Writing Poems and Short Stories

There's no better way to practice the art of writing than to write a few poems and short stories. Have you ever tried your hand at them? It's surprising the number of writers that have never done this. Instead they jump straight in with their first novel.

Poems

Poems are a great way to get your creative juices flowing. Why? Because they force you to either rhyme or scan or express your feelings. And most poems are quite short, probably less than 200 words or so. Stuck for a subject? Then just pick a sentence from a book and write a poem about it. It doesn't have to be very long. Or else choose something in your house, or your son or daughter, or your cat or dog. There are a hundred different subjects you can find. Let me try my hand at a limerick:

Writing Poems and Short Stories

I once had a big tiger cat
Who got incredibly fat.
I cut out her food
She got in a mood
And she swallowed my other pet, rat!

There we go, less than five minutes and that included being attacked by my cat, Pipsqueak. She's a little one year-old tabby by the way. The point is it's not that difficult to write poems and practice the art of writing. As we've said already, the more you write, the better you will get.

Short Stories

Onto short stories. The beauty of short stories is that you don't have to sit at the keyboard for days on end to finish them. Ideally, short stories should be somewhere between 3,000 and 10,000 words in length. Assuming you write at about 1,000 words an hour, you can see you've only got to write for three to ten hours. I write at about 1300 to 1600 words an hour usually, so I ought to be able to write a short story in two to seven and a half hours. That's only a couple of days work! Think about it, you can have a complete story in two days!

How do you write a short story? First spend a day or so planning the story. Lay out a simple plot, introduce a couple of characters, add some conflict and there you go. Then jot down somewhere between ten and twenty story points. Next re-order them to make sure the pace of the story is correct and the conflicts are in all the right places. Finally, start writing. The objective is simple. For each story point you are going to write somewhere between 300 and 500 words. Don't worry about getting it exactly right, just write. Don't self-edit, don't re-read what you've written. Just write each story point and move onto the next. At the end of your exercise you'll have a short story that will be ready for editing at some point in the future. And I'll say this again; just leave the story and let it mature on its own in the dark. Let the book 'cook' for a while and for now just be happy that you've written a short story.

Another reason for writing short stories is to discover those that could be turned into full-length novels at some point in the future. Sometimes an idea we have for a story doesn't go anywhere. We write the ten to twenty story points and that's it. There's nothing more in it. But sometimes, we write the short story and suddenly realize there's a whole world waiting to be discovered in this story. It has the makings of a full-length best seller. Welcome to the world of finding your niche!

At the beginning of this article I wrote that some people jump straight into writing their first novel instead of practicing with poems and short stories first. Hopefully you understand the point a little better now. The truth is that most writers have a hundred story ideas, and sometimes one or two they are convinced will turn into novels. But that's it; they're just ideas. Like anything in life, you need to prove the idea. You need a prototype. The short story is your prototype. Once you start writing your ten to twenty story points, you'll soon discover how long the legs on your story are. As an example, when I write my YA fantasy novels I generally need between 200 and 250 story points to complete the novel, and each story point converts to about 550 words. This gives me a novel of about 125,000 words. It's tough to come up with 200 story points out of the gate and it would be terrible to get half-way through a novel and discover you have nowhere to go.

So, your task is to write a short story over the next few days so that by the time we get to the article on self-editing you have something to work with. Enjoy!

Writing Poems and Short Stories
Check For The New Release in Health, Fitness & Dieting Category of Books NOW!
Check What Are The Top Cooking Books in Last 90 Days Best Cheap Deal!
Check For Cookbooks Best Sellers 2012 Discount OFFER!
Check for Top 100 Most Popular Books People Are Buying Daily Price Update!
Check For 100 New Release & BestSeller Books For Your Collection

Paul Dorset invites you to interact with him directly on his author blog at http://pauldorset.blogspot.com. He is very active in the field of young adult fiction and always welcomes queries and reader comments. His first YA fantasy book can be found on Amazon and Smashwords and is available for download for only Signature.99!

mobile phone watches Best Price Golf Cart Ultimate Light Kit Upgrade Buy Acdelco D1483D Ignition Lock Cylinder For 118

Report Writing - How to Format a Business Report

Introduction

Report writing is a time consuming business so it is a great shame if, having devoted all that time to writing your report, the quality is such that hardly anyone can be bothered to read it. Quite frankly, most report readers do not actually read all the report; they are too short of time. You might as well know it and accept it -- that is normal. They only read the parts that interest them. Frequently these are the summary, the conclusions and recommendations.

Short Stories

Of course, some readers do need all the details you so carefully included, they are specialists, but most do not. Most readers just need two things: that the information they want is where they expect it to be so they can find it, and that it is written clearly so that they can understand it.

Report Writing - How to Format a Business Report

It is similar to reading a newspaper. You expect the news headlines to be on the front page; the sports coverage to be at the back; the TV listings on page whatever and the editorial comment in the middle. If what you want is not in its usual place then you have to hunt for it and you may get irritated. So it is with a report.

There is a convention as to what goes where. Stick with the convention and please your readers. Break the convention and people may get slightly irritated - and bin your report.

So what is that convention, the standard format?

Standard Sections

Title Section. In a short report this may simply be the front cover. In a long one it could also include Terms of Reference, Table of Contents and so on.

Summary. Give a clear and very concise account of the main points, main conclusions and main recommendations. Keep it very short, a few percent of the total length. Some people, especially senior managers, may not read anything else so write as if it were a stand-alone document. It isn't but for some people it might as well be. Keep it brief and free from jargon so that anyone can understand it and get the main points. Write it last, but do not copy and paste from the report itself; that rarely works well.

Introduction. This is the first part of the report proper. Use it to paint the background to 'the problem' and to show the reader why the report is important to them. Give your terms of reference (if not in the Title Section) and explain how the details that follow are arranged. Write it in plain English.

Main Body. This is the heart of your report, the facts. It will probably have several sections or sub-sections each with its own subtitle. It is unique to your report and will describe what you discovered about 'the problem'.

These sections are most likely to be read by experts so you can use some appropriate jargon but explain it as you introduce it. Arrange the information logically, normally putting things in order of priority -- most important first. In fact, follow that advice in every section of your report.

You may choose to include a Discussion in which you explain the significance of your findings.

Conclusions. Present the logical conclusions of your investigation of 'the problem'. Bring it all together and maybe offer options for the way forward. Many people will read this section. Write it in plain English. If you have included a discussion then this section may be quite short.

Recommendations. What do you suggest should be done? Don't be shy; you did the work so state your recommendations in order of priority, and in plain English.

Appendices. Put the heavy details here, the information that only specialists are likely to want to see. As a guide, if some detail is essential to your argument then include it in the main body, if it merely supports the argument then it could go in an appendix.

Conclusions and Recommendations

In conclusion, remember that readers expect certain information to be in certain places. They do not expect to hunt for what they want and the harder you make it for them the more likely they are to toss you report to one side and ignore it. So what should you do?

1. Follow the generally accepted format for a report: Summary, Introduction, Main Body, Conclusions, Recommendations and Appendices.
2. Organise your information in each section in a logical fashion with the reader in mind, usually putting things in order of priority - most important first.

Good luck with your report writing!

Author: Tony Atherton
© Tony Atherton 2005)

Report Writing - How to Format a Business Report

Tony Atherton is a freelance trainer and writer based in England. He has had four books published and about 90 of his articles have appeared in various magazines and journals. After an earlier career in industry he now runs in-company training courses in business writing, report writing (including technical reports) and taking minutes, as well as negotiation skills and time management. Over 6000 delegates have attended his courses. See http://www.tony-atherton.co.uk/reportwriting.htm for details of report writing courses, or see http://www.tony-atherton.co.uk for general information.

watch mobile phone Cheap Deals Mason 5C025 Pad Anti Vibration