the crowded aisle. Angrily, the driver pulled the brake, got out of his seat and went after her.

“Hey,” he shouted. “You can’t get on.”

“But I am on,” the girl said.

“Well get off.”

“Why?” the girl asked.

“You can’t bring all this stuff on at rush hour.” He glared at her. The girl tried to hold her ground but she began to falter.

Her face grew red. Her eyes began to water. She looked confused and very tired.

“Off!” The driver yelled, seeing his advantage.

Suddenly, as if they had rehearsed it, all the passengers stood up. “We’re getting off, too,” they shouted back to the driver. “You’re unfair…look at this poor girl…let her ride…”

The driver was stunned. He snapped his mouth shut and ran back to his driver’s seat, put the bus in gear and took off down the avenue without another word.

This incident is a “slice of life.” It’s wonderful to hear about…perhaps even read about. Such slices of life are often used as fillers in newspapers or magazines. But they don’t qualify as stories, for a number of reasons.

For one thing, we don’t know anything about the girl. If we analyze more closely, we might have to agree with the driver that she should not have gotten on the crowded bus with all that luggage. If we knew her better, we might not like her.

For another thing, nothing is resolved. The girl got to ride the bus to her destination but so what? We don’t learn much knowing this. We have no reward to take away from the story except that it was a sympathetic gesture on the part of supposedly coldhearted New Yorkers to have threatened a riot.

More important, the girl didn’t do anything to solve her own problem. The people in the bus did it for her. At the end of the incident, the girl and the people remained as they were at the beginning: strangers.

What’s needed to make this incident into a story? The basics of any good piece of fiction. We need to know more about the girl and what her problem is. Her trip must be urgent. If she can’t get to where she’s going on the bus, what will happen?
Perhaps she must be at the station to meet her fiancé, with whom she is eloping. If she misses the train, he will go without her, knowing that she meant what she said. What did she say? Earlier in the day she told him she was through with him forever, because she thought he had betrayed her. But no sooner was he off to the station, than she found out the truth. Of course, she regretted her words immediately. She packed quickly, rushed out the door.

Now we are worried about the girl, hoping she will get to the station on time. But a complication sets in. The people in the bus join in with the driver, urging her to get off. It’s rush hour, they’re tired and she’s taking up too much room. She hasn’t got enough money for a taxi. What will she do now?

Drama? Urgency? That’s what makes a story.
An incident is something that happened. The action occurs by circumstance and had no particular purpose, nor does it lead anywhere.

A story describes the actions and events that grow out of a particular problem. Things move along a purposeful path to the resolution of the problem. A reader gets involved with a story because of concern for the characters and interest in seeing how things will turn out.

An easy way to remember the difference between an incident and a story is to think of a prize fight. A blow-by-blow description of the fight isn’t much of a story, is it? But what if we know all about one of the fighters and why he must win the fight, and also find out that someone wants to make sure this fighter doesn’t win?
Problem, complication, solution—these three elements woven together with characterizations that make a reader care are what make a good story plot.

When you think plot, think design and plan. A story is designed and planned by you—that’s what makes it a story, not an incident.

When you think plot, think entangle, perplex, intrigue. These elements will add the conflict and concern that will keep a reader interested.
Have you jotted down a sentence that sums up your story? Now, begin thinking of your story’s parts.

Internet Writing

Ranking well in the search engines is not difficult. In fact search engine optimization is relatively easy. What stops most people from ranking well in search engines is misinformation. Every week there’s yet another quick fix to ranking well in search engines and people jump from one quick fix to the next hoping for that Top 10 position in Google and never achieving it.

There are 6 key areas of search engine optimization that you need to know about. These are the basics. Getting these right will help you achieve the search engine rankings that website owners want.

Domain Name - The jury is still out on the how relevant a keyword rich domain name is. What I mean by keyword rich domain name is say for example your site was going to be about money making ideas then an idea domain name could be either http://www.moneymakingideas.com/ or http://www.money-making-ideas.com/. My own personal preference is with the hyphenated approach e.g. http://www.money-making-ideas.com/ simply because I believe that search engines can read it more easily. To register your domain name I would suggest using either 000Domains.com or GoDaddy.com (I use GoDaddy.com because they are directly linked with Google.)

Content - Useful content. Not keyword stuffed, spammy pages. Write something useful for visitors.

Keywords - Keywords are the words or phrases that you expect people to search for your site/service/content with. There are two distinct factors to consider when choosing keywords for your site.

1. You need to target specific keywords.
2. You need to choose the keywords that you want people to find your site with.

Put yourself in your visitors shoes - think about what they might use to find you in the search engines. What keywords or key phrases would you type into a search engine to find your site? What keywords or key phrases would your potential visitor use to search for you? Always, always think like a typical websurfer.

Keyword density - This is how often your keyword is used on the page itself. For example if you have 100 words of text on a single page and you mention your keyword 5 times then you have 5% keyword density.

Opinions vary on this but anywhere from 1% - 7% is considered ideal. If this doesn't make sense to you then it's ok. The simple rule is this: less is more. Do not alter the text on your webpages to include your keyword over and over again because.........well.... it looks stupid, won't instill any confidence in your prospective customer and might also get you penalized or removed from the search engines.

How To Format an Article

Formatting an article--an article format is different depending on where you are sending it. If you are writing for the web, your article needs to be formatted for the website that you are writing for. It should include keywords from that site.
Most magazines have a set of guidelines that you can write, visit their web page or read in Writer's Market for specifics. Normally it should be double spaced, a size 12 font, and the style of font must be easily read, Times New Roman, is your best bet.
Most magazines accept submissions electronically, again you just have to check their guidelines, some will accept attachments, while others want you to cut and paste into the body of your email.
You will also need to provide a word count. You should always do a spell check and grammar check. Even if your copy is great, if you have misspellings and a lot of problems with grammar, most editors will hit the delete key! I hope this helps you. If you have more questions please feel free to ask!

Ciao for now!
Brenda

How To Get Started Freelance Writing

I wanted to start this blog so that I could help people understand about freelance writing and help them along their own path to getting published. There is good news for freelancers, a vast market is waiting. There are more than five thousand magazines in today’s market which doesn’t include all of the internet opportunities available that take freelance material. Every day, aspiring writers strive to discover how they can get their work published with their own bylines. I hope that his blog can answer those questions.

To begin, your personal knowledge and expertise can find its way into this vast market. For example if you know are a nurse, there are numerous Nursing Magazines, if you enjoy hunting or fishing, there are numerous Hunting & Fishing magazines. Whatever your passion, there is a magazine for you and online resource for you to write articles. Your experiences can become articles or stories for print magazines, or ezines, or blogs.

A little market research can uncover a wealth of specialty magazines—sports, hobby, travel, auto, military, business, health, nature, mystery and more—as well as hundreds of literary and regional publications that could be markets for your work.

Find out what these magazines are all about by reading them, explore the Internet, and research what is available to you. Never go by the name of a publication or web page to make an assumption about its contents. Titles can be misleading. And a lot of web pages have a need for articles and usually have a wide array of topics and opportunities. Be sure of what a magazine and/or web page publishes—and give yourself a better chance for success—by reading. Editors return hundreds of manuscripts every month from people who have no idea what their magazines want. Businesses also turn away quality work for their web pages, because some writers just submit their work without researching where they are sending it.

Find out what these magazines are all about by reading them, explore the Internet, and research what is available to you. Never go by the name of a publication or web page to make an assumption about its contents. Titles can be misleading. And a lot of web pages have a need for articles and usually have a wide array of topics and opportunities. Be sure of what a magazine and/or web page publishes—and give yourself a better chance for success—by reading. Editors return hundreds of manuscripts every month from people who have no idea what their magazines want. Businesses also turn away quality work for their web pages, because some writers just submit their work without researching where they are sending it.

“It’s a terrible waste of time, energy and postage for all of us,” says one editor.
Visit the library or send for sample copies of the magazines. If you do your market research up front, you’ll decrease your chances of singing the “rejection slip blues.”

Writing, like any craft is hard work, it can be fun and yes, you can make a living at it. But you have to want it and you have to be willing to put in the time. I look forward to sharing this process and would love to hear your comments, or suggestions for blogs, or even to answer your questions. You can also visit my webpage at http://www.brendasegnawebmarketing.com/

Ciao for now,
Brenda