Do a Google search for any writing topic. You’ll get at least a dozen “o’s” in Goooooooooooogle. Some articles are good. Some are not. You’ll come across OUTSTANDING articles if you take your time.
Sometimes you don't have some time for that.
Today’s post presents overviews of five online articles I’ve found contain sound advice on specific topics.
Five is neither the magic number nor the most appropriate number of articles. There are tens of thousands of articles on writing posted online as stand-alone pieces or in blogs. Five is the number chosen because it’s the number of digits on a human hand. Hence, the title matches the number of articles.
The order of presentation is from pinky finger to thumb. There is a correlation in my mind between article content and finger representation. Feel free to speculate. None of the correlations involve crude gestures. These are the only clues you get.
No correlation is crude or offensive.
Your life as a writer would be dreadful without an opposable thumb.
Included is a teaser for an article labeled GLOVE. It's good enough to be a finger. By the time I found it in my blog post folder, I already had five articles chosen. Gloves are important in their own way, so, I decided that six articles were the way to go.
PINKIE
BookDaily Staff October 24, 2016
If your book cover attracts potential readers, then you definitely need your book blurb to sell your story. Here at BookDaily, we come across thousands of book blurbs. Some blurbs are enticing. Others are forgettable. Here are 5 tips for creating better book blurbs:
ENGAGE.
ALLURE.
HONEST.
QUICK.
INTRIGUE.
This website is no longer functional.
How many books have you rejected immediately after reading the author's book blurb? You like the title. The cover caught your attention. You scrolled down and read the blurb...
and you clicked your way away from that site.
One problem writer's face is lacking the discipline to read their writing objectively. That's never easy. With book blurbs, the lack of objectivity can doom your book to a 7-digit Amazon ranking.
Straightforward and concise, this article will help you craft more effective book blurbs.
RING
8 Tips For Picking Meaningful Character Names
By Jody Hedlund, @JodyHedlund
How important are character names? Does it really matter what we choose? Or how we go about deciding? Should we draw names out of a hat? Or should we wait until exact names are revealed to us in a dream?
I’m slightly hesitant to give advice on how to pick character names. I can’t tell you how to name your characters any more than I can tell you how to name your real-life children. I truly believe the naming process will be unique for each of us.
But . . . I do think there are some general principles we can employ when deciding on character names. Here are eight things I keep in mind when naming my characters:
Oh, bummer, there's no list here.
However you decide what to name who in your books, this article has something to help you. I've been married 47-years. Ya think the ring finger might be important to me?
MIDDLE
Top Typo-busting Tips
Using “Find and Replace” in Word is a useful tool for identifying common typos and homophones and formatting nits. All writers have their “pet nits” and it advisable to keep a list of your own so that you can run a check for them before the final edit. It’s much easier to spot a particular typo by searching through the document than reading it as a proofreader (the brain has an auto-correct facility, which is why proofreading is so much more difficult than one imagines.)
To instigate a nit search in Word, press the F5 key on your keyboard to get the Find and Replace window up:
To clean up formatting nits, please see our Eradicate Manuscript Nits article first, which will result in a more accurate search of all of the above, and also our Layout Tips article, which has a free Word template download that is Kindle/epub friendly.
Find errors in your writing is hard to do. I've posted several ideas about overcoming the common brain response to editing:
"I wrote this. It's mine. I don't want to change it. There's nothing wrong with it."
This article offers a clever procedure to outfox your brain and make self-editing more effective.
INDEX
How to Hyperlink Your Table of Contents
in Microsoft Word
Sep 15, 2014
As an avid e-reader, I love to come across an e-book that has a “hyperlinked” table of contents. Then I can easily click back and forth between the start of each chapter and the TOC—particularly handy if there is a map, table, or other reference in the front matter, or I forgot to mark my place in the text. However, as an editor, I frequently come across manuscripts that appear to be hyperlinked yet the links don’t work on my computer. Also frustratingly common are manuscripts with hyperlinks that seem fine until they are loaded to an “e-tailer,” at which point they cease to function. Fortunately, after quite a bit of trial and error, I have found a system that works the vast majority of the time—so of course, I couldn’t wait to share the news.
Part I: Create a Table of Contents
The very first step is to make sure you are in “compatibility mode,” meaning the document is saved as a Word 97–2003 doc, no matter what version you are actually using. Then type a list of all the chapter headings at the beginning of your manuscript; I would also recommend including any front or back matter you wish the reader to have easy access to, for example, maps, family trees, or glossaries. At this point, nothing is bookmarked or hyperlinked, just typed with one chapter head per line and the heading “table of contents.” Below is a screenshot of my fake manuscript, which I’ll use for illustrations throughout.
Step II: Bookmarks
If you've ever swapped reviews with another author, you might have experienced the lack of links between the Table of Contents (TOC) and chapter numbers or titles. It's far from the worst thing in the world unless you closed the file before you finished and had to scroll to Chapter 12 from the title page.
That activity might have biased your review.
I use this process with every book I self-publish. Once you get the hang of the process, it's almost fun to link the TOC to the chapter headings.
THUMB
Dialog words: Other words for ‘said’
Writing effective, compelling dialogue has multiple elements. It’s not only what characters say but how they say it that matters. Or how you show who’s speaking. ‘He said’ and ‘she said’ can dull and grow boring if overused. Read other words for said as well as tips for keeping your dialog natural and engrossing:
First, what is a ‘dialog tag’?
Tags (like name tags) identify. A dialogue tag is a group of words following quoted speech (e.g. ‘she said’), identifying who spoke and/or how they spoke. Other words for ‘said’ can indicate:
· Volume (e.g. yelled, shouted, bellowed, screamed, whispered)
· Tone or pitch (e.g. shrieked, groaned, squeaked)
· Emotion (e.g. grumbled, snapped, sneered, begged)
The relation between these elements of voice is also important. It would be strange, for example, for a character to ‘sneer’ the words ‘I love you’, since the word ‘sneer’ connotes contempt, which is contrary to love.
Given that there are countless verbs that can take the place of ‘said,’ should you simply find a stronger, more emotive one and use that?
Not always. Here are some tips for using dialogue tags such as said and its substitutes well:
1. Use all dialog tags sparingly
Join Now Novel and get constructive feedback on your dialogue as you grow and improve.
I've been complimented on my dialogs.
I pride myself on making reading my dialogs engaging for my readers.
While I hope you can make those statements, too, you might not be able to.
Everyone who writes dialog will benefit from this article. I was on the FINAL edit of my upcoming Biblical history book, Who Leads the Shepherd?" when I started working on these posts. I went back through the manuscript and adjusted several dialog sequences. The book is a better read because of that time spent.
BTW, you can read Chapter 1 of that book in my blog posts on December 11 and 18 AND Chapter 2 on December 18 and 19.
You might have noticed that too and to were underlined in the italicized sentence in the previous teaser.
You did notice that, right?
I did that to reinforce the need for serious editing. The MIDDLE article explains how to spot those pesky typos.
Now, why GLOVE?
This article presents another important aspect to dialog writing. It will be included in the THUMB blog post.
GLOVE?
This is a bonus. It’s from another site that’s now inoperative. Much of the content is from the MacMillan Dictionary. The content supplements with the words to use in lieu of “said.” You can access the site by copy and pasting this shortened URL in your browser: https://goo.gl/bXB3ah
Hmmm.
Do you think I think this topic is important?
1. adenoidal adjective if someone’s voice is adenoidal, some of the sound seems to come through their nose
2. appealing adjective an appealing look, voice, etc. shows that you want help, approval, or agreement
5. croaky adjective if someone’s voice sounds croaky, they speak in a low rough voice that sounds like they have a sore throat
6. dead adjective if someone’s eyes are dead, or if their voice is dead, they feel or show no emotion
8. flat adjective spoken in a voice that does not go up and down. This word is often used for describing the speech of people from a particular region.
THE FULL LIST HAS OVER 60 EXAMPLES. IT’S A KEEPER!
I've come across another resource full of good information.
Technical Writing:
The Ultimate Guide To User-Friendly Manuals
https://instrktiv.com/en/
Technical Writing:
The Ultimate Guide To User-Friendly Manuals
https://instrktiv.com/en/
Ferry Vermeulen offers a valuable resource for writing your own manuals for nearly any situation. Here's part of his description.
Do you write user manuals or technical documentation? Do you often hear people emphasizing the importance of their user-friendliness?
But you hear it so often, that you actually do not know where to start looking for information about how to do user-friendly technical writing yourself?
UX writing in technical documentation is getting more and more important. Also, the user experience of products' instructions is considered as an important part of the customer journey.
In this guide/post, I have created a complete overview of all the topics to think of, when writing user-friendly copy.
SEO: Writing, writing tips, writing resources
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