Category Archives: Writing tips

Tips to improve your use of words, your skill at writing, and to help you publish.

#4 Writing Tip: Captivate with Storytelling Content

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Can you tell where I conducted this signing for my first, published fictional story? First one to comment below, gets a $10 gift card from this hot spot.

How can you truly captivate the readers of your blog, presentation, or book? With so many rampant messages vying for everyone’s attention at every turn, you need proven techniques to blast your message through—like storytelling.

One of the best ways involves content rife with storytelling. Content must tell something interesting, real and relatable. Even in business, stories serve to attach a customer to you emotionally. Simply, they hit home.

As a novelist, and avid movie fan, I adore stories. They’ve been a part of my life since I was a small child, starting when my Mom read the magical book The Secret Garden and chilling North To Freedom to my brothers and me. I became a constant reader in high school, especially of historical romances like Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, and…well…anything written by Jane Austin. As I grew older and started appreciating movies with amazing special effects like Star Wars, sci-fi and fantasy became my favorite genre(s). Those continue as my favorites today. Yes, I am a total LOTR and Harry Potter fan girl, and I stand proud.

I self-published my first novel in 2011 and, although it wasn’t written to fit my favorite genre, Rhythms & Muse culminated a life dream for me—along with its soundtrack of five original songs I wrote and performed. Today, I am full-force into writing a young-adult fantasy adventure: the Delfaerune Rhapsody trilogy. This focus on stories and writing led me to my current career in which I help authors and visionary entrepreneurs share their messages through relatable stories, available technology, and creative word of mouth marketing.

So, see what I did there? You’ll note my own tale included the six basic elements in a story:

  1. Introduction: “As a novelist…adore stories.”
  2. Initiating incident: “They’ve been a part…to my brothers and me.”
  3. Rising action: “I became an avid reader…and proud of it.”
  4. Climax: “I self-published…wrote and performed.”
  5. Falling action: “Today, I am…trilogy.”
  6. Dénouement/Conclusion: This focus…and word of mouth.

I bet you found that:

  • You connected more to the story section of this blog entry than the instruction part.
  • You formed mental pictures, which captured your imagination and helped you relate to me.
  • You got the sense that I really enjoy what I do and might actually be pretty good at it. (Well, I’ve been doing it long enough, I’d better be.)

That’s what you want your content to do. Engage!

So, what other ideas can you share about making content captivating? What techniques to you use?

P.S. If you want training to help create your stories, consider contacting my friend and associate Andrea Beaulieu, who specializes in performance coaching with a big emphasis on storytelling.

#3 Writing tip: Develop your book or content idea

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Before you can write anything—a book, a Web page, an article, a post—you must create a concept to intrigue readers, emotionally grips them, and keep them reading. “The idea” serves as the foundation for your content.

Suffering from a lack of inspiration or imagination? Here are my tips for getting started:

Picture your audience

    • Treat this as THE starting point, always. Don’t start to write anything without knowing the exact reader you want to reach with your message/story. Picture one person in your mind: their look, their economic level, their interests, their need (as addressed in your writing). You may even want to give them a family, a background and a pet. The better you know this reader, the better your writing will flow.

    Brainstorm

    • Begin by jotting ideas by yourself, create an outline, use stream-of-consciousness writing until “the idea” hits you.
    • Ask a friend to join you in bouncing ideas around. This happens nicely over a cup of tea.
    • Seek advice from a professional to help you with a strategy session. Although, my Videan Unlimited Marketing Strategy Session descriptions are geared to marketing rather than just writing, looking through them might help you see how strategy help can move you toward an idea.

Participate in blogs/listservs 

You don’t have to come up with the idea yourself, you know. We build networks for a reason. Use them! A couple of my favorite places to find writing inspiration and ask questions of other authors include:

Other ways to inspire ideas

  • Listen to music.
  • Look at artwork or photographs.
  • Take a walk or do something away from “idea generating” for a while.
  • Read others’ writing.

Tell us your favorite ways to generate ideas.

#2 Writing Tip: Use your book cover as a profile picture

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Rhythms & Muse’s back cover. You want to click on it so you can read it, don’t you? I’ll let you watch my Facebook page at Ann Narcisian Videan for the front cover to appear in a few days, or check it out at http://www.tinyurl.com/ANVamazon.

Change your profile picture to your book cover.

Twice a month I meet with a group of established Phoenix, AZ-area writers in my Alliance of Literary Writers, Authors and Yabbering Scribes (ALWAYS) “tribe.” We share writing tips, ideas and resources, which I pass along to you.

The authors attending our May 22, 2012, gathering came up with a number of great ideas, which I will parse out in the near future, but Eduardo Cervino shared a real winner, an easy way to gain a bit more visibility.

He suggested authors change their profile photo to their book cover every once in a while on their social media sites. You know when you see the same image over and over, you tend to ignore it? A change in scenery can pique interest and entice your friends and followers to actually click on your little image to see it in better detail, especially a book cover.

Just make sure you offer valuable information next to the photo, such as a photo description in Facebook which includes your Web site address.

Thank you, Ed! I’m going to do this whenever I’m running a special promotion or on the  verge of a big book event.

Do you have a savvy writing tip to share for authors or freelancers? Please post a comment. (And, don’t forget to ALWAYS write!)

Share your best writing tip and get featured: ALWAYS

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• Need contacts to help your writing?  • Want advice about your writing business?  • Like to hang with other cool writers?
If so, my tribe – the Alliance for Literary Writers, Authors & Yabbering Scribes (ALWAYS) – is the place for you. We’re an informal group of established writers looking for camaraderie, ideas, enlightenment and connection with writers, especially in the Phoenix metro area, to talk about our craft and businesses.
Any established writer can connect with us online through our ALWAYS Facebook page, get listed in our directory of writers on our ALWAYS LinkedIn page, or you can meet with us in person at a lunch meeting.
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ALWAYS gathering
May 8, 2012

Topic:
Share your best writing tip and be featured in my Words•Music•Village blog

Expect an informal, let’s-help-one-another lunch gathering. Come ask questions, gain resources and meet other freelance writers. We’ll share our own best writing tips and hear what works for others. I’ll gather the tips and write up each one,  along with background on you and your writing, as an entry in my new series of writing-tip blogs.

Also, if you have something noncommercial you’d like to showcase — a tool, a resource, a tip — please contact me and I’ll slot you in for 15 minutes of our undivided attention at the meeting.

Next gathering:
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
11:30 a.m.–1 p.m.
(Freelancers typically meet for lunch on the second Tuesday, and authors on the fourth Tuesday of each month.)

Where:
T.C. Eggington’s
1660 S. Alma School Rd., #129
Mesa, AZ 85210
(Just one block south of I-60 on the west side of Alma School Road, toward the south end of the strip mall)
480.345.9288

Cost:
A writing tip, and your own lunch.

RSVP:
PLEASE show the consideration of reserving your spot at the table by:
• RSVPing through the “Attending” link on our Facebook Event page
• Emailing Ann Videan with “ALWAYS May 8” in the Subject line

If you’ve RSVP’d and run into a conflict later, please let me know before the event so I can make the necessary adjustments for the group. Cheers!
…………………………………………………………….

We’d love to have any experienced writer join us at our next meeting … anyone who spends a significant part of his/her week writing, and wants to rub elbows with other writers.

Please do add a your best writing tip in the comments below, but I will feature only those who attend the meeting in my blog. I’m encouraging face time here, wordsmiths!

Storytellers AZ writer’s tips: Photos for blog posts

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Looking for easy places to grab great photos/images for blogs and other writing? Check out these cool portal ideas from Storytellers AZ writers at the April 12, 2012, meeting.

StorytellersAZ.4-12-12

Storytellers AZ writers – like Brian LaPan, Tyler Hurst, Sarah Marques and Matt Fox – meet the second and fourth Wednesday each month, from 7 to 9 p.m. at Gangplank in Chandler, AZ.

• Freedigitalphotos.net, where you can find varying levels of royalty-free photos

• Compfight.com, for a free WordPress plug-in

• Flickr.com’s Creative Commons, offering a vast array of amateur and professional photographer’s images

• iStockphoto, professional images available for a nominal fee

Can you suggest another portal for photos and images which might help other writers or creatives?

Check out our StorytellersAZ iTunes podcast for more hands-on ideas from our writers.

#1 Writing tip: Passive vs. active voice

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Ann Videan at Souvia Tea

Passive:
For her Coffee CommuniTea (CCT) blog, Ann had visited the Souvia Tea Shop and had found this perfect tea-shirt.
Active:
Ann explored the Souvia Tea Shop for her Coffee CommuniTea blog and discovered this perfect tea-shirt.
(Visit Ann’s CCT watering hole reviews at https://anvidean.com/coffee-communitea/.)

My main pet peeve when editing involves the overuse of passive voice. I don’t mean past tense, where you’re describing things that happened before. But passive voice, which uses far too many “to be” verbs and far too few active verbs.

Passive verbs = is leaping, are creating, have experienced, was learning, were thinking, have been choosing.

Active verbs = leaps, create, experienced, learned, thought, chose.

Your goal? Communicate your message in the most compelling, concise manner to intrigue customers and get them talking, right? Here’s how…

Your message jumps off the page when you use active voice. Plus, you shorten the length of your writing by one-third. (This most valuable tip takes into consideration the on-screen scanning that people – myself included – use as an excuse  for reading these days.)

Active voice takes  practice, but simply watch for “to be” verbs followed by words ending in “-ed” or “-ing” and replace them with active verbs. Example:
Passive: The voice was mesmerizing to the student.
Active: The voice mesmerized the student.

Also, try to start your sentences with the subject and use an active verb to describe what the subject does. Example:
Passive: The young girl was overwhelmed by the depths of the woman’s presence.
Active: The woman’s deep presence overwhelmed the young girl.

Employ these two tips alone and just watch your writing become much more effective!

Tell me about your main editing pet peeve.