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Unpack the Bags to Better Understand A Book

December 22, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Unpack the Bags to Better Understand A Book

Admit it -you usually read a book, spend a few minutes thinking about the characters and plot and how it affected you on a personal level, and that’s as far as you go. Are you ready to take it to a deeper realm?

To sharpen your critical and analytical thinking skills and gain new insights, try “unpacking”  the book you’ve just read. You’ll need a pen and paper, or open up a blank document on your computer. Doing this exercise will take some time and thought. But you’ll feel the gears turning in your mind and you’ll fire up some neurons in the process.

Think about the book and consider the following:
- In your own words, write a brief summary of the story.
- What was the purpose of the story?
- What was the writer’s point of view?
- Do you agree with the writer’s point of view? Explain why or why not.
- Were there distractions in the book you had to overcome, such as word choices, technical or complex subjects, writing style, characters, story lines or dialogue?
- Did these distractions serve a purpose?
-Did you have to reread any parts of the book so you could understand them?
- What was your personal reaction as you read the story?
- Did you make predictions as you progressed through the book? What predictions did you make, and did they turn out the way you expected?
-Do you like the way the book ended, or would you prefer a different ending?
- What question or questions would you like to ask the author?
- Would you recommend the book to others?

Reading doesn’t have to be a passive activity. By asking questions and deconstructing or “unpacking” the contents, you’ll become a more powerful reader and thinker.

Another benefit – post your critique on your favorite social media sites and on bookseller sites like Amazon. Others will appreciate your analysis and you’ll get an interesting dialogue going.

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Get that novel published

November 18, 2010 by Leave a Comment
Title page of Peter and Wendy
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Are you a big fan of novels which inspired you to take up writing and write a novel of your own. If this novel is the handy work of a lifetime of imagination and inspiration, then chances are that it may be really good. Some publisher might be currently looking for a fresh writer like you because people get tired reading novels from the same author and are looking for a fresh and thrilling new change.

So if you haven’t yet put those imaginations to paper, now is the time. Get your novel written, focus on the idea here and make it original. Show that you have the making of a great author i.e. discipline, stamina and skills. Make sure you target a specific audience, if it is children’s book that you are writing, and then focus on what children like. In a novel find the category and genre that your novel is going to belong to. To find a publisher who might be interested, do some research on who has published the books of your kind the most? Also check if that published gives chances to young and inexperienced writers. If you are good, then a break is all you need to get started to on your journey to the top. To know about publishers get on to the writer’s market on the internet where all the writers and publishers are listed. You can also find information like the rated that a particular publisher set for his novels. The paper on which you write your manuscript is makes a lot of difference. Publishers are very particular about the kind paper on which they like to read on. Hence use a high quality bond paper and take good care about your presentation. If all is done, then just mail your manuscript and wait with crossed finger for that one call or email. All the best.

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Writing the next Twilight

November 18, 2010 by Leave a Comment
Purge (short film)
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Movie screenplay writers are nowadays working on converting novels into movies. A novel gets its reputation tripled if it succeeds into being picked up as a story line for a movie. The author gets instant worldwide recognition and the novel suddenly becomes popular. More novels are sold after a movie is made than when at first the novel was first published.But not all novels have what it takes to be made into movies. There are many things that a good screenplay writer looks for in a novel. It is a hard decision because to make a movie it takes many hundred times the money that it takes to get a novel published. Hence only after careful consideration will a novel be chosen. Make it obvious that the novel is movie material. Be passionate about your novel and it will be shown in the kind of novel you write. Make sure that your novel has what it takes to be converted into a movie of 2 or 3 hours. If it’s too long don’t worry, it can be made into a sequel. But if it is too short, the only chances that it has is to become a short movie. Like a good movie it needs to have a beginning, surprises, payoffs, twists, defeats, wars, etc. Make it as interesting as you can and different. Lately movies nominated at the Oscars have been adaptation of novels, hence you need to follow the rule, make stories that sell and let it self-execute by itself.
Another quite important part in the adaptation of a novel or a screenplay is to set the contract between the producer rights. To make it more attractive as a movie so that the novel is easily chosen for a movie is to write the screenplay. You will get more than what you would get if you just get the credits as an author.

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Being a Successful Freelancer

November 17, 2010 by Leave a Comment
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Freelancers are bosses of their own, they are not under any pressure to perform and provide a steady flow of articles every day. They can easily roam around the world and still keep earning money just as easily. Freelancers when submit an article are paid per article, this when calculated with the number of articles an on roll employee writes makes freelancing a better career option. A freelancer can be anywhere around the world or just sitting in front of the computer and write articles using the internet. All that a freelancer has to do is worry about his reputation, which once set will earn him more than authors with jobs. A freelancer can find work with other newspapers, internet blogs, advertisers, magazines and novels.

So how does one become a great freelancer? You need to focus on your writing style, find the style that fits you perfectly and stick to it. This will help you identify with your readers and the editors will come back to you. Another very important thing is don’t plagiarize, a little inspiration won’t hurt but plagiarism can ruin your career no matter how good you are. So be careful and do not plagiarize even by mistake. Check your article for plagiarism with the online tools available. When writing about a trend or a fact, remember to include sources of validation in your article. This will give weightage to what you have written and will be taken more easily by the editors. For collecting information be innovative and just don’t depend on Google for information. You can try sending a query to the websites that are similar to your topic, find books that are on your topic, sign up for receiving press releases from company PR agencies and find non-profit associations if any that are remotely connected to your article.

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Editors remorse

November 16, 2010 by Leave a Comment
Writer L. Frank Baum, writing with pen.
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Editors have a huge task at hand of improving upon what an author has written without changing the meaning. It is believed that editors are the final step before the publication of the authors work be it a novel, or an article or any little piece of literature. It is also said that editors clean up the mess left after the author is finished and they are the ones who direct them what to do next. That’s the case most often than not. Manuscripts from authors come with hundreds of typos and small alterations of words which will add more meaning to what the author wants to say. It is just the enhancement of the authors written text. No matter how good the plot and the characters of a novel are, with multiple typos and without depth, it is going to push every one away from it.
The first thing that an editor needs to understand from the manuscript is the purpose of it. Sometimes the author adds a few elements in the story and forgets about it, these are spotted by the editor and the story is streamlined further. Another important aspect of being an editor is organizing the thought of the author. The authors are treasure chests filled with ideas, when in flow, they spit out whatever comes to their mind in any possible manner. This is made into presentable form by the author. The story needs to be broken into smaller and easily understandable parts. The editor looks for roughed up or jumbled ideas that may be mixed along with the main story, these just divert the attention of the reader to useless stuff hence is carefully removed without altering the main story. And in the end the simplest and the most important thing, the correction of typos needs to be carefully checked for.

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Writing Book Reports

November 13, 2010 by Leave a Comment
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Book reports are a literary nightmare for students. Something that cannot be done overnight, no matter how good are you at performing under pressure. A few times the entire question of passing a subject hangs on this one book report. So stop cursing your teachers and your professors for your agony and get to work on writing that perfect book report.
To write a book report you need to slowly read the novel slowly section by section and find out exactly what your professor what’s you to pick up about the novel. Writing a book report is a time intensive process for which pressure has detrimental effect. Hence stop pushing the important book report for the last moment, because you will only end up ruining it. When writing a book report, focus on the whole book as whole and not particular sections. First create a clear outline of the book report that you are planning to make, this will give you good ideas as to the whole picture. Think about the way your professor thinks, if he is the kind of person who likes drama, or the climax or the characters. Focus on their needs and you are sure to get their point of view. The more that you and your professor’s point of view match here, the more the chances of you getting good grades. But if anything is written against his point of view, then consider you grades dropping. And yes never be lazy since your professors have dealt with probably hundreds of other reports on the same book and they have a better idea than you about her student’s minds. Proof reading anything before submitting is important because you will be reading like you are seeing the report for the very first time and any mistakes and changes that need to made will be easily located.

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Writing Poetry

November 10, 2010 by Leave a Comment
Michael Madhusudan Datta
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Poetry is the best way that one can express ones feeling in words. No matter how many essays you write to describe your feelings, a few lines of poetry is instead enough to make others feel the same way that you feel. Poetry is ones imagination put into well-defined words in an artistic manner. It is the most free and description-less form of writing known. Most of the things are left to the reader to fill up. This makes poetry appear different to different people in many different forms and meanings.
But writing poetry is not every ones cup of tea. Poetry comes from a part of the brain that is specialized for art, hence poetry too is considered to be an art. Look for inspiration at all the times, keep a pen and paper at you all the times, and wait for inspiration. Only when you least expect it in the oddest of situations will inspiration hit you, don’t miss these moments. These will start to fade away later if you are not able to get them on paper. Poetry requires the use of metaphors to a huge extent. Hence it is important that you know what metaphors are and learn to use them fluidly. Before beginning poetry writing in any language, you need to get proficient in the language of your choice. To learn words you need to read profusely and learn to incorporate them into your daily vocabulary. And yeah imagination is very important requirement for poetry. This is the only way you can look at ordinary things in extra ordinary ways that will make things look more vibrant and attractive. Also read as much poetry as possible and find the type of poetry you are comfortable with. When you are done, you need to get opinions from both other poetry writers and friends.

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Avoiding beginner’s whoppers

November 8, 2010 by Leave a Comment
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The first novel in any author’s life can make or break her career. If the first novel is a big blunder, the next time it will be extremely hard to convince a publisher to publish your book no matter how good your book is. Even if this is your first book, the reason for it get rejecting might be some whoppers that you have made as a beginner. Publishers’ are vary of these blunders and use them to separate good authors from normal street corner authors.

Look out for empty words that haunt your manuscript. Empty word such as blond bombshell, bloody idiots, guns blazing, etc. which are used in normal life and seen quite commonly used on the television are considered as beginners blunders. This makes that author steer away from the novel even before the plot begins to thicken. Avoid using clichés in your writing since these are considered as red flags by the editors and easy targets to be rejected among the numerous other submissions that are received. Avoid weak writing and use of vivid language that makes adverbs and adjectives into noun. Stick with English language, it is good. When writing stop the explosion of background information at the reader at any cost, even the most chaotic of situations, explain it in a structured and simple manner. Find innovative ways of storytelling and try not to confuse the reader with too much description. Choose the different viewpoints carefully, and pay close attention to their details. If you keep changing the point of view of your characters, it is only going to tell the publisher about you bad writing skills. In the end take care about the grammar and punctuation skills that you learned in your school. This can make or destroy your career in a few minutes.

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The Trouble with Online Content

November 7, 2010 by Leave a Comment

If you have ever considered using online freelance writing as a means of paying your bills, you have a lot of trials on the road ahead of you. While a degree from OnlineEducation.com’s partners will help you, it won’t make up for a lack of drive or a lack of your personal belief in yourself. After all, if you don’t believe in you, how could you expect any editor to believe that you have anything constructive to offer? The fact that you are little more than a bunch of words means that no one owes you much of an explanation; it isn’t like you can go to the other side of the world to threaten someone if they tick you off.

Another trial you are destined to face is your own perfectionism. The online world is full of strange content for a couple of reasons. For one, the online world is ruled by keywords and key phrases, many of which don’t quite make sense when you use them in a sentence. For a beginning reader of online content, it might seem as if the people who wrote some sites didn’t know how to use plural and singular tenses. They know, but that is not what the key phrase in question is.

Also, you are going to have to write a lot to make a good living. Some writers put up over 50,000 words per month, just to make sure their bills are all paid. If this seems like too much for you to bear, you might not be cut out for this kind of work. You have to be a real trouper if you want to get to the point where a simple project will keep you going for a few weeks. Writing e-books, website copy and articles is something of an art, but it’s the same kind of art as breaking bricks in karate.

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Making the book review the best in the class

November 6, 2010 by Leave a Comment
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Anyone can write a book review, hell it is possible to write a book review without even reading a book by looking at the cover and reading the reviews and criticisms’ of other critics. But to write a great and true book review has to have a few important things included in a structured manner. If you are a professional book reviewer, your single review can ruin a good book or just one single word in your review can bore people from even picking it off the shelves and taking a look at it. Hence the next time you write that important book review worth an A+ grade, remember the following points. Do not delete points from your rough draft; only make modification to make it better.
Every book has its lows and its highs. Every character does things with which you might agree with or disagree with. Only after a thoughtful reading of the book can one begin analyzing and criticizing. This can be done after writing the first rough draft. Look at your draft as it is your worse enemy’s book review and find faults in it. Reanalyze the story and make changes to the draft. Make what you want to say profound and clear so that it does not cause any confusion. After the final draft is done, remember to proofread the article. Make sure no stupid mistake are made and see that all the sections are in proper order. Remember not to copy some one else’s book review since your professor has seen your writing style and he is the one who checks everyone else’s book review. Hence if you have copied anything, you are sure to get caught. Even if it comes to explain why you have the written impressions of the book, you will have trouble explaining them if they are copy pasted from somewhere else.

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