Writing Articles

How to Write Fantasy Fiction

3/9/2015

Over the next week or two I want to talk about fantasy fiction.

That’s a big topic, and I want to focus on what it takes to write fantasy. We’ll explore various aspects of world-building as well as developing characters. I’ve done this before, and both in series format. You can read both here:

How to Write a Fantasy Novel (5 Posts)

How to Write a Fantasy Novel That Sells (10 Posts)

Here’s a list of some of the topics we’ll discuss over the next two weeks:

What we’re getting at with a lot of these points are motives. You’re learning the motives of your characters. What drives them, what makes them do things, and makes them not do things?

These are important things to consider, and they help with character development. More than that, though, they make a good story. And stories take place in worlds, worlds of your creating, worlds of fantasy.

I hope you’re interested in that, for we’ll be talking about it quite a bit.

Thanks for reading!

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Mindless Followers and Thoughtless Leaders in Self-Publishing

7/5/2014

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I would love to see successful authors like Chuck Wendig, Hugh Howey, and Joe Konrath offer advice on how to write for just 1 week.

Alright, alright…how about just 5 days?

See, I don’t think they could do it. I think they’d try, but I know that the first shiny glint from an Amazon/Hachette article would draw them away like a child in a toy shop.

They can’t resist – they just can’t talk about anything that will help you!

Maybe it’s not their fault. After all, they’re leaders, and they have an obligation to their followers to inform them of how the world works, and what’s best for them. That way they won’t have to think for themselves at all. I mean, who wants that hassle?

But, the thing is, you do. You desperately want that hassle because you’re trying to write a book. You want advice that will allow you to think for yourself. Just not on this crap...on something useful.

What would that look like? Maybe a topic list like this:

Using Commas in Sentences: When and Why;

Unique Punctuation Styles and Why Readers Like Them;

Who Runs The Passive Voice Publishing News Website?

Split Infinitives, Conjunctions and other Things that May or May Not be Important;

What is the Best Size for a Paragraph?

Does the Look of the Page Matter?

Tricks for Writing Italics Quickly.

Those are all ideas that I’m sure many readers and writers would love to read. But these big-name and successful authors just want to shove Amazon/Hachette gibberish down our throats again and again.

Perhaps these are leaders in the industry and that’s what leaders should do.

I don’t think so – I think they’re failed leaders.

Of course that would assume they’re leaders in publishing in the first place. Are they? What is a leader in publishing?

Sorry, I guess what I really want are leaders in writing. I know the first three places I won’t be looking for when it comes to finding those leaders: Chuck Wendig, Hugh Howey, and Joe Konrath.

As far as I can tell from their sites lately, if you want to improve as a writer, those three men are worthless to you.

(Normally I'd link to those sites, but they're so incredibly worthless that I don't want to anger you).

Should You Sue Your eBook Reviewers?

Do Hippos Belong in Self-Publishing?

I’m Taking Joe Konrath’s Site Off My Bookmark Bar

What Happens When You Write Something That Pisses Off Everyone?

Aren’t You Getting Tired of Big Name, Know-It-All Authors Whining?

How Can Authors Get Thicker Skin?

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Watching Paint Dry is More Interesting than Today’s Blogs

4/20/2014

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Nothing I read is good.

There seems to be nothing new, nothing groundbreaking, nothing…interesting.

Yep, there’s a serious glut in good content on most all the self-publishing and content marketing blogs I visit.

Sure, I’ve got that Midweek Roundup of content, but I’ve been pulling that off of disparate Google+ groups, some of which traces back to who knows where.

Mainly I’m talking about my bookmark bar. I regularly visit about 10 to 15 blogs, and lately they’ve all been putting up rubbish.

I’m serious – it’s rubbish.

There was one post about Facebook from a woman that had about five blog posts in the past year on her own site. I thought that was rather silly.

I especially liked the site asking for opinions on romance authors and their marketing abilities. When I mentioned their penchant for copying each other’s work and slapping new covers on it, as well as their reliance on ARC reviews (Already Reviewed Copies), the comment was swiftly taken down.

And don’t get me started on the Montana blogs I frequent. One I’ve stopped bothering with completely due to its inability to talk about anything but Ukraine, and on another the commenting section has gotten so out of control I stopped subscribing.

No, there’s nothing out there worth a bucket of warm piss…for now.

Things change quickly in the blogosphere, and tomorrow there could be a lot to talk about.

Somehow I doubt it though.

So what could change all that? What could light things up? What are the hot topics to get knickers in a knot everywhere?

I don’t know. I try to put some edgy and insightful content up on this site, but I’ve a feeling most of the time it’s rather droll.

Who knows, you’re reading it, and thousands of others are as well. Who are they? I don’t know.

Oh, yeah…those topics.

Well, if I had to shoot from the hip right here and now I’d say these would be some worthwhile blog topics for you and your site:

Buckets of Warm Piss: A 5-Point Blog Post Measuring Scale

Kids Screaming in the Hallway and How to Be Heard Over the Noise

The Amazing Google+ +1 Button – It Shuts People Up!

10 Best Finger Foods for Fast Computer Typists

Writers’ Walls: What the Greats Had Over Their Desks

How Many Writers Had Teeth Problems?

Do Hippos Belong in Self-Publishing?

Haunted Lighthouses and What They Tell Us about Self-Publishing

Why Not Commenting on Your Blog’s Comments is the Best Approach

Using Adverbs to Stick it to The Man

I think those would be interesting blog articles. What would they be about? I don’t know.

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My February Promise To You

1/31/2014

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I will not bore you this February. I will not waste your time.

I will not hamper you with meaningless articles you’ve seen before, and I will not dig up old arguments and tired crusades.

February is typically the shortest and coldest month of the year, the depth of Hades if you will – there’s just no time to fool around.

You need good content. You need interesting content. You don’t need boring content or content trying to get you to sign-up or buy. That’s rubbish.

Quality Content, All Month Long

I’ve got an exciting schedule of blog posts planned for this month. I made up a list, something I don’t usually do, and they’re pretty outlandish. If you look at some of those outlandish novel covers over there, you get the idea.

So get ready to have some fun this month, and tell your friends. Yeah, you can do that by clicking on those little Facebook and Google+ buttons over there.

Hell, you could even join my mailing list if you want, though honestly, there’s really nothing much exciting about it, just a monthly email. Hey, you’ll have something to delete!

Now, that said, since I do want to give you quality and not rubbish like so many sites, I’ll post a little less frequently. Sometimes I’ll post everyday and then go a couple days with nothing.

I’m pretty busy with politics now as well so there’s that to consider. I will be posting a bit more frequently to my new 2014 Montana Elections Blog, although I doubt anyone reading this blog will care about that.

I’m also doing a guest blog post on The Book Designer on Wednesday, February 5, so check that out.

Alright, here are my (planned) topics for the month of February:

Choosing Your 2 Amazon Categories Wisely

What’s Going on With the Kindle Serial Program?

How Would You Feel About No eBook Sales Data?

If Amazon Gave You Zero Royalties, Would You Still Do It?

Why Are So Many Writers Scared?

Your Amazon Blurbs Document

What Happens When You Write Something That Pisses Off Everyone?

Why is the Sky Blue? Going from General to Specific with Your SEO

Deleting Everything You Have Now and Starting from Scratch

Would You Rather Write 100 Shitty Books or 1 Good Book?

What is the Eye of the Beholder?

Whales, Mermaids and Your Publishing Long-Tail

If it’s Not Providing Value, Why Don’t You Just Shoot It?

Series on Blog Comments

Kiss & Make-Up: 10 Ways to Recover From Terrible Blog Comments

Bitch & Moan: Escalating an Argument Into a Blog Commenting Nightmare

Turn & Run: If a Site Doesn’t Reply to Your Comments, Do They Care About You?

Stand & Fight: If a Blog Insults You, Should You Fight Back?

Hunker-Down & Deliver: Why Doing Something Better Is Always Your Best Attack

Excerpts from Upcoming SEO Book – SEO and ‘80s Movies

What The Blues Brothers Can Teach us About SEO

SEO and 1980s Best Picture Winners

How Rocky Sequels Can Make You a Better SEO Fighter

Caddyshack Urges You to Take Your SEO Game to a Whole New Level

What Your Website Can Learn from Actress Debra Winger

What’s Your SEO Brat Pack?

The 9 Lessons the Police Academy Movies Have for Your Website

Charlie Sheen & Emilio Estevez: Is Your Website Yesterday’s Star?

Has Your Site Gone Walkabout With Crocodile Dundee Yet?

Your Website on the Cusp of the 90s.

Well by golly if that doesn’t sound like fun than I don’t know what does. I hope you’ll stop in sometimes and see what’s new.

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Write Your Novels Faster: Sacrificing Formatting Early

1/6/2014

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Note: This is the 1st part in a 5-part weekly series on How to Write Your Novels Faster.

Part 1: Sacrificing Formatting Early
Part 2: Visual Representations of Your Novel's World
Part 3: Plotting With Your Table of Contents
Part 4: 7 Ways to Get Over That Writing Wall
Part 5: Editing and Proofing Your Novel Fast

Every writer wants to know how to write faster. I can write a novel a month, plan to do so most months this year, and have done so in the past.

I start my books in the middle of a scene with a line of dialogue and let the characters go. Oftentimes I'll have an idea of what's going to happen, but not always. I try to get one part of 5 to 7 chapters, which may not even be the first part.

After that it’s really just word count goals, like below:

10,000 Words: Once I can get up to 10,000 words I'll put my title page in there and start the TOC. I'll name and write chapter headings for the other 4 to 5 parts (sometimes just 2 for short books) and then write out a few paragraphs of ideas for those chapters. I'll color these in red or blue to separate them.

20,000 Words: When I get up to around 20,000 to 30,000 words I'll usually hit a wall. I'll give it a line-edit, usually giving myself an extra few thousand words as I write out some of those earlier colored paragraphs and add things here and there. I rarely get rid of anything.

50,000 Words: After that it's just filling out those parts until I get to my predetermined word count goal, which I usually set before even writing (these range from 20,000 words for short novelettes to 60,000 words or more for full novels). Personally I find that I hit a wall with my writing about every 20,000 words, so that’s a great time to go back and do a line-edit – it often gets you back on track!

I skip around a lot and write what feels write, leaving the boring stuff for last, which I then try my best to find ways not to include.

Sometimes I might need to do another line-edit when things stall again. After awhile thought it's just fighting to get those last bits and work things up.

I try to come up with and write the ending to my novels around 20,000 to 30,000 words in, and that way I'll know it and can go back and change it later. Also, it makes some of those holes in your story magically fill up!

Below are some basic things I do when I write novels. I follow many of these same things when I write non-fiction, although here we’ll really get into the formatting that I follow for all of my Amazon published novels. You can use this format for Amazon, or whatever works for you.

Making It Feel Like a Book Early

I shoot for 10,000 words of just ideas, different chapter starts…whatever really, before I even start to think of my work as a book. When I get past that 10,000 word hump I start thinking of releases and marketing and I know I’ll finish.

It’s a psychological hurdle you need to get over, and here are some things you can do to make you Work in Progress (WIP) seem like something that can actually get finished.

TOC and Title Page

Once I get enough words, usually around 10,000, I’ll go ahead and put in a Title Page and a Table of Contents (TOC). Both of these make it feel like I’m writing a book, which is important psychologically when you still have tens of thousands of words to churn out.

I also like the TOC, hyperlinked like mine is, because it makes for easier navigation. I like to skip around and write what feels good, like I talked about in Writing Blocks vs. Puzzles, and this approach works for me.

Formatting for Amazon As You Go

It’s always easier to format as you go, but I usually don’t start doing that until I get up to around 10,000 words, sometimes more. A lot of times when you’re starting out it’s just better to write a lot as fast as you can. When you get a big pile of words you can begin to go back and sort through them.

Below are a couple pages of what my novels usually look like while I’m writing them. I really just write, hit ‘return’ a few times when I need a new paragraph, and continue.

You can see here that I’m writing the novel in block format style. I have basic formatting going, although I put Bookman Old Style font in place for something a little friendlier to look at.

Now, what I sacrifice in quality to gain time and words I then have to go and fix later. The next sections will detail how to make the above pile of words into a presentable and up-loadable Amazon Kindle novel.

Making Good Amazon First Line Indents

When I get up to around 20,000 words or so I’ll usually go back one night when I’m feeling pretty tired and don’t want to write anymore and clean that all up.

I’ll go through and delete out all those extra returns you see, then I’ll Select All and give it a First Line Indent. When I’m done with that I’ll go back to those parts I don’t want indented, like the title page and TOC, and get rid of it.

This will give me a nice first line indent that will make my pages easier. See, we’re just formatting as we go, making it easier when we finally get those last sentences finished. Then most of this headache stuff is done.

So now I’m just going to go through and manually delete all those returns. I suppose you could do Find/Replace with this, but I use it as a chance to just give everything a good once over. I want the sentences to look right.

Once I’ve done that I’ll have that huge block of text that just looks bad. I’ll Ctrl+A to Select All and then simply go up to my spacing shortcut on the bar up there and hit 1.5 spacing. This will give me something like this:

Indenting Your Amazon Titles Properly

I like this look a lot better and it’s the format I submit to Amazon when I publish novels. It also makes it easier to write the rest of my work and I like that it gives me a higher page count – kind of a psychological bonus.

Notice that the ‘Chapter 2’ title looks a little off, so I’ll go ahead and take out that first line indent on it to make it centered.

What you have to remember is that Amazon will often take that back out and indent it anyway, so if you’re doing a non-fiction book set all of your Amazon indents to 0.01, which makes it so you can retain that block formatting. I didn’t figure this out until my 5th or 6th non-fiction book and regretted it.

Now, today we pretty much just focused on what you can do to write quickly without worrying about all those formatting headaches while you’re doing it. Going back at a certain point to correct those is worth it, in my opinion, if it means you can get up to that 10,000 or 20,000 word mark.

Many people can’t do that, so I’d just sacrifice the good looking manuscript notion for substance. Remember, you’re the only one who’s going to see it, unless you write a blog post about it like I just did.

Tomorrow we’ll discuss Visual Representations of Your Novel and how this can help you get a lot more words out, especially after you’ve hit a wall with your writing.

Planning Your Blog 50 Days in Advance

Self-Publishing on Amazon

Saying to Hell With Your eBook Prices

Three Months of Amazon Perma-Free Results

Dealing With a BookBub Rejection

eBook Marketing: Bringing the Dead Back to Life

The Problems Discounted eBooks Pose

Your 2014 Self-Publishing Game Plan

SEO, Self-Publishing, and 1980s Kevin Bacon Movies

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How to Write a Fantasy Novel that Sells

8/24/2013

3 Comments

This is the 1st post in a series on how to write a fantasy novel that sells.

Over the next week or so I’m going to focus on writing fantasy novels. More specifically, I’ll focus on writing a fantasy novel that sells.

Why am I qualified to do this? For two reasons:

First, I’ve got 3 fantasy novels selling on Amazon right now. Each month those titles sell. I also have 3 historical fantasy novels, and those sell each month as well. Check out my Amazon account and see for yourself if you’d like.

Second, I’ve got a lot of quality information that will help struggling fantasy writers create a detailed and thought-provoking world. The more effort you put into your fantasy world before you even begin writing your novel, the better it’ll be.

How Will These Posts Be Structured?

A new fantasy topic will be discussed each and every day. Here is what they’ll cover:

How Will Things Be Explained?

I’ll use my first and most successful book, the Jongurian Mission, to explain how you can go about creating your fantasy world, imagining your fantasy characters, and fleshing out all the details.

These posts will be extremely long, numbering into the thousands of words. When it comes to writing a fantasy novel you really need to plan. The goal of these 10 fantasy tips is to aid you in making your world as realistic and believable as possible. If each character has a history, every city has a story, and all the little details fall into place, then you’ll have a great fantasy novel on your hands.

So hang on, hold tight, and get ready, because over the next week we’ll be taking quite the fantasy ride!

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How to Write a Fantasy Novel

4/21/2013

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What’s your world? It’s an odd question, but one that fantasy authors and readers might ask each other quite frequently. Figuring out where your fantasy novel is going to take place is an important step in writing a fantasy novel, after all.

And that's why I wrote this series of articles on how to write a fantasy novel. I make up a small world, create some easy characters, and do some simple world-building. After that you should have a good idea of what you can do to write your epic fantasy masterpiece.

The fantasy writing articles include:

You might already have an idea for your characters, and you might even have specifics laid out on what they’re like and what they do.

But how will the fantasy world in which they live affect their choices and behaviors? Deciding on what your fantasy world will look like is therefore very important. There are many ways you can go about creating your fantasy world, and I’ll explain some of them by showing you a map I made:

I don’t have a name for this world. Many fantasy worlds won’t have names, themselves per se, but they will have other place names that you can grab onto. After all, you might be like me and not give your fantasy novels a name until near the end. That can often be the case with your world as well. Just think of how many fantasy books you’ve read where the name of the world isn’t listed at all.

I made this map in about 5 minutes in Windows Paint. You could tell, couldn’t you? I certainly wouldn’t want to put this map in my new fantasy book, but I would certainly use it when I’m writing my story, and especially when I’m planning that story. Let’s look at how you can make your fantasy world by looking at this basic fantasy map.

Shape

What is the shape of your world? In my fantasy world you can see it’s just one large continent, almost like a donut. Most fantasy worlds will be one large continent; it’s just how most books have always been written. Do you want to continue that trend, or break from the norm? As you can see, I’m sticking with the standard fantasy mold here.

Terrain

My fantasy world is round, and is probably surrounded by seas or oceans. In the middle is a large lake or inland sea. The continent is divided in two by the lake, as well as by the mountains which surround it. To the north is a vast desert, the Wo’dan Desert. To the south is an impassable swamp, the Swamps of Miletus. Where did those names come from? I have no idea; I needed a name so made them up. Those can be changed later, or you might just find that they start growing on you.

Cities

After I put in my as of yet unnamed mountains and lake, and the already named swamps and desert, I started in on my cities. I figured I had divided my continent in half with the terrain, now I needed to place at least one major city on each side of that continent. I’m a stickler for balance. The result is Finnegal in the West and Pa’dun in the East. Just judging from the terrain, it’s a safe bet that both cities are isolated from one another, and have been for some time. They’ve probably developed different cultures, and may have even gone to war with one another from time to time.

I also decided to put two additional cities on the map, both near what I consider to be the only landward crossing from one side of the continent to the other. They’d also make good forts or outposts to ensure that people from one side of the fantasy world don’t go to the other side. Drubeck is at the base of the mountains in the West, and Slotaan is in a similar position in the East. I’d imagine those aren’t the last settlements before the lake; there’d have to be some small fishing communities, right?

History

And that takes us into our fantasy world’s history. Just by making this simple map I’ve already opened a floodgate of ideas. Let’s take the lake. It’s surrounded by mountains, with only two mountain passes leading to it. To get to one side of the continent you’d have to take a ship or a boat across. I’d imagine that there’s a lot of joint trade on the lake, and perhaps a good deal of the world’s resources come from it. Was it always that way?

What about the Wo’dan Expedition that’s only talked of in hushed voices long after the kids have been sent to bed? It’s been about 60 years now, but many of the older folks of Finnegal haven’t forgotten their boy-king’s folly in sending the men, 5,000 in all. Their bones are still bleaching the fine white sands.

Or how about the Slotaan Seven? They were the elite instructors to the Pa’dun army, but after the Fanatics publicly humiliated them, they chose to hold their heads high and make a show of what real leadership was. For nine days they walked over the rocky plains to the Swamps of Miletus, that much is known from the Swamp Kin that live in the area. What’s not known is what ever befell them those 40 long years ago.

You can see that your fantasy world, and the terrain that it has, really have a big effect on how you tell your story, and really what story you have to tell. I wrote three fantasy novels this way, by making a map first. I’ll show you what you can do after you’ve begun making a fantasy world in future posts.

How to Write a Fantasy Novel That Sells

Writing a Fantasy Novel in Installments

Top 10 Reasons Fantasy eBook Novels Don’t Have Maps

New 2014 Epic Fantasy eBook with Attitude

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Writing a Website’s Blog: Increasing Traffic Quickly

4/16/2013

19 Comments

This is an excerpt from my book Write to the Top: A How To for Website Content Writing and Increasing Website Traffic.

Everyone wants to get their website’s blog right to the top of Google. Many try, but the sad truth is that very few succeed. It’s tough getting to the top, and once your there everyone wants to knock you off, claiming that spot for themselves. It’s a precarious position, and few find they can be the ‘king of the hill’ for long.

There are many things you can do that will move your blog posts up in the rankings, and you don’t have to spend a lot of time slaving away at your computer to do them. Simple things like making email subscriber lists, enabling social networking access, posting on forums in your niche, and commenting on likeminded blogs are all ways to see you boost the traffic to your blog. You’ll also increase the validity of your posts, and your relevance to Google, as well as all those using it to find what they need.

Email Lists

You’ve got to let people know when you’re putting up your content. It’s rather sadistic to slave away at a computer writing great content if no one’s going to read it. Still, many people do just that everyday, at least as far as the traffic to their site is concerned.

If you’re a J.D. Salinger-type who likes to keep their best stuff under lock and key, then go ahead, collect that internet dust. But if you want people that have read your stuff before to know that you’ve got new stuff out there, let them subscribe to a list that notifies them by email each time you add new content.

Social Networking

I always discounted the importance of social media because I lived in China for so long. You can’t use Facebook here unless you’ve got a VPN, and even then your access could be spotty at best. YouTube has been banned since 2008 in the Middle Kingdom, and Twitter is thought of as a way to share information and bring people together, something the Chinese authorities dread.

So I never enabled my FaceBook, Twitter, and RSS Feeds, and I never saw a lot of traffic on my site as a result. Boy, was I making a big error of judgment; just as big as the Chinese were making by not allowing this great source of traffic, and possibly income, to flow in. Do yourself a favor, and let the world onto your site by enabling social networking.

Forum Posting

Forum posting is a hassle, and it may take away from what your trying to do with your own blog, namely get a post onto it each day or each week. If you’re writing on someone else’s website, after all, you’re not writing on your own.

Still, thousands of people are going to forums, and you and your site could do with the exposure. Find out what forums are talking about your niche, and start reading what people are saying.

You don’t need to write a lengthy treatise, and you certainly don’t need to make posts everyday. What you should do is occasionally scroll through the most recent posts to see what is relevant to you and your site, and comment accordingly. People will read and listen, and if you’re good, they’ll want to find out what you’ll say next.

Commenting

Make sure that you find your competition’s blog. Go to the sites that you most want to be like, or whose content you like the most. Sign up for their email list, and each time there’s a new post, write a comment. Put a link back to your site in the comment, or just mention your site’s name. After enough of those types of comments you’ll have a lot of validity.

The key is making sure that you’re putting quality comments out onto those other sites, and not a lot of garbage. If you just put one sentence, like “I like it!” followed by a link to your site, people won’t take you seriously. That type of ‘robo-commenting’ may actually hurt you in the long run.

Now, if you can get onto 10 blog email lists, and stay up with their posts while still posting your own content, you’ll quickly see a boost in traffic. The key is to keep making your own posts, and not just contributing to someone else’s. Finding a right balance between your posting frequency, and the marketing involved with your posting, is therefore critical, and a necessary step on the long road to the top of Google.

Reference Other Posts

Putting a link to another post at the bottom of your own post, or within it through anchor text, is a great idea. But you can take it a step further by talking about the other blog post as well. Tell about how you read a great blog post on increasing traffic from so-and-so, and how their 7 key ideas really made you think differently about your own website.

If you can talk about a great article, and give a link to it, it will increase your own relevance in your regular users’ eyes, and those that just happened to stumble upon your post.

One great post that I used when writing this was 21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic on SEOMoZ. This post is great for a variety of reasons.

It has a great title, with a number displayed prominently. Whenever I’m searching for Google, I’ll always click on the title with a large number. It might not give me the best content, but it will give me a lot of keywords that I can think about, and write my own content around.

All 21 points are formatted well, and each contains a wonderful graphic. They range from large graphs to actual website screenshots. Pictures always say more than your content can, and people like their text broken up by them.

Analytics are shown and discussed, with arrows pointing to what’s being talked about. Take note of those and see if you can begin looking at your own site’s analytics more analytically.

The article is on one page, not 21 pages that I have to click through. By doing that you might be getting more page views, and perhaps more advertising opportunities. I think it’s a bad tactic, however. I hate waiting to transfer between all of those pages, and I’ll usually go somewhere else pretty quickly, unless the content is good. Remember, if you’ve got great content, you can do just about anything.

There’s a huge comment section on this page, and you can learn a lot by just reading those. Sometimes I’ll go to a site and read the blog post, scroll down the page, and find I’ve learned more from the other bloggers who commented. Don’t neglect what those long pages of comments tell you; they probably hold quite a few secrets on what works when it comes to blogging, and what doesn’t.

How You Can Get Your Blog to 100 Posts Fast

Google Panda 10-Day Rollouts and Your SEO Site

So What is Google Hummingbird and Why Should I Care?

Editing Your Website Long-Term

Popular SEO Keyword Strings on This Site

SEO & 80s Movies is on Sale!

Increasing Your Social Media Presence for Free

10 Reasons It’s Time For You to Stop Commenting on Blogs

My Site Analytics: The 1-Year Report

Optimizing Your Google+ Circles

How Do You Get Your Blog to 200 Posts Fast?

19 Comments

Academic Writing

3/17/2013

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Plagiarism is something that many university professors look for, and which all university students engaging in academic writing should steer clear of. It’s not always easy to come up with fresh and insightful ideas, however, especially when the topic is rather staid and overused.

So what is plagiarism exactly?

The Random House Compact Unabridged Dictionary defines it as “use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as “the wrongful appropriation or purloining and publication as one's own, of the ideas, or the expression of the ideas… of another.” So says Wikipedia.

That’s why it’s so important to cite your sources. With software out there today that can detect plagiarism and copied text in even the best of academic writing assignments, it’s especially vital to protect yourself by putting your cited passages into quotes, as well as saying general ideas in a slightly different fashion.

So what are the best ways to start in on a serious academic writing project then? Well, to start with, consider these simple things:

Sources: Find good sources, pure and simple. Go to your library, find reputable websites, or scour through old newspapers. There are plenty of great sources out there, whether in print or online, you just have to find them. Use Google Books to find wonderful books that have been turned into eBooks, complete with hyperlinked tables of contents. Use Wikipedia to expand the amount of sources that you have in your bibliography; there are plenty on the bottom of the page you’re looking at for your paper, after all. You’ll always do better if you have more sources listed on your bibliography page of your academic writing assignment, and professors will notice your extra work.

Facts: Make your facts shine by adding supplementary material other academic writing papers often leave out. There are many great ways to talk about a person’s background in a few sentences within a larger paragraph. You can just as easily highlight an area better by pointing out a few interesting historical facts that most professors will be unaware of, or at least haven’t seen in a while. The key is using these interesting and rare facts in a way that bolsters your academic writing, and doesn’t take away or distract from it. While a paragraph that provides a scenic route for the professor is great, making a page long journey of it is not recommended. If you’re writing a paper on ice-cream, don’t spend a whole page talking about cows, just a paragraph explaining which cows produce the best milk for making ice-cream, and why.

Combinations: Everyone in your academic writing class will be using the same old required readings, and the professor will have to read the same boring facts from the same boring sources over and over again. Why not make your paper stand out, and get a higher grade in the process, by utilizing sources that many other students will have overlooked, not bothered to even think about, or are just simply too lazy to take advantage of. You can easily find something related to your topic and give it a paragraph of its own. If you can find a way to make it relate to your larger topic or argument, you’ve really got a gold nugget in the otherwise worthless pile of debris that professors everywhere are forced to shovel into their satchels.

To give you even more ideas, and because I think this subject is so important, I've written a lot on it.

Below you can find lots of articles that will help you with your academic writing.

Academic Writing: Expanding on Facts

Academic Writing: Elaborate on Sources

Academic Writing with Google Books

Academic Writing with Wikipedia

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Be the King of SEO Writing

3/11/2013

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So how can you write a great, or maybe just a good, SEO article? It’s really not that difficult, and lots of people who can’t write very well are doing it today and making some good money, including myself.

In fact, since I first wrote this article more than a year ago I've written some of these articles that might give you even more insight:

Writing a Website’s Blog: Increasing Traffic Quickly

Planning Your Blog 50 Days in Advance

Claiming Your 2014 Blogging Authority

What is Google Hummingbird and Why Should I Care?

My Site Analytics: The 1-Year Report

Sun Tzu and the Art of SEO

The 9 SEO Lessons The Police Academy Movies Have for You

Is SEO Making Your Stupid?

Has Your Site Gone Walkabout With Crocodile Dundee for Organic Links?

There are lots of little tricks you can do to get yourself noticed on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP), and writing a Search Engine Optimized (SEO) article is often a critical component of just that.

And after awhile you might even get something a little more special.

Quality: When I work for other people, what I always tell them is that you want a quality article that will give relevant, useful, and new information to whomever is reading it. Lots of people understand this, and that’s why when you type something like “acid reflux” into Google, you’ll get the cream of the crop in regards to information right at the top of your screen. Unfortunately, many people also do not realize this, and that’s why there are so many poorly written articles out there today, although thankfully they’re on the bottom of the SERP.

Correctness: One of the easiest ways to spot a phony article, or one that is just plain rubbish, is by looking for mistakes. This won’t be hard, and you won’t have to go out of your way, for they’ll be blatantly obvious. Incorrect grammar, spelling that is completely wrong or makes no sense, and of course seeing the same word multiple times in an article in mind-boggling locations. When people do SEO writing, they tend to use their keyword in interesting ways to try and get the most effect. That’s why you’ll see things like “reflux acid reflux” in a sentence like this: “When your reflux acid reflux begins, quickly kill yourself.” Well, not exactly like that, but you get the idea.

Keywords: When you do SEO writing a lot, you’ll hear all about keywords, and you need to keep those in mind, somewhat. When the keyword is the only dominant thought when you sit down to write an article, you’ll get an article that is just not good, and which may even turn readers away. And if Google somehow notices what you’re trying to do, which is keyword stuffing, well, goodbye good ratings, you’ll be dinged. One of the worst things that can happen to a growing online business, and one that I see quite often when I talk to clients, is that they’ll have to rewrite all of their content because the googlebot came by their site and saw they were using black-hat SEO methods, or at least gray. The line can often be blurred, but when your SEO writing is so blatantly obvious, you really need to consider changes.

My SEO Writing

I’m writing this article right now around the keyword “SEO writing,” in case you haven’t noticed by now. If you haven’t, that means I’ve done my job well. My goal with this article is to come in around 500 words, and have a keyword density of 1% to 2%. That means I need about 5 to 10 examples of my keyword “SEO writing” to qualify for good, white-hat SEO writing.

So how’d I do? Well, I don’t know, I’m not finished yet, let me check. Alright, so far I’ve got about 560 words and 8 examples of my keyword. Therefore, that’s a good, if not great, SEO article.

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Academic Writing

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by Greg Strandberg

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Quality Content, All Month Long

Making It Feel Like a Book Early

TOC and Title Page

Formatting for Amazon As You Go

Making Good Amazon First Line Indents

Indenting Your Amazon Titles Properly

You Might Also Like

How Will These Posts Be Structured?

How Will Things Be Explained?

You Might Also Like

You Might Also Like

Writing Blogby Greg Strandberg

Top Ten

Categories

My Books(By Publication Date, New to Old)

Archives

Writing Blog
by Greg Strandberg

My Books
(By Publication Date, New to Old)