Some Knowledge

A good way to write an article is to think of a question that needs to be answered.  The question can be just about anything.  This is your trigger for writing.  A lot of times you do not even have to think up a question.  There are many ways you can find interesting questions.  The Internet is full of forums and message boards where people are always posting questions.  Look around and do a web search if you are stuck for ideas.  You might have heard something on the news or on a TV show that got you thinking.  Maybe somebody asked you a question and you didn’t know the answer.  Maybe it’s just something you are wondering about.  Questions are great for stimulating thought.

Once you have a question, try to find the answer.  This is where the Internet shines.  If somebody knows something about your question, it is possible they have posted the answer on the net already.  Read all the replies on a forum to the question you found there.  What is the best answer?  Do your own research on Google and see if this information is correct.  There are a surprising number of sources you can look into to find answers to many different questions.

Now that you have a question and an answer, it’s time to write.  Your first sentence will probably be the question.  Follow with some analysis of what the question means if this is appropriate.  Then suggest an answer.  In the next paragraph expound upon the answer.  You might put in a statement about why this question is important.  If there is no answer for the question, there is still a reason to write about it.  You might suggest possible answers.  You might suggest lines of research for the subject.  You might write about why the question has not been answered.

When writing an article try not to confuse your readers.  I do not read writing that is intentionally confusing.  This is painful.  Compose your text so that it has a logical flow of information.  Be clear in your wording.  There are a lot of words in the English language that have perfectly good meanings, but that few people know.  If you have to use three words to replace one oddball word, write the three words.  If it’s something you need to use repeatedly, define the word in your piece.  Be kind to readers, and they will enjoy your writing.

Once you have an article written, go over it for mistakes.  Double check any important information or facts.  You do not want to mislead people by making an error.  Hopefully, you are not trying to be deceptive.  Honesty is valuable.  Deception will only confuse and mislead.  Even if you are trying to sell something in your article, it pays to be honest about the benefits of your product.

Writing articles can be fun, as well as helpful to people.  You never know when somebody will need a careful analysis of some situation.  With search engines getting smarter by the minute, it is likely a person will find your article if you post it on the web.  Take your time and do a good job of writing, and your articles will pay off.

There are as many stories, more even, than there are people who tell them.  Many people would like to know how to write a story.  This is in fact either a simple thing, or something not so simple.  Almost anyone who can figure out writing can come up with a story.  How good your story is will depend on how much work you put into it.

Perhaps the first thing you need for a story is a character.  Your main character can be anyone.  Often, when we tell stories to our friends, the main character is ourselves.  This is what’s known as writing in the first person.  It is easy in that the main character is a person called “I.”  I did this.  I did that.  First person gives a story a sense of immediacy and familiarity.  What you want to be aware of is that a reader will come to identify with this character fairly quickly.  When reading stories we often put ourselves in the place of the main character.  This is one thing that makes reading such a personal experience.

If you write in the third person, he did this, she did that, you will need to come up with a name for your character.  This also applies to first person.  Character names can be tricky.  Names carry connotations.  A character named Dillard Mudthump will have a different feel than one named Daisy Softwhistle.  Be aware of names when you are creating your characters and get a feel for what the name conveys to the reader.

Stories all happen in some kind of setting.  This can be a room, a field, a cave, a city.  Just about any place that is accessible to the human mind can be the setting of a story.  Give some thought to where things happen in your story.  Flesh out the setting and scenes with good, yet short description.  A colorful setting goes a long way toward making a scene memorable.

Stories are about change and action.  Something about a character should change in the course of your story.  It makes no sense to have characters remain always the same in a story.  A story moves along as one situation or conflict after another.  If there is no conflict between characters or characters and the environment there is no story.  A good story presents a problem and then attempts to solve the problem.  Stories used to be categorized as tragedy or comedy.  In a tragedy, characters encounter problems and lose.  In a comedy, characters find a problem and then solve the problem.  There are many modern stories that stretch the definitions of tragedy and comedy, but in general, they can all be categorized this way.

To write a good story you will need to think about plot.  Plot is the action that moves the story along.  Plot is not just a bunch of stuff that happens.  Actions in a plot move from one situation to another and the story unfolds.  A character checking his watch and noting that it’s 3:27 is not a plot element unless the fact that it’s this time means he has missed the bus that would have taken him to an important meeting.  Actions in a plot have meaning to a story.  In the past, one of the most overused fillers in stories was the cigarette.  The fact that a character lights up a smoke means nothing to a story unless it conveys a sense of anxiety or impatience on the part of the smoker.  You can use metaphor like this to show things about your characters, but unless it moves the story forward it is not a plot element.

It is not hard to write a story.  It takes a lot of practice to write a good story.  If you want to write fiction, you should set aside a time every day to do your writing.  Try to arrange a block of time when you will not be disturbed.  Allow yourself to experiment, but do not go off on pointless tangents.  If you are at a loss for what to write next, set aside your story and start another one.  What is important is that you spend time actually writing something.  Thinking about what you want to write is good for getting ideas, but you can think while you are writing words.  Once you have a rough draft, you will be able to edit and revise.  A story is written many times.  You make a start and then go over what you’ve written and make changes.  It takes a lot of time to write a decent story.  Put in the time and you will see results.

There are many markets and venues for articles you might write.  In the old days, before the Internet, the few places to publish articles were newspapers and magazines.  You would contract work from an editor and produce an article on a given topic, and then you would get a check.  Things work a little differently today.

There is a much larger market for articles in the online world.  The billions of websites all are looking for content.  The hundreds of millions of blogs all post and generate content of various kinds of writing.  Then there are ezine distribution sites and all the commercial sites that all publish a lot of articles.  If you look for article marketing in any web search you will find an endless stream of data.  It seems everybody is looking for interesting, original content to publish on the web.

How does a person get paid for writing articles on the web?  It all boils down to the same strategy of selling something.  Money enters the equation when there is some product that you charge money for.  You might only use the article as bait to draw a customer’s attention to some product.  You might offer to sell a person an ebook you have created after they look at your original article.  There are many angles to the economic aspect of writing articles.

One website I saw today sells link-building articles.  They charge a lot of money to write an article that has something to do with your website, then promote and post that article to many online article directories.  A 750 word article might cost $700 from this agency.  If I could get $700 for every article I have on this blog I could take a year off and go on vacation somewhere expensive.

The idea behind writing articles for money is to write good articles that attract attention to your income-producing website.  If you want to look at writing as a job, you can always try to sell articles to websites and magazines for some cash.  There are many freelancing sites online that list writing jobs.  The problem with these is that they often advertise work that does not pay well.  I have seen people advertising a job writing an entire book for some publisher that pays as little as $100 for an entire book.  Some of the advertisements do not even list a price, but tell the writers to bid on projects.  This is just not profitable.

One place you can get paid for writing is Helium.com.  They give a small percentage of their profits from ppc advertising on their site after you post an article.  You can also bid on jobs for magazines and other article buyers that are listed in the marketplace.  The problem with Helium is that it pays very little money.  It is a good place to get some practice writing, though, and you can get feedback on your articles from other writers.

Writing is an enjoyable thing to do.  You can learn a lot about the world just by trying to write articles about various things.  It is good practice in the use of language for communication.  You might have to look into various business schemes if you are going to try to make money with writing.  There are many opportunities to cash in on creating content these days, and you are no longer limited by the restrictions of working for a paper publication.  Use the tools of the web to find your own way in the business of writing, and you will be able to enjoy your work and make some money.

The first thing you will need to write an interesting article is information.  These days, just about anything you might be interested in finding out can be found on the Internet.  It is as simple as using a search engine to research your topic.  Of course, depending on your subject, you may have to turn to more traditional sources of information such as libraries.  There is a wealth of resources in just about any library, and immense libraries can be found on almost any college campus.  Get a backpack and some notebooks and head out to the library if you can’t find what you’re looking for online.

Chances are you will find more than you need to know to write any article from online sources.  Check out the Internet libraries like UPenn Digital Library if you want public domain books to quote from or research in.  Often times old sources of information will provide a simpler explanation of some phenomenon.  Always check old sources out for accuracy though, as science has a tendency to progress.  For history or literature, even some old books can be just as good as new.

Once you have read over your sources and taken notes on the information you will need for your article, it is time to start writing.  If you are working on a long article it will be helpful to make an outline.  Gather up the important information and the point you are trying to make and write an introductory paragraph.  The introduction of an article should get across all the important things you are trying to say.  Often times people will just read the first few sentences of an article and no more.  You want to make your purpose known as soon as possible in writing an article.

When you did your reading or other research, you will have written down some of the facts or observations that you will use in writing your article.  This is the main part of the information you will be trying to communicate to your readers.  People want to learn something when they take the time to read.  The facts will also give your article credibility and authority.  Make sure you have your information correct.  Writing is not only a process of communicating to a reader, but it also informs the writer, who may be learning something new when they work up an article.

It is better to have a more conversational tone when you are writing something than to be correct and proper and authoritative.  Official sounding language can be very boring to read.  Use an active voice.  Avoid too many adverbs and qualifying words that limit the impact of what you write.  Present your information as simply as possible and do not try to obscure your points with extra words.  An article is something people read to get information.  It is not a work of fiction that is meant to entertain.  Still, if you use a good tone of voice and are crisp and understandable, an article can be very enjoyable to read.

If you want to write an interesting article, you will have to have an interesting subject.  Not many people are interested in some little-known arcane fact about some aspect of a game that went out of vogue twenty years ago.  A lot of people are interested in celebrities.  This does not mean that you can not write a very interesting article about ancient Greek pottery.  It just means not as many people will want to read such an article.  For your writing to attract an audience it has to be about something that draws people’s attention.  Do some research online into what people are interested in and pick your subjects accordingly.

An article is not just a list of facts.  You should relate your subject to the broader experiences in life and explain why you think it is important to be concerned with this material.  All subjects are in some way part of human experience.  Even such strange and distant objects as black holes and neutron stars have some appeal to some people.  Anything that has been studied by human beings is possible subject matter for an article.  You might write an article about your visit to the park.  You might write about your own experiences in school or on the job.  You do not have to base your writing on the work of other people.  If you do your own scientific research, you are expected to write about your own work and relate it to the work of others.  The same process of gathering information and arranging it into an understandable piece applies.

Good research, an interesting subject, clear and entertaining style, and relevance to life are all ingredients in any good article.  Prepare your material and read over your work before you publish in whatever medium you use.  There are many things a person might be interested in reading about.  It is the job of the writer to identify and expound on a subject so that readers might be informed.

Writer’s block can strike anyone.  You may be in the middle of some long project and just don’t know where to go next with your work.  You may not have any great ideas for starting a shorter piece.  It might be something that has you preoccupied and will not let you think about what you want to write.  Whatever it is, it is frustrating.

The only way to beat writer’s block is to sit down and start writing something.  Maybe it’s only a note to yourself about what you have to do later.  Maybe it’s a shopping list.  The important thing is not to let your lack of ideas stop you from moving forward in your work.  You can often generate ideas just by starting to write about something.

Sometimes it is a simple fear that what you write will not be good enough to please people.  You cannot always write to please people.  Sometimes you just have to write something to please yourself.  Maybe you are tired of writing the same sort of things every day.  Maybe you just do not know what happens next in your story.  Whatever the reason, the longer you sit at your desk and do nothing, the longer you will be blocked.

It is sometimes helpful to stop your routine and try something different for a change.  You might look up some writing exercises in a book on writing, or you might look up some writing triggers on the Internet.  Whatever you use to spur yourself to write, go with it for a while and see where it takes you.  There are thousands of different things you can write about.  There is no end to what can be described with language.

Many times, a piece of writing is an answer to some question.  If you find yourself stuck for ideas, find some question and try to answer it.  It is easy to look up information in this modern age.  All the answers you need are at your fingertips if you have a computer.  Where there are no answers, there are always speculations.  Does life exist on other planets?  There is no answer to this question at this time, but there are endless possibilities.  One simple question can be the basis for a whole book.

If you can’t even find a question to answer, try making up your own questions.  Imagine you are talking to a friend who has some kind of problem.  Problems form the basis for most fiction.  Problems are also the reason much research is done.  Medicine, technology, science, history, all these fields and more are based on some set of problems.  If you are stuck for something to write about, try thinking in terms of problems and solutions.

The longer you sit and try to think of something to write about, the less time you will have to actually write something.  You do not have to solve all the problems in the world.  You do not have to answer everyone’s questions.  You don’t even have to tell an original story.  All you have to do is write down your own thoughts and observations.  Decide on some subject or theme and start writing.  If nobody feels like reading what you write, it doesn’t matter because you will have read your work and know that it is good enough.  Don’t feel like you have to change the world or write the answer to all the world’s problems.  Just write what you care about and what you think about.  Take your time and tell your story the way you think it should go, and pretty soon this writer’s block will be broken.

There’s something that has been lacking in this blog recently.  I’ve been trying to put my finger on just what that is.  Could it be an original idea?  Possibly.  I’ve been getting all my latest ideas from the web.  There is something to be said for writing stuff that people are interested in.  My most popular entry was something I saw on the news, then researched online.  If nobody wants to read what you write, then why bother?  Still, originality is something I look for in anything I read.  If I’ve seen the same thing all over the place before, there is no reason to read further.  If I learned the same thing in grade school, why would I bother to go over it again?

I can see where a lot of the ideas that people get for writing about come directly from the news media.  Most of these ideas are the results of what some person does.  A lot of news stories have limited lifespans.  The results of an election are only news until everyone hears about them.  After that it becomes part of common knowledge and any story about that election will be pointless.  Nobody wants to know what the score to last weeks game was, they want to know who will win next week.

It’s probably good to find out something about what people are interested in if you are planning to appeal to a lot of people.  Sometimes this leads to random posts about things that have absolutely no relation to each other.  Still, if you want to find out some information, you look for it specifically.  All those people who read my post about the cookie diet today were here for a reason.  They wanted to find out how to lose weight by eating cookies, and I told them.  I must have had five cookies myself today just thinking about that nonsense.

There’s no reason you can’t say something original about some given topic.  You do not have to write as if you were a parrot, just repeating somebody else’s observations and opinions.  Nobody wants to read the same thing over and over again.  In everything I write I try to inject some original thought.  Maybe I just scout up some links to good information and state my opinion.  It’s a blog entry, not War and Peace.

(That’s a link to a download page.  A link to the actual text might be something malicious to do to any readers using dialup connections.)

In any case, I still feel a bit unoriginal because I haven’t been thinking up all of my own topics.  If you write for a magazine you might not think up your own story ideas.  In general the editor will tell you what he wants a story on.  It’s your job to put together something original and interesting.  Being the editor of this blog myself gives me a lot of freedom.  At times, it might be too much freedom.  How am I supposed to know what people are interested in?  Unless I go around asking thousands of people what they want to read about I haven’t got a clue.

Originality is great in fiction.  There are limits to originality in non-fiction though.  You can not just make up things that are supposed to be true or that people are supposed to have done.  That kind of originality is what gets people in trouble.  You have to get your facts straight and have some references to back you up if you need them.  Personally, I hate reading footnotes and references.  That’s why I don’t use them.  I read all I can find in a certain amount of time on some subject, then what I happen to remember, that’s what I write.

This might not be the best way to go about writing authoritative text.  I’m not really trying to be an authority.  I have a pretty broad knowledge base and use it to evaluate the subjects I read and write about.  If there is something I don’t know I look it up, either online or in books.  I choose what I write about as carefully as possible.  If I have absolutely no interest in some subject I am not going to bother to write a word about it.

Originality is a tricky subject.  All the words we use get their meaning because they are not original.  Words have meanings that are agreed upon, which is how communication works.  If people didn’t all agree upon the meaning of words they would all speak their own language and nobody would know anything.  How you put those words together is where originality comes from.  The scenes and information you present with your skill in language is where you do the work of writing.  Copy and paste is one way to say the same thing as another person.  This is how robots operate.  Word for word copying is not original.  Presenting the same general ideas as another person is not saying anything new.  Stating your own understanding and interpretation of some situation is where originality begins to show.  Giving your own evaluation and opinion on a subject is what makes a piece original.

When you think about it, most writing is in some way about life.  Even if you are writing about rocks and stones, it is your own living observations that you are making about these inanimate objects.  Life has many facets and many angles and there is no limit to the different material you can use in any written piece.

Just about anything you do in your life can be the subject for writing.  Getting up in the morning, walking your dog, taking care of your family.  You don’t need anything earth-shattering to have a good piece of writing.  How you handle your material makes all the difference.  If you can draw people into your experience and make them see the world through your eyes, you have done your job as a writer.

When you are describing some event from life, you will want to include as many concrete details as you can without bogging down your story.  The color of flowers, the details of the river, the clothes people wear.  Work these details in to your narrative and you will have a more impressive work.

When writing about life it is impossible to separate the thoughts and feelings of the narrator from the world described in the work.  State your feelings clearly and be succinct.  Include reasons for your reactions such as past experience.  If you need to digress, lead into your alternate story smoothly.

Any event in your life can be worked up into a story.  Try not to embarrass or slander people in your work.  If you have to, change names.  We all experience little stories and dramas each day throughout our lives.  With a little time and effort we can mine this experience for material to write about.  If you work in fiction, you do not have to follow events as they actually happened.  Your story does have to make sense.  Pay attention to detail and anything you write will be worth reading.

If you want to write a fantasy story or novel, you will have to do some planning.  The first thing you need for your story is a setting.  This is usually described as world-building.  You will need a world for your story to take place in.

The most important thing about a world is the name.  If you pick a name that seems silly or that is hard to pronounce it will throw off your readers.  Go do a search for Seventh Sanctum on the net.  There you will find hundreds of name generators.  It is easier to sort through a list of possible names for one that sounds good than to use your imagination to think up good names.  Look at Tolkien, all he could come up with for a name for his world was “Middle Earth.”

Get some character names from the generators while you are at Seventh Sanctum.  You will need characters.  If you are swift with a computer start a database of characters and cities.  Write down all the information about these characters and write up some pages on what is in each of your cities.  This will help you imagine your world.

Now you will need to think about a plot.  Plucky adventurer saves world from evil magician is not a plot.  That is a cliche’.  Think up an original plot that you will not get tired of as you write your story.  Writing is like reading, only it takes ten times as long and you have to make up the story as you go.   Think of a good place and scene to start your story.

Now start writing.  It doesn’t matter if your story is any good.  It doesn’t matter if it is interesting.  You want to have some words down on your computer or the page that you can work with.  Write out a complete scene or chapter.  Then set it aside for a day.  Come back to your work the next day and read it, aloud if possible.  How does your story sound now?

After you read your story is the time to start editing it.  Cut out anything that does not move the story forward.  Those flashbacks to childhood should be cut.  That long description of the magic sword needs to be trimmed.  The lame joke about the fat boy tripping over a rope is not needed.  You want the reader to get into your story and move along with it.  When you have a lively text, continue.

It takes a long time to write a story or a novel.  You will not be able to finish one in a single sitting.  Set aside a certain time each day to work on your novel and in a year or so you will have something to try to sell.  Never pay to have your story published.  People buy stories.  Publishers make money off customers who are readers, not the writers they print.  Get a copy of Writer’s Market and find out which companies publish your kind of story.  There are hundreds of publishers.  If you get desperate and are sick of rejection, publish your work on the Internet.

Writing a fantasy story is not something that takes tons of imagination or skill.  What it takes is dedication and committing yourself to doing some work every day.  There are lots of books and websites that will help you if you are totally lost, but the thing that will help you the most is actually doing the writing.  Practice makes perfect, or at least passable.

If you want to make your writing easy to understand you should start with the main point.  State your subject clearly.  Use short sentences.  Keep your word choice simple.

Write in short paragraphs with one idea per paragraph.

If you have a lot of points to make use the bulleted list.  Do not do anything stupid to make your words hard to read.  This means do not use confusing backgrounds or fonts.  It is impossible to read some websites because the background obliterates the text.

Do not use long complicated sentences that confuse the reader.  Do not write in the passive voice.  Use a “subject, verb, object” sentence structure.  Do not misspell  words.

Arrange your pages in short columns so that it is easy for the eye to follow from one line to the next.  Try to avoid long passages that require scrolling.  Clearly state the point of your message.  Do not confuse or mislead the reader.

Clearly identify who is speaking in quoted text.  Make sure your facts are correct.  Be honest.

Avoid jargon and overuse of acronyms.  Summarize your conclusions at the start of a piece.  Most readers will merely scan your work.  State the facts in a simple manner.  Complicated structures are not style, they are sophistry.

With a little practice you can write easily understood prose.  You want to communicate and convince with your words, not confuse and annoy.

The key is to write something that people are interested in.  How do you find out what interests people?  That’s a question a lot of people ask themselves.  There is such easy access to information on the net these days, you can pretty much write about whatever interests you, and then let people find your article.  You can write just about anything and somebody will have some interest in it.  Even something like a poem can attract attention.

Still, the fact remains:  If you want a lot of readers you need to write about something that a lot of people care about.  You can be pretty safe in the assumption that people on the Internet will have some interest in computers.  This is the one thing any Internet publishing will have in common.  You need some sort of computer to access the net, even if that computer is nothing more than a PDA or an IPhone.  If you write articles about computers there will be a ready-made audience for your writing on the net.

There are many things besides computers that people have in common.  We all have bodies, and we all have some kind of health issues.  Even if people are healthy they are still concerned with how to stay healthy and how to get more healthy.  If you write about how to improve the body, there will be a ready audience for your work.  You do not have to be a doctor to write about health, but you do need to do your research.  It would be unfortunate if you gave people bad advice on maintaining their health and somebody suffered some kind of problem or injury because of something you wrote.  Still, there are books available at libraries and stores that can give you a good foundation in health.  You can even audit college courses on many things by looking for lecture podcasts on the web.  UC Berkeley has many webcasts from different classes if you are interested in picking up some free knowledge.

No matter what you write, if you post it in some place that is accessible to the public, people will eventually find it.  You can maximize your visibility by choosing a good title for your work.   The title of your blog or web page is the first thing a search engine or person surfing the web will see.  You need something that clearly states what your page is about.  If you give your piece a title that has nothing to do with the content of your page you will just confuse people.  Worse than confusion, people will feel misled in looking at your work.  If you lose the trust of your reader you may as well have not written anything.  A good title is short and to the point.  It will convey the subject or theme of your piece and lead the reader into viewing your writing.

The important thing in any piece of writing is the information it contains.  Suppose you are writing a review of some automobile.  You will want to look up all the facts about that car you can.  You will want to know what engines it comes with, what accessories are standard or optional, what colors you can get it in, what kinds of interior it can be equipped with, and what power options are available.  You will also want to know what kind of mileage it gets, what kind of acceleration performance it has, what safety options it can be equipped with, and what tires it uses.  All these facts are the meat and potatoes of any article you write.  You will also want to have information on how the car handles, how comfortable it is to drive, how is the visibility when you are driving, and what entertainment options does it come with.  In short, you will want to look up all the information about your subject that anyone could possibly want to know.

Once you have all the facts for your article it is just a question of putting them all together in an interesting story structure.  You might want to describe a test drive you took, if you test drove the car you are writing about.  You might want to describe how you found out about all the different things about this vehicle.  You will definitely want to make an interesting framework on which you can post the different facts you have discovered.  Your piece should be easy to read and have an enjoyable format.  You are not just trying to cram facts down people’s throats, you are cajoling them into knowledge of your subject.  Use active verbs and descriptive phrases that convey concrete images.  You should describe your own feelings, but do not try to project feelings onto your readers.  If your intention is to sell something, point out all the advantages that ownership will give to the potential customer.  If your intention is just to tell an interesting story, focus on the story of how you interacted with your subject.

In your style of writing it is best to be as simple as possible in relating your story.  Big words and complicated sentence structures only add to confusion.  If you use a word processor run your work through the grammar checker and check your statistics.   You should have some indication of grade level, the Fleishmann-Kinkaide rating I think it is called.  The lower this number the better, to a point.  It is considered best to write to about a 5th grade level.  Long sentences, big words, and convoluted structures will make this level go up.  Also it is best to try and avoid the passive voice.  Say:  He picked up the bag.  Not:  The bag was picked up by him.  Active voice gives a piece a moving quality that makes it read easily.  A grammar checker can point out all these problems.  Do not rely on the computer to write your piece though, as often grammar checkers and spell checkers make mistakes.  Use your own judgment in editing any piece of work.

If you write a good article that has useful information, people will eventually find it if it is posted on the Internet.  You do not have to worry about keyword optimization or anything else if you have good facts in your story.  The facts are the keywords.  If you write clearly in a simple style that people can understand you will attract people to view your work.  If you can give some value to your audience as far as the work you have done in researching your piece, then they will return to see your future efforts at writing.  The Field of Dreams is your work.  The reason people read your work is the benefit they derive from it.  If you place valuable information in an accessible format you will attract attention.