tips for writers
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A couple of years ago, I wrote a tips piece for The Writers’ Bureau’s on-line magazine, ‘E-Zee Writer’ about how to grab your readers’ attention in the opening to your story: http://www.writersbureau.com/e-zee-writer/september-2011/page4.htm Having hooked that interest, you need to keep it there and then finish the story on a high, leaving readers feeling as if
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Dramatic Dialogue In a short story, you need to hook your reader’s interest straight away. If your opening paragraph is too long or you waffle, you’ll lose his interest. Try opening your story with dialogue. It instantly makes your reader feel part of the story and privy to the conversation that’s taking place. Here are
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If you’re sending a short story or article by post, here’s some quick tips on presentation: Make sure your work is clearly presented on clean A4 paper, typed on one side only. When printing your piece out, place the paper in the paper tray carefully and check that the type isn’t slanted or the ink
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Regular Research However you research your market, your research must be up-to-date. Reference books such as ‘The Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook’ are very useful but they’re often collated months before they’re published. Magazines are changing all the time so the information may not be current. You may have a copy of a woman’s weekly that’s
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What’s In A Name? When you’re sending out a covering letter for your article, filler or story, always use the editor’s name. It doesn’t take five minutes to check the publication’s website or if it’s not there, to place a call through to the editorial desk to find the information you need. It shows that
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Say no to long, lengthy paragraphs Whether you’re writing an article or short story, make sure your work isn’t full of big blocks of text. This is especially important for your opening paragraph. If a reader is faced with a large passage of text, it can be very off-putting as can page after page of
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Amazing anniversaries Every day marks the anniversary of a famous person’s birth or death, an historical event or the invention of something which altered lives. Anniversary-based articles make fascinating reading and a lot of magazines use them. So where can you find out about what happened when? There are lots of websites which feature lists
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Shout It Out! It’s so easy to make mistakes in your writing, whether it’s missing full stops, an extra word, stilted sentences or a comma in the wrong place. An excellent way for highlighting those mistakes is to read your work aloud. You’ll soon see where a full stop should go or if you’ve repeated
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Whether you’re a short story writer, novelist, copywriter or non-fiction writer, always check your work through. If you don’t and your script is full of spelling mistakes, missing passages of text, omitted full stops and commas, then the editor/publisher will think you don’t care about your work. He’ll think that if you don’t care, then
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Dastardly Dashes! Last week, it was the turn of the exclamation mark and this week it’s the turn of the dash (-). A dash is often used as a short interruption in text and like exclamation marks, a few are fine but overloading your script with them makes it harder on the eyes to read,
Esther Chilton 