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videoclip on how it's used in advertising

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This video deepens students' understanding of the concepts of pathos, logos, and ethos with visual examples. The video explains how the television, print, and online advertisements utilize the three rhetorical strategies. The narration in the commercial further explains their use in each advertisement.

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http://eslbee.com/persuade.htm

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Diary Narrative

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Keeping a personal journal might be a therapeutic way to describe feelings and life events, but it can also be a useful tool for relating educational experiences, processing new concepts and reflecting on progress. An English teacher, for example, might use journal writing to help students generate ideas about a novel and discuss what they can relate to in the story, while a science instructor might ask students to journal their experiences and observations of outdoor environments. Regardless of the subject, keeping a journal is an effective way to help students personalize their learning and practice writing skills.

Write With Routine

Consistency is key to making your journal a useful learning tool. The more entries you accumulate, the more you'll be able to reflect on your learning process. Many instructors provide students with time to write in their journals at the beginning of class, often responding to a specific question or prompt related to the day's activities. Similarly, students may have to compose additional entries for homework. Whether your instructor gives it as an assignment or not, take time to write about your experiences and new knowledge on a daily basis and make journaling a habit.

Write Informally

Journals are different from many classroom writing assignments in that they require the conversational, personal tone of the informal voice. Where the use of first-person point of view and observations like "I think" and "I believe" might be prohibited in academic writing, you should feel free to write in your journal much the way you would actually speak. The informality of journaling also gives you freedom to explore areas of interest or confusion rather than composing a structured response with a thesis statement. Feel free to ask questions and discuss your personal responses to what you're learning.

Write With Detail

Whether you're describing a personal experience or engaging with a book in English class, journal entries demand description to capture your reactions on paper. If you're discussing a significant moment in your life or something that happened to you recently, try to recreate the story through imagery, dialogue and detail. Describe how you felt during the experience, how things were resolved and how you are currently feeling as you write about it. If your journal focuses on your response to learning in the classroom, you might discuss ways that you relate to the topic. For example, you might describe how you specifically relate to a character in a novel or how reading it affected you emotionally.

Write With Reflection

Ultimately, your journal should give you a tool for looking back on your growth as a learner, taking note of how far you've come and where you still need to improve. Periodically, go back and reread your past entries, analyzing the questions and observations you posed. Then, try writing another entry where you reflect on the learning that's taken place over the past several entries. Discuss your strengths and weaknesses in the subject, how your views have changed and what you might do differently to make your journal habits more effective. You can also use this entry to set goals for future learning, such as becoming a more critical reader or working to strengthen your writing skills.

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How to Write a Narrative Journal | Synonym

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Keeping a personal journal might be a therapeutic way to describe feelings and life events, but it can also be a useful tool for relating educational experiences, processing new concepts and reflecting on progress.

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Jerz > Writing > General Creative Writing Tips [ Poetry | Fiction ]

Writing short stories means beginning as close to the climax as possible - everything else is a distraction. A novel can take a more meandering path, but should still start with a scene that sets the tone for the whole book.

A short story conserves characters and scenes, typically by focusing on just one conflict, and drives towards a sudden, unexpected revelation. Go easy on the exposition and talky backstory - your reader doesn't need to know everything that you know about your characters.

1. Get Started: Emergency Tips

Do you have a short story assignment due tomorrow morning? The rest of this document covers longer-term strategies, but if you are in a pinch, these emergency tips may help. Good luck!

What does your protagonist want?
(The athlete who wants her team to win the big game and the car crash victim who wants to survive are not unique or interesting enough.)

When the story begins, what morally significant action has your protagonist taken towards that goal?
(Your protagonist should already have made a conscious choice, good or bad, that drives the rest of the story.)

What unexpected consequences - directly related to the protagonist's goal-oriented actions - ramp up the emotional energy of the story?
(Will the unexpected consequences force your protagonist to make yet another choice, leading to still more consequences?)

What details from the setting, dialog, and tone help you tell the story? Things to cut:

Travel scenes. (Save words. "Later, at the office, I...")

Character A telling character B about something we just saw happening to character A. (Cut the redundancy.)

Facial expressions of a first-person narrator. (We can't see what our own faces look like, so don't write "A smile lit my face from ear to ear.") See Writing Dialogue.

What morally significant choice does your protagonist make at the climax of the story?
(Your reader should care about the protagonist's decision. Ideally, the reader shouldn't see it coming.)

An effective short story (or poem) does not simply record or express the author's feelings; rather, it generates feelings in the reader. (See " Show, Don't (Just) Tell.")

Drawing on your own real-life experiences, such as winning the big game, bouncing back after an illness or injury, or dealing with the death of a loved one, are attractive choices for students who are looking for a "personal essay" topic. But simply listing the emotions you experienced ("It was exciting" "I've never been so scared in all my life" "I miss her so much") is not the same thing as generating emotions for your readers to experience.

Keep a notebook. To R. V. Cassill, notebooks are "incubators," a place to begin with overheard conversation, expressive phrases, images, ideas, and interpretations on the world around you.

Write on a regular, daily basis. Sit down and compose sentences for a couple of hours every day - even if you don't feel like it.

Collect stories from everyone you meet. Keep the amazing, the unusual, the strange, the irrational stories you hear and use them for your own purposes. Study them for the underlying meaning and apply them to your understanding of the human condition.

For those of you who are looking for more long-term writing strategies, here are some additional ideas.

Read, Read, Read

Read a LOT of Chekhov. Then re-read it. Read Raymond Carver, Earnest Hemingway, Alice Munro, and Tobias Wolff. If you don't have time to read all of these authors, stick to Chekhov. He will teach you more than any writing teacher or workshop ever could.-Allyson Goldin, UWEC Asst. Professor of Creative Writing

2. Write a Catchy First Paragraph

In today's fast-moving world, the first sentence of your narrative should catch your reader's attention with the unusual, the unexpected, an action, or a . Begin with tension and immediacy. Remember that short stories need to start close to their end.

Dry. Nothing sparks the reader's imagination.

The second sentence catches the reader's attention. Who is this guy who goes in his shower every day and screams? Why does he do that? What, exactly, is "scream therapy"? Let's keep reading...

The rest of the paragraph introduces I and an internal conflict as the protagonist debates a course of action and introduces an intriguing contrast of past and present setting.

"It is important to understand the basic elements of fiction writing before you consider how to put everything together. This process is comparable to producing something delectable in the kitchen-any ingredient that you put into your bowl of dough impacts your finished loaf of bread. To create a perfect loaf, you must balance ingredients baked for the correct amount of time and enhanced with the right polishing glaze." -Laurel Yourke

3. Developing Characters

Your job, as a writer of short fiction-whatever your beliefs-is to put complex personalities on stage and let them strut and fret their brief hour. Perhaps the sound and fury they make will signify something that has more than passing value-that will, in Chekhov's words, "make [man] see what he is like." - Rick Demarnus

In order to develop a living, breathing, multi-faceted character, it is important to know way more about the character than you will ever use in the story. Here is a partial list of character details to help you get started.

Appearance. Gives your reader a visual understanding of the character.

Action. Show the reader what kind of person your character is, by describing actions rather than simply listing adjectives.

Speech. Develop the character as a person - don't merely have your character announce important plot details.

Thought. Bring the reader into your character's mind, to show them your character's unexpressed memories, fears, and hopes.

Imagining all these details will help you get to know your character, but your reader probably won't need to know much more than the most important things in four areas:

For example, let's say I want to develop a college student persona for a short story that I am writing. What do I know about her?

Her name is Jen, short for Jennifer Mary Johnson. She is 21 years old. She is a fair-skinned Norwegian with blue eyes, long, curly red hair, and is 5 feet 6 inches tall. Contrary to the stereotype about redheads, she is actually easygoing and rather shy. She loves cats and has two of them named Bailey and Allie. She is a technical writing major with a minor in biology. Jen plays the piano and is an amateur photographer. She lives in the dorms at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. She eats pizza every day for lunch and loves Red Rose tea. She cracks her knuckles when she is nervous. Her mother just committed suicide.

4. Choose a Point of View

First Person. The story is told from the view of "I." The narrator is either the protagonist (main character) and directly affected by unfolding events, or the narrator is a secondary character telling the story revolving around the protagonist.

I saw a tear roll down his cheek. I had never seen my father cry before. I looked away while he brushed the offending cheek with his hand.

This is a good choice for beginning writers because it is the easiest to write. (But if your viewpoint character is too much like you, a first-person story might end up being a too-transparent exercise in wish-fulfillment, or score-settling.)

Second Person. The story is told directly to "you", with the reader as a participant in the action.

You laughed loudly at the antics of the clown. You clapped your hands with joy.

(See also Jerz on interactive fiction.)

Third Person. The story tells what "he", "she," or "it" does. The third-person narrator's perspective can be limited (telling the story from one character's viewpoint) or omniscient (where the narrator knows everything about all of the characters).

He ran to the big yellow loader sitting on the other side of the gravel pit shack.

Your narrator might take sides in the conflict you present, might be as transparent as possible, or might advocate a position that you want your reader to challenge (this is the "unreliable narrator" strategy).

First Person. "Unites narrator and reader through a series of secrets" when they enter one character's perceptions. However, it can "lead to telling" and limits readers connections to other characters in the short story.

Second Person. "Puts readers within the actual scene so that readers confront possibilities directly." However, it is important to place your characters "in a tangible environment" so you don't "omit the details readers need for clarity."

Third Person Omniscient. Allows you to explore all of the characters' thoughts and motivations. Transitions are extremely important as you move from character to character.

Third Person Limited. "Offers the intimacy of one character's perceptions." However, the writer must "deal with character absence from particular scenes."

Point of view is the narration of the story from the perspective of first, second, or third person. As a writer, you need to determine who is going to tell the story and how much information is available for the narrator to reveal in the short story. The narrator can be directly involved in the action subjectively, or the narrator might only report the action objectively.

Yourke on point of view:

5. Write Meaningful Dialogue

Make your readers hear the pauses between the sentences. Let them see characters lean forward, fidget with their cuticles, avert their eyes, uncross their legs. - Jerome Stern

Dialogue is what your characters say to each other (or to themselves).
Write Meaningful Dialogue Labels
Each speaker gets his/her own paragraph, and the paragraph includes whatever you wish to say about what the character is doing when speaking. (See: " Quotation Marks: Using Them in Dialogue ".)

The above paragraph is confusing, because it is not clear when one speech stops and the other starts.

"Where are you going?" John asked nervously.
"To the racetrack," Mary said, trying to figure out whether John was too upset to let her get away with it this time.
"Not again," said John, wondering how they would make that month's rent. "We are already maxed out on our credit cards."

The second example is mechanically correct, since it uses a separate paragraph to present each speaker's turn advancing the conversation. But the narrative material between the direct quotes is mostly useless.

"John asked nervously" is an example of "telling." The author could write "John asked very nervously" or "John asked so nervously that his voice was shaking," and it still wouldn't make the story any more effective.

How can the author convey John's state of mind, without coming right out and telling the reader about it? By inference. That is, mention a detail that conjures up in the reader's mind the image of a nervous person.

Beware - a little detail goes a long way. Why would your reader bother to engage with the story, if the author carefully explains what each and every line means?

6. Use Setting and Context

Remember to combine setting with characterization and plot.

Include enough detail to let your readers picture the scene but only details that actually add something to the story. (For example, do not describe Mary locking the front door, walking across the yard, opening the garage door, putting air in her bicycle tires, getting on her bicycle-none of these details matter except that she rode out of the driveway without looking down the street.)

Use two or more senses in your descriptions of setting.

Rather than feed your readers information about the weather, population statistics, or how far it is to the grocery store, substitute descriptive details so your reader can experience the location the way your characters do.

Our sojourn in the desert was an educational contrast with its parched heat, dust storms, and cloudless blue sky filled with the blinding hot sun. The rare thunderstorm was a cause for celebration as the dry cement tunnels of the aqueducts filled rapidly with rushing water. Great rivers of sand flowed around and through the metropolitan inroads of man's progress in the greater Phoenix area, forcefully moved aside for concrete and steel structures. Palm trees hovered over our heads and saguaro cactuses saluted us with their thorny arms.

Setting moves readers most when it contributes to an organic whole. So close your eyes and picture your characters within desert, jungle, or suburb-whichever setting shaped them. Imagining this helps balance location and characterization. Right from the start, view your characters inhabiting a distinct place. - - Laurel Yourke

Setting includes the time, location, context, and atmosphere where the plot takes place.

7. Set Up the Plot

Plot is what happens, the storyline, the action. Jerome Stern says it is how you set up the situation, where the turning points of the story are, and what the characters do at the end of the story.

Explosion or "Hook." A thrilling, gripping, stirring event or problem that grabs the reader's attention right away.

A character versus the internal self or an external something or someone.

Exposition. Background information required for seeing the characters in context.

Complication. One or more problems that keep a character from their intended goal.

Transition. Image, symbol, dialogue, that joins paragraphs and scenes together.

Flashback. Remembering something that happened before the short story takes place.

Climax. When the rising action of the story reaches the peak.

Falling Action. Releasing the action of the story after the climax.

Resolution. When the internal or external conflict is resolve.

A plot is a series of events deliberately arranged so as to reveal their dramatic, thematic, and emotional significance. - Janet Burroway

1. She becomes a workaholic.

2. Their children are unhappy.

3. Their children want to live with their dad.

4. She moves to another city.

5. She gets a new job.

6. They sell the house.

7. She meets a psychiatrist and falls in love.

8. He comes back and she accepts him.

9. He comes back and she doesn't accept him.

10. She commits suicide.

11. He commits suicide.

12. She moves in with her parents.

Understanding these story elements for developing actions and their end results will help you plot your next short story.

Brainstorming. If you are having trouble deciding on a plot, try brainstorming. Suppose you have a protagonist whose husband comes home one day and says he doesn't love her any more and he is leaving. What are actions that can result from this situation?

The next step is to select one action from the list and brainstorm another list from that particular action.

8. Create Conflict and Tension

Conflict is the fundamental element of fiction, fundamental because in literature only trouble is interesting. It takes trouble to turn the great themes of life into a story: birth, love, sex, work, and death. - Janet Burroway

The protagonist against another individual

The protagonist against nature (or technology)

The protagonist against society

The protagonist against God

The protagonist against himself or herself.

Conflict produces tension that makes the story begin. Tension is created by opposition between the character or characters and internal or external forces or conditions. By balancing the opposing forces of the conflict, you keep readers glued to the pages wondering how the story will end.

Mystery. Explain just enough to tease readers. Never give everything away.

Empowerment. Give both sides options.

Progression. Keep intensifying the number and type of obstacles the protagonist faces.

Causality. Hold fictional characters more accountable than real people. Characters who make mistakes frequently pay, and, at least in fiction, commendable folks often reap rewards.

Surprise. Provide sufficient complexity to prevent readers predicting events too far in advance.

Empathy. Encourage reader identification with characters and scenarios that pleasantly or (unpleasantly) resonate with their own sweet dreams (or night sweats).

Insight. Reveal something about human nature.

Universality. Present a struggle that most readers find meaningful, even if the details of that struggle reflect a unique place and time.

High Stakes. Convince readers that the outcome matters because someone they care about could lose something precious. Trivial clashes often produce trivial fiction.

Possible Conflicts Include:

Yourke's Conflict Checklist

9. Build to a Crisis or Climax

This is the turning point of the story -the most exciting or dramatic moment.

The crisis may be a recognition, a decision, or a resolution. The character understands what hasn't been seen before, or realizes what must be done, or finally decides to do it. It's when the worm turns. Timing is crucial. If the crisis occurs too early, readers will expect still another turning point. If it occurs too late, readers will get impatient-the character will seem rather thick.- Jerome Stern

Jane Burroway says that the crisis "must always be presented as a scene. It is "the moment" the reader has been waiting for. In Cinderella's case, "the payoff is when the slipper fits."

While a good story needs a crisis, a random event such as a car crash or a sudden illness is simply an emergency -unless it somehow involves a conflict that makes the reader care about the characters (see: " Crisis vs. Conflict ").

10. Find a Resolution

Open. Readers determine the meaning.
Brendan's eyes looked away from the priest and up to the mountains.

Resolved. Clear-cut outcome.
While John watched in despair, Helen loaded up the car with her belongings and drove away.

Parallel to Beginning. Similar to beginning situation or image.

They were driving their 1964 Chevrolet Impala down the highway while the wind blew through their hair.

Her father drove up in a new 1964 Chevrolet Impala, a replacement for the one that burned up.

Monologue. Character comments.
I wish Tom could have known Sister Dalbec's prickly guidance before the dust devils of Sin City battered his soul.

Dialogue. Characters converse.

Literal Image. Setting or aspect of setting resolves the plot.
The aqueducts were empty now and the sun was shining once more.

Symbolic Image. Details represent a meaning beyond the literal one.
Looking up at the sky, I saw a cloud cross the shimmering blue sky above us as we stood in the morning heat of Sin City.

The solution to the conflict. In short fiction, it is difficult to provide a complete resolution and you often need to just show that characters are beginning to change in some way or starting to see things differently.

Yourke examines some of the options for ending a story.

Got Writer's Block?

The Writer's Block
Comprehensive Web site that offers solutions to beating writer's block such as various exercises (not necessarily physical), advice from prolific writers, and how to know if you really have writer's block.

Regular access to an instructor who is a published author, and a peer group that is motivated to read your drafts, might just be the extra motivation you need to develop your own skills.

If you are counting on the credits transferring to help you complete an academic program, check with your university registrar.

Overcoming Writer's Block
Precise, short list of ways to start writing again.

Learn through Schooling
Some online colleges and universities offer creative writing courses. Look for ones that offer creative writing courses that cover the plot and structure of short stories.

Show, Don't (Just) Tell
Don't just tell me your brother is funny... show me what he says and does, and let me decide whether I want to laugh. To convince your readers, show, don't just tell them what you want them to know. There. I've just told you something. Pretty boring, huh? Now, let me show you...

Short Stories: Developing Ideas for Short Fiction
A short story is tight - there is no room for long exposition, there are no subplots to explore, and by the end of the story there should be no loose ends to tie up. End right at the climax, so that the reader has to imagine how a life-changing event will affect the protagonist.

Creative Writing Forum
Have a story you'd like to share? Looking for feedback? Feel free to post in this creative writing forum.

MLA Style: Step-By-Step Instructions for Formatting MLA Papers
Need to write a paper in MLA format? This step-by-step includes images showing how to use MS-Word to create the title block, page layout, and works cited list.

Archived discussion of "Short Stories: 10 Tips for Creative Writers"
Dec. 2002 - submitted by Kathy Kennedy, UWEC Senior
(for Jerz's Advanced Technical Writing class)
Jan 2003 - edited by Jamie Dalbesio, UWEC Senior
(for an independent study project with Jerz)
May 2003 - edited by Jerz and posted at Seton Hill University
Jan 2007 - ongoing edits by Jerz
May 2008 - reformatted
Sep 2010 - tweaked Writer's Block section
Mar 2011 - reformatted and further tweaked
Jun 2017 - minor editing. Are "Keds" still a recognizable brand of kids shoes?

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Short Story Tips: 10 Ways to Improve Your Creative Writing

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Explore 18 pages that focus on writing: planning, creating a thesis, writing an introduction, citing works, avoiding plagiarism; MLA style citation quizzes.

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What is Creative Writing?

Creative writing is anything where the purpose is to express thoughts, feelings and emotions rather than to simply convey information.

I'll be focusing on creative fiction in this post (mainly short stories and novels), but poetry, (auto)biography and creative non-fiction are all other forms of creative writing. Here's a couple of definitions:

Creative writing is writing that expresses the writer's thoughts and feelings in an imaginative, often unique, and poetic way.
(Sil.org - What is Creative Writing?)

Writing is a form of personal freedom. It frees us from the mass identity we see all around us. In the end, writers will write not to be outlaw heroes of some underculture but mainly to save themselves, to survive as individuals.
(Don DeLillo)

Writing of any sort is hard, but rewarding work - you'll gain a huge amount of satisfaction from a finished piece. Being creative can also be difficult and challenging at times, but immensely fun.

How to get started

Many people think that just because they've read a lot of stories (or even if they haven't!) they should be able to write one. But as Nigel Watts writes:

There is a common belief that because most of us are literate and fluent, there is no need to serve an apprenticeship if we want to become a successful wordsmith. ... That's what I thought until I tried to write my first novel. I soon learnt that a novel, like a piece of furniture, has its own set of requirements, laws of construction that have to be learnt. Just because I had read plenty of novels didn't mean I could write one, any more than I could make a chair because I had sat on enough of them.
(Nigel Watts, Teach Yourself Writing a Novel)

By all means, if you're keen, jump straight in and have a go: but don't be too disappointed if your first efforts aren't as good as you'd hoped. To extend Watts' metaphor, you may find that these early attempts have wonky legs and an unsteady seat. There are lots of great books aimed at new fiction writers, and I'd strongly recommend buying or borrowing one of these:

I'd also recommend starting small. Rather than beginning with an epic fantasy trilogy, a family saga spanning five generations, or an entire adventure series ... have a go at a short story or a poem.

And if you end up chewing your pen and staring at a sheet of paper, or gazing at a blank screen for hours, try kickstarting your writing with a short exercise. Don't stop to think too much about it ... just get going, without worrying about the quality of the work you produce.

Tips and tricks for beginners

Do some short exercises to stretch your writing muscles - if you're short of ideas, read the Daily Writing Tips article on "Writing Bursts". Many new creative writers find that doing the washing up or weeding the garden suddenly looks appealing, compared to the effort of sitting down and putting words onto the page. Force yourself to get through these early doubts, and it really will get easier. Try to get into the habit of writing every day, even if it's just for ten minutes.

If you're stuck for ideas, carry a notebook everywhere and write down your observations. You'll get some great lines of dialogue by keeping your ears open on the bus or in cafes, and an unusual phrase may be prompted by something you see or smell.

Set up a writing environment that gets your creative juices flowing. The first thing here is to decide which room of the house is best suited for your creative writing efforts. There is no right or wrong here. Some people prefer to write in the bedroom, some in the living room, some set up a home office, some even in the bathroom! If you'd like to listen to music by writing, considering investing in a good headphone or on a sound system. Getting a comfortable and ergonomic chair can also be a good idea, especially if you were going to spend many hours per day writing. Last but not least, consider what kind of lighting and fragrances might help to make you more productive.

Work out the time of day when you're at your most creative. For many writers, this is first thing in the morning - before all the demands of the day jostle for attention. Others write well late at night, after the rest of the family have gone to bed. Don't be afraid to experiment!

Don't agonize over getting it right. All writers have to revise and edit their work - it's rare that a story, scene or even a sentence comes out perfectly the first time. Once you've completed the initial draft, leave the piece for a few days - then come back to it fresh, with a red pen in hand. If you know there are problems with your story but can't pinpoint them, ask a fellow writer to read through it and give feedback.

HAVE FUN! Sometimes, we writers can end up feeling that our writing is a chore, something that "must" be done, or something to procrastinate over for as long as possible. If your plot seems wildly far-fetched, your characters bore you to tears and you're convinced that a five-year old with a crayon could write better prose ... take a break. Start a completely new project, something which is purely for fun. Write a poem or a 60-word "mini saga". Just completing a small finished piece can help if you're bogged down in a longer story.

Consider experimenting with artificial intelligence software that can generate writing prompts and even short stories. Technology is getting to a point where those computer generated texts are very sophisticated, and therefore they can help to inspire or even complement your creative writing work.

Online resources

NaNoWriMo
Every November, hundreds of thousands of people just like you do something extraordinary: they write a novel in just thirty days. Want to be part of the coffee-fueled, manic-typing, adrenaline-rush that is National Novel Writing Month? (NaNoWriMo for short). Make sure you sign up by October 31st. The "rules" state that you can't start writing Chapter 1 until 00.01am on November 1st but you can spend as long as you like before that planning...

Authors' websites and blogs
I read lots of websites and blogs written by authors and these give real (sometimes harsh) insights into what it's like to write professionally. One which has been a strong favourite of mine for many years is Holly Lisle's. Check out her
advice for writers and her weblog. She also has an excellent newsletter which I subscribe to, and some very thorough and helpful e-books on various aspects of writing available for purchase.

Competitions listings
Having a theme and a deadline can make a startling difference to a writer's motivation! If you're in the UK, Sally Quilford's competition listings are a comprehensive and regularly-updated list. Alternatively check out the Poets and Writers list.

I Should Be Writing podcast
This is a practical and inspiring podcast: I Should Be Writing by Mur Lafferty. She describes the podcast as "For wanna-be fiction writers, by a wanna-be fiction writer" (though since starting it several years ago, she's had considerable success selling her short stories) and focuses on science fiction and fantasy.

Common mistakes beginners make

While the most important thing when you're getting started is to simply enjoy flexing your creative muscles, if you're aiming toward publication (or if you want to enter competitions) then it's a good idea to steer clear of some common creative writing mistakes.

Three very common mistakes that often crop up in beginners' work include:

Too much descriptive detail. This is a tricky one, because description is a good thing - and some well-known writers are particularly loved for the vivid, well-realised fictional worlds that they create. (I always think Joanne Harris does a great job with description, for instance.) But when you're new to writing, it's easy to go over the top in trying very hard to describe everything - when readers are more interested in the actual story: the action taking place, and the dialogue between your characters.

Unintentional repetition. This can crop up in lots of different ways - but any repetition of a word that stands out to the reader, without the author intending it to stand out, is a bad thing. This could mean simply using the same word in several sentences running (e.g. "I put the money back in his wallet while his back was turned. Thinking back...") It could also mean starting a run of sentences or paragraphs in the same way - e.g. always starting with "He" or "She" plus a verb.

"Headhopping" to a different point of view. While it's fine to shift between viewpoints in a short story or novel, you need to do so deliberately. Even when you're writing in the first person ("he" or "she" rather than "I"), most readers will expect you to stick with one character's feelings and thoughts - so don't suddenly give us access to the inside of another characters' head.

Ways to get support with your creative writing

When you're starting out with creative writing, you might feel that you're on your own. Perhaps you don't have any family members or friends who are interested in writing (or worse, you might even have people around you who scoff at your dreams of writing success).

There are lots of ways to find support, though. Two of the best are to:

Take an evening class or a weekend course. Unless you live somewhere very remote, there's a good chance that there are writing classes available near you. These might be run by published authors, by organised groups, by local libraries, and so on. You might want to ask around locally or via a local Facebook group.

Join a writers' workshop group. These don't tend to offer "teaching" content, but instead, you'll find a group of likeminded peers who get together to write and/or to share what they've written. It can be nerve-wracking to share your work with others (I still remember my knees shaking the first time I read out a piece to a writing group!) but it's

If finding an offline, local group of some sort really isn't a possibility, there are lots of writing communities available online through forums, Facebook, and so on. Whatever your situation, do try to find other writers who can support you (and who you can support in turn) - it will make a huge difference to your motivation and to your growing skill levels.

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Creative Writing 101 - DAILY WRITING TIPS

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Creative writing is anything where the purpose is to express thoughts, feelings and emotions rather than to simply convey information.

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Extend a sentence with a colon, a semicolon, a dash, or three dots (grammar lesson)

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Useful argumentative essay words and phrases

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Useful Essay Words and Phrases Certain words are used to link ideas and to signpost the reader the direction your line of reasoning is about to take, such...

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http://www.studygs.net/wrtstr4.htm

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English grammar lessons. Search our comprehensive list of easily confused words.

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"The beginning is the most important part of the work.” — Plato.

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Tips for Writing an Informative Article - Writing-Articles

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Tips for Writing an Informative Article plus articles and information on Writing-Articles

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An informative article informs the reader by explaining and giving details on a given topic. The informative article is not an argumentative article that tries to persuade the reader to one side or the other. It covers all the pertinent details: who, what, when, where and why. Newspaper reporting uses informative articles; how-to articles represent another category.

Who

An informative article identifies the people involved. For instance, if the informative article is about a governmental policy change, it includes the congressmen, senators or lobbyists involved in the issue. The article also identifies the stakeholders, those affected by the topic, if any.

What

An informative article includes a brief history of the subject, changes over the years and its present state. An informative article about training golden retrievers, for example, may contain a brief history of training patterns for the breed, what owners train dogs for now and some methods for training.

When

Informative articles contain pertinent dates. For example, in an article about a July 4th event, the reader will want to know the day and time of the event. An article about a historical event, such as the first Constitutional Congress, includes the dates of the event.

Where

Informative articles provide location details for the topic. When reading an informative article, the reader learns about where the topic takes place. In a July 4th event article, the informative article tells the reader where the event is taking place.

Conclusion

The conclusion of an informative article presents the highlights of the article and connects them to the article's purpose. For example, the conclusion of an article about a government policy may remind the reader of possible implications of the policy or cover the historical importance of the issue.

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What Are Informative Articles? | Synonym

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An informative article informs the reader by explaining and giving details on a given topic. The informative article is not an argumentative article that tries to persuade the reader to one side or the other. It covers all the pertinent details: who, what, when, where and why.

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Practise and improve your writing skills. This section has advice and exercises to help you write emails at work and essays and assignments at university.

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Being able to write informative articles will definitely pay off not only in the short term but also in the long term. The readers will be able to appreciate the information you have written in your articles by how you structure them and how your writing style complements the flow of the article. Writing articles with such consistency is the key to winning more readers and gaining authority in your chosen niche as an expert.

Here are some steps you can follow to maintain the quality of your informative articles.

Brainstorm a topic you think you already know about. It could be a hobby, a career, etc. You can also find many resources of your chosen niche in forums, blogs, or websites dedicated to that niche. This will ensure you are comfortable explaining the articles in your own words so as to make the article sound natural.

Make a title that is straight to the point but is also enticing for readers at the same time. Titles like "How to lose weight in 2 weeks" will usually work better than "Lose weight in 2 weeks."

Outline the informative article you wish to write before you start writing the introduction. Outlining helps expedite the whole process and helps you organize your thoughts. This will easily translate to an article that is easy to read and easy to understand. Note the basic outline of the article which is the introduction, body and conclusion.

Write in your introduction what your topic is about and what your reader should expect to know by telling them the contents in your article.

Shorten the sentences and make sure that paragraphs don't get too long so as to consist of more than 5 lines of sentences. To do this you will have to get straight to the point and inform the readers the information they need to know. Most readers that encounter huge blocks of text will just get turned off and avoid reading the article.

Outline the steps in your article if the article you are writing is a how-to article. You may have to use bullets or numbering for this to be effective.

Write in your conclusion the summary of what your article is about, what your readers have finally learned after reading your article. Also, reinforce in their minds the message that you intend to tell the readers in the conclusion.

To Your Ultimate Success,

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Being able to write informative articles will definitely pay off not only in the short term but also in the long term. The readers will be able to appreciate the information you have written in your articles by how you structure them and how your writing style complements the flow of the article.