Questions

Entering creative writing contests can become a lucrative yet addictive pastime for many writers who are spurred on by the challenge of pitting their wits against those of other dedicated writers. Cash prizes, publication and recognition for their endeavours entice many writers to submit their stories in the hopes of securing one of the top prizes. There are numerous creative writing contests available and a scan through any writing magazine will highlight some but for a more detailed search, simply type creative writing contests into a search engine such as Google or yahoo and a vast array of results will appear.

Finding a contest that inspires is the key to doing well. There is no point entering if the topic fails to stimulate as the resulting entry would lack enthusiasm and passion, something that a judge would clearly see. Writing with passion is important but writing with a controlled and sustained passion is even better, a good writer will be able to impart all the information needed a little at a time, unveiling unique aspects about the characters and the plots at just the right speed to tantalise the reader. When submitting fiction for creative writing contests, the writing must be tight and yet highly compelling.

For greater results in any creative writing contests, adhere to the following points:

Find a contest that appeals and sparks off that all important imagination trail Read the rules several times. Most writers fail simply because they do not pay attention to detail. Don’t just start writing, think. The thinking process is an integral part of being a good writer; they work hand in hand so allow time to mull over potential ideas and then eventually, when happy, make your choice and start writing. Plan the story. Decide where to start within the plot itself and create a compelling introduction by starting off at an exciting point, then draw the reader in with carefully crafted words. Know those characters. If your characters are under-developed and uninteresting, the judge’s interest will wane, so invest some time to create strong, exciting and 3 dimensional characters that appear larger than life. It helps to really get inside the skin of the characters and make them believable. Try to live through the story as you write it, feel every emotion and witness every event that unfolds. This gives your writing an extra and most important winning element. Edit ruthlessly and ensure that the specified word count has been adhered to. Editing is vital to ensure that any unnecessary words are eliminated. Never pad out a story unnecessarily, every word should be important. Develop your own style and a confidence in your work. Don’t leave it until the last minute to write your story. Whilst determination and a ticking clock can kick-start that all important creative process, having time to re-read and edit is paramount. Don’t waste a great storyline and a well-written piece of fiction through starting your story too late and submitting with spelling mistakes or grammatical errors. Check out previous winning entries if available, then you are able to judge the standard and the types of stories that won and consider why. Think from a judge’s perspective, could your submission be improved and achieve greater winning potential?

 Creating a winning story in creative writing contests is easy, but it takes great determination and forward planning to write original and well-thought out storylines that stand out from the crowd.


- annette young

I have two huge issues that are causing me to have major writer’s block:
1.) I have so many story ideas floating around in my head that I can’t focus on one story to write
and
2.) A lot of my stories need endings or some sort of movement that is just on the tip of my tongue which I need to have before I begin writing so I know where I’m going with the story.

Can anyone PLEASE help me, I absolutely have to write and it’s my passion and this writers block is driving me insane
- glamgal

Writers always gain advantages when they form groups. In writers groups, there are always chances to gather more information and receive true critiques. You can groom your writing skills only if you have someone to comment on them. Your readers will not always comment on what you write because they are just interested in knowing what you have to offer.

               

Only experts and critics can truly analyze your writing and tell the positives and negatives. As an increasing number of writers are making profits on the internet and through self-publishing, they form writing groups to share their success and experience. The main idea behind these groups is to find potential writers and help them groom their skills.

 

Writers must always network with other writers to improve their creative writing skills. Going solo is too hard. Finding fellow writers and editors in writers groups who share your passion is extremely encouraging. Communicating with other writers through emails, chats and forums becomes extremely easy. You can also chat with them privately and find ways to help each other. A number of activities to improve your talents can be found in writers groups. A Creative writing community helps you think outside of the box. As the saying goes; it’s hard to see the forest for the trees. A fresh pair of eyes can be beneficial.

 

When you join writing groups, you will find more people to buy your writing. You can come in contact with publishers searching for talented writers. Writing about your favorite topic and getting paid for it is more interesting. By helping others to improve their business with your writing, you become a reputed writer in the industry. If you have something useful and beneficial for other writers, you can share that in the writing groups and become an authority figure. You can participate in contests and band together with other talents from these groups.

 

Creative writing is not easy and only with proper critiques can you improve your writing. In a creative writing community there will be many critics who are willing to comment on your work. They may also tell you the mistakes you have made. These critiques help you improve your writing before you send your content to editors. Unpolished manuscripts are simply ignored by editors. From your fellow critics, you can identify the mistakes you have done and edit your work accordingly. This increases the possibilities of your work being accepted by publishers.

 

Writing style is more important for writers. Even if you are not a native English speaker, you may be good at creative writing. There is a good chance that your writing lacks the style of native English speakers. Writers and editors in a creative writing community can clearly critique your work and tell you plainly how best to evolve your personal writing voice. You can also find links to how-to articles and tools which will help you progress. Expert critics will comment on your plot and help you make your work more shaped. You will also get opportunities to help other writers in return, which will help you identify good and bad writing.


- Perpetual Prose

For many people writing is a passion. On the internet, there are huge opportunities for writers to make money. Everywhere on the web, content is needed and webmasters and website developers are looking for people to write unique articles for their website. If you are ready to make money online and you are a passionate writer, then there are great opportunities for you to become a successful writer.

 

Every writer always wants to improve his or her writing and to do this you must know the best writing secrets. To write better, you have to choose the topics that you know. On the internet, you can find resources about various subjects and you can soon become an expert. You need to know where to find writing resources in order to improve your writing.

 

You should know writing secrets to captivate your readers. You want them to read whatever you present and you want them to cry out for more of your work. As a writer, you must never be satisfied with your writing skill. You have to always look for writing resources to improve your writing. With a positive attitude, you can easily gain readers for your writing. If you have people who like to read whatever you write, you will be automatically motivated to write more.

 

To impress your readers, you must present something of use for them. Never write on something that you don’t like or believe in. Only if you are confident of the subject you are writing, will you produce something people will enjoy.

 

The essential writing strategies dictate the way you present your knowledge to your readers. Every reader is unique and every one of them has different expectations. It is not possible to satisfy all the readers who read what you write. However, it is possible to get as many readers as possible if you know the writing strategies to impress them. Some of your readers may like to read facts and information. Some of them like to hear stories. You have to provide both of these for your readers. The better the balance, the bigger your target audience.

 

Experts who formulate essential writing strategies ask you to concentrate on one major point in each paragraph. Don’t focus on writing long paragraphs because no one has patience to read these, and they are unappealing to the eye. The article must concentrate on three to five major points. Validate each point with facts and information and also include stories. As a writer, you need to have your own style of writing. You can learn from experts, but you should never try to copy their writing style. No one in this world accepts duplicates when the originals are available.

 

Many writers on the internet form writing groups and these groups are great writing resources. The members of these groups are always ready to help those who want to choose writing as their career. You can join these groups and share your knowledge. Even an expert writer can get useful information and writing secrets from these groups.

 

While the focus has been on freelance writing, what you have learned can be applied to any type of writing, be it short stories, novels, works of non-fiction or poetry.

 

 

 

 


- Perpetual Prose

I love to write. I mean, I really love to write. It’s probably the only passion I have stronger than love. But I need to know what college to go to.

What college should I go to for Creative Writing?
- theunbreakable88

I am a first year college student and, yes, I know I have sometime to figure this out but the more I know the more I can decide what I truly want out of my college years. Anyways, I have a passion for creative writing and love to see how words can become vividly produced either in a movie or play. My question is “What are the many options out there?”
- kja_90

Lost my inspiration. Newsletter due to printer but my articles are boring. Spring showers bring sleepless nights and no passion. Where can I find it or fake it?
- desperategotti

So now your a pro blogger and you’re blogging away each and every day.

Then it happens. You never saw it coming. Your flow and passion have driven you and you’ve never had a problem coming up with something to write about.

Until today.

Writers block. It happens to everyone. You can be super passionate about your business. Super schooled in all facets of that business and know enough to fill volumes. But for some reason, today it just won’t come to you.

Don’t feel like the lone ranger here. It happens to everyone. It happens to me. I have been working online for over 13 years now. I have picked up a few things along the way and I absolutely love talking about all things ‘internet’…. So why is it that some days I just sit and look at that awful empty whiteness that is my text editor and groan?

Here is where I have to say, I don’t know. If I walk away from the computer and happen to start a discussion with my wife or someone else that has to do with work, I can roll on about a topic for hours. But at the moment I’m trying to come up with something pertinent to write about on one of my blogs, zippo. Zilcho. Zero.

No worries. There are answers for writing dry spells, and I have learned a few things about writing. One of them is that this kind of thing happens. So the best way for me to counter those dry days is to have some ammunition waiting in the storage shed. Yup, I sometimes stash an idea or two.

In my car I carry a micro recorder. Many times when I’m driving through town something will tickle my frontal lobe and I’ll think it’s a good subject to write about. It might not be, but I grab my little recorder and babble off the idea. Then I forget about it usually. If it’s a really great idea and it sticks with me, usually it gets posted within a day or two. But sometimes I forget about something that really was a good idea and a good topic to cover.

So when the dry day comes, I run out to the car and grab my trusty little recorder and review what’s there. Most of the time I have something that I really did want to write about. Most of the time I find myself nodding and saying, “yeah, I remember that”. Giving me a good item to write about for today.

So instead of blowing off my writing for the day, I still keep the continuity going on my blog. My readers aren’t wondering if I’ve fallen ill, and the search engine spiders are a little happier to find brand new content on my blog. Two good reasons to keep on blogging.

Now don’t get me wrong, if you don’t have a decent idea and can’t come up with one, don’t waste your time putting up a junk post. Your readers won’t appreciate it, they probably won’t buy whatever product or service you are offering, and your spammy post won’t help you much in the search engines.

Follow the number one rule and you won’t go wrong. Write quality posts about your quality product or your quality service. Your words represent you online and they are what your potential clients will judge you on. Whatever you put on your blog will ultimately be a major deciding factor for your users as to whether or not they do business with you.

But don’t become a lost blogger just because of a lost post. Know that the day is going to come when you aren’t quite sure what to blog about, and prepare for it.


- Chuck Crawford

You’ve read through what you’ve written—your first few scenes, your first chapter, your completed novel—and you’ve discovered that your words don’t move you. They don’t make you want to keep reading. They don’t make you laugh or cry. If writing is bleeding on the page, well, you might have scratched yourself, but you don’t need a transfusion. And you don’t know what went wrong.

When you started writing, did you know what story you were telling? This is trickier than it sounds. You might have known your characters, you might have known your world, and you might have known your plot…but even with this much planning done, it’s entirely possible that you had not yet located your deep layer, the heart of your story, the engine that drove you to write it in the first place.

Odds are very good you did not know your theme.

Your theme is nothing more and nothing less than the heart of a novel. It is not a grade-school exercise in tedium, that single droning sentence you wrote that told your reader what you were going to tell him. In a novel, your theme is a living, vibrant, critical thing. It is your particular passion in this particular novel summed up in a handful of words. It is what you need to say.

Need. That’s the critical thing in a theme. If you’re writing novels, if you are doing something this complex and challenging, you’re doing it because something in you needs to write. You have something to express, some particular point of view, some set of life experiences, some driven hunger that you must put down on paper. You NEED. And you need to say what you need.

Maybe it is: In spite of having survived heartbreak, I believe in true love. Or: I believe good can triumph over greater evil. Or: If I were King of Everything, this is the way the world would be.

Your plot is the map of your story. Your theme is the map of your soul, and it is where your characters will find their direction, their flaws, their hungers, and their own passions. They only breathe with your breath, and they only bleed with your blood. Your plot may be Boy Meets Girl, Boy Loses Girl, Boy Gets Girl, but your theme—your take on the world based on your life, your own hopes and aspirations, your own beliefs—might be Chubby Bald Guy Deserves the Love of a Wonderful Woman.

You have themes in you. You’ve built them from love and courage, but you’ve built them from anger and fear, too. You live with them every day, when you’re muttering that argument you had with your spouse or colleague, designing better comebacks; when you’re watching the boss cheat someone and you’re getting furious about it; when you’re watching a disaster and telling yourself, Someone could have prevented that; when you’re hearing the latest political garbage and thinking, This is not the way the world should be.

I could do this better. I WOULD do this better.

And so you write.

You have rich, powerful, compelling, passionate themes boiling inside you. You have something worth saying. Now you just need to know how to figure out what it is, and how to get it on the page.

In Part II: How To Find Your Novel’s Pulse, you’ll learn how to identify your themes, and figure out which are worth pursuing.


- Holly Lisle

It’s November 9th and I still haven’t started my novel for NaNoWriMo. I have absolutely no idea where to begin. Any tips for writing a novel? My main problem seems to be commitment. Or could it possibly be passion? I start with a few sentences (or maybe just a few ideas) and never feel strongly enough about it. Any ideas? I really want to get this thing written and am desperate for any feedback.
Thanks!! : )
- yssirc e