Essay Online

Writing articles is a very effective way to get one way links to your site as well as to have people learn more about your website or service. However, there are ways to do this that can make you more successful versus have your articles be overlooked and not considered.

Shane Pearce has written the Lazy Man’s Guide to Article Writing which outlines some helpful tips. I was first impressed with his tip that when you submit your article to an ezine publisher or a webmaster, that you can offer him to use his own affiliate link in place of your own. For instance, if you have written an article on motivation and have a link to a clickbank ebook on motivation and goals, you can offer the publisher that he use his own affiliate id instead of yours. What this means is that the ezine or website publisher will be getting a free article already written with a link that may give him some monetary income. You still would have your own information in your resource box at the end, so people can click to your website as well. Think about what the website publisher you write to will get out of the exchange and find a way to make his or her life easier.

Other tips he gives are to read frequently asked questions to find out what people want to know about in terms of popular topics. Shane discusses how to make a viral ebook based on a faq niche that can be passed around. If there are frequently asked questions on a topic that is a sign that the topic has an interest as well as the fact there may be an interest in some guide or tutorial.

Also I like the sample autoresponder examples he uses as well as different ideas for a signature file at the end of one’s article. I think he is very good at showing how to integrate a couple of affiliate links without being pushy. He recommends sending people to opt-in to a mailing list as part of your signature file.

Another section I found useful discusses how to create checklists and use them both for your website and in articles that lead back to your website. People like checklists. Shane discusses how to use these. They also help break through writer’s block or paralysis because you can have a list of steps .

There are ideas given about utilizing both 2-tier affiliate programs and residual income programs that will help you keep you earning as your articles circulate around the net. Shane gives some interesting suggestions on types of sites that work for this.

I also like that Shane gives an example of a flop he did of an unsuccessful attempt at marketing. He analzyes it and compares it to something someone else wrote he feels was better expressed. It is a very interesting study covering various ways to get your articles noticed and published. I publish articles regularly but learned some valuable tips from this ebook.

Are you running short of ideas for your blogs or articles? Is generating fresh ideas for writing becoming difficult? By following the techniques discussed in this article, you will be a writing power house.

1. Subscribe to a dozen RSS feeds on various subjects you are most interested in. Scan through the feeds every morning or at night and select a few articles for thorough reading. After reading the articles, tag them using your own classification system.

Classifying articles in different categories helps locate them quickly. Use Google’s RSS reader for reading and tagging the RSS feeds. You will have access to your categorized articles from any computers connected to the Internet.

2. Subscribe to a few print magazines and read them regularly. After you finish reading an article, record the main points of the article in a Google note. You will have access to these notes anywhere in the World.

3. Use a PDA and carry it with you wherever you go. Better yet, get a PDA with a camera and cell phone. You will only carry one gadget for all your communication, organization, and content generation needs.

Take pictures of interesting places, events, and moments you come across in your daily life. Use the voice recorder of the PDA to record whenever an idea hits you. Every night, transfer the ideas from your PDA to Google notes and upload your pictures to flickr.

4. Scan through the comments posted by others on the online articles you read regularly. Record interesting ideas, pros and cons of an issue, and strong opinions posted by others in your Google notes. Leverage the wisdom of the crowd.

5. Have lunch with friends at least once a week. Bounce ideas off them on any topic. Mix ideas from divergent topics to create new ideas in you own subjects.

6. Use the time like driving, watching TV while exercising in a treadmill, etc. to think about your favorite topics and try to relate to things you observe on the road and on the TV. When you get an idea, record it in your PDA.

7. Go through all the ideas and articles you have recorded in Google notes and your RSS reader to create new ideas by giving new twists to the old ideas. Combine two or more ideas and change or improve an existing idea to come up with your own idea.

8. Use a variety of online tools like Technorati, Digg, Delicious, etc. for writing inspiration. Every hour, hundreds of new articles and news stories are posted in these sites. Check Yahoo’s buzz log to find out what people are talking about and searching for. Quickly scan them to hit a few gold nuggets that can serve as springboards for new ideas.

9. Using on-line tools discussed earlier, select an issue and jot down all the pros and cons. Search Google to enhance the idea by adding more pros and cons. Once you have collected a dozen diverse opinions, you will be able to write an article based on those facts in a pro-con format.

10. If you are good at using data for analysis and comfortable in the use of a spreadsheet, draw charts in the spreadsheet and look for patterns in the data. Provide you own interpretation to the data. Illustrate your articles with charts and graphs.

11. To generate topics for your article, use overture keyword selector. Select a single keyword and run it through the overture. You will see a dozen or more keywords based on the search popularity. Copy a few selected keywords to a notepad. Now, take each keyword and do a search in online sites like Digg, Technorati, etc. You will see a number of articles. Read them to generate ideas.

12. Ask yourself what if, what else, and why not questions on an issue and search the Internet to find answers from different sources. Create new ideas generated from existing materials, provide step-by-step guide for somebody to practice an obvious idea, or offer benefits of practicing an old idea.

There are a number of strategic reasons for using checklists, a writing format which helps you make your point(s) by writing at least some of your document in lists, rather than all in standard paragraphs. For example, checklists may convey the idea that you have carefully analyzed a situation, that a sequence should be followed, or that you are a well-organized person.

In this article, I have a follow-up, in which we look at the creation of checklists.

How you create your checklist will depend on its type. In some cases, you will want readers to follow a sequence of steps; this is a sequential checklist. On the other hand, if it’s just a list, like a shopping list, then it would be a non-sequential list.

If you write non-sequential checklists, use bullets or boxes to indicate a new line or new item, as in:

* something

* something else

* another thing again

One quick note about bullets: if you’re printing and distributing the message, then you can use conventional bullet forms (usually a square or round dot, whether solid or hollow). If you’re sending the message by email, use an asterisk because not all email programs handle bullets properly (something to do with ASCII characters).

If the steps must be taken in sequence, then you’ll use numbers or letters as your bullets. And, if that sequence has several sub-steps within each step, you would follow convention by using these types of characters, in this order:

* Roman numeral;

* Capital letter;

* Standard (Arabic) number;

* Lower case letter.

For example:

I The Beginning

A. The first part of the Beginning

1. The first part of the first part

a) and so on.

Indentations are helpful when working with highly structured checklists, like these. They show at a glance the importance of each component in the list.

A couple of other types of checklist might also be considered — flowcharts and mind-maps. A flow-chart means a series of boxes illustrating the linear steps in a process. These are especially helpful if the checklist includes decision points. For example, “If the computer starts, do this” or “If the computer DOES NOT start, do that.”

A mind-map refers to a number of boxes with interconnecting lines (not necessarily in a sequence, but perhaps showing interrelationships). In this case, the idea is to show how different aspects of the same issue connect with each other.

One final thought: outliners, whether stand-alone or in word processors can provide checklists, along with appropriate indentations. If the content fits the checklist format, an outliner may help you create one quickly and easily.

Have you given much thought to the voice of your narrator? Perhaps you assumed the narrator in your novel should remain neutral. Many writers believe that the narrator should have little in the way of identity and the use of a narrator is essentially a necessary means of moving the story from one scene to the next.

It may come as a surprise to learn that your narrator can, and SHOULD, have a distinctive voice. The narrator should be used to do more than simply take the reader on a guided tour of your story.

The technique used to add life to your narrator is called ‘Voice’. How you ultimately choose to define the character of your narrator can add a new dimension to your work. By adding a unique personality to your narrator the reader has a chance to visualize the story through the eyes of someone that intrigues them. They may not particularly like the narrator, but the voice you choose help the reader find a new facet of interest in your story.

Your narrator could have a strained relationship with the main character and might make occasionally negative comments as they unfold the story. The reason for the animosity could be explained and resolved as the story unfolds.

The Disney movie “Emperor’s New Groove” was narrated by the main character who interjected humor, sarcasm and arrogance that allowed the viewer to gain a clearer picture of the primary character, the conflict his actions created, and the ultimate need for him to lose some of his pride. What is interesting is the narrator’s voice also allowed the viewer to actually enjoy the Emperor’s character even more.

In western fiction the narrator often provides range-hardened wisdom during the course of the narrative that leaves you feeling as if you’ve saddled up a horse and are paired up an agreeable partner that has much to teach you.

Some writing intentionally portrays the narrator as distant and rather formal in their story telling. In this case the writer does not wish to have the narrator play a significant role in the storyline and only wishes them to fill in the blanks with no commentary or personality showing through.

Determining the voice of your narrator can be an important element in the development of your story. Choosing the ‘voice’ of your narrator may be best achieved early in the story-writing process to avoid needless rewriting.

One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment. - Hart Crane

Some of the best advice for writers in the 21st century comes from those who have seen their successes and offer advice from their own experience. Let’s draw from that brain trust.

On Writing Well

Show don’t tell. - Henry James

Don’t say the old lady screamed — bring her on and let her scream. - Mark Twain

Cut out all those exclamation marks. An exclamation mark is like laughing at your own joke. - F. Scott Fitzgerald

First drafts are for learning what your novel or story is about. - Bernard Malamud

Usually, when people get to the end of a chapter, they close the book and go to sleep. I deliberately write a book so when the reader gets to the end of the chapter, he or she must turn one more page. When people tell me I’ve kept them up all night, I feel like I’ve succeeded. - Sidney Sheldon

Don’t mistake a good setup for a satisfying conclusion — many beginning writers end their stories when the real story is just ready to begin. - Stanley Schmidt

On Inspiration

Nighttime is really the best time to work. All the ideas are there to be yours because everyone else is asleep. - Catherine O’Hara

I know writers who write only when inspiration comes. How would Isaac Stern play if he played the violin only when he felt like it? He would be lousy. - Madeleine L’Engle

If you wait for inspiration, you’re not a writer, but a waiter. - Anonymous

You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club. - Jack London

The best way to become a successful writer is to read good writing, remember it, and then forget where you remember it from. - Gene Fowler

Read, read, read. Read everything — trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. - William Faulkner

The best time for planning a book is while you’re doing the dishes. - Agatha Christie

So this is always the key: you have to write the book you love, the book that’s alive in your heart. That’s the one you have to write. - Lurleen McDaniel

In the second part in this series we will look at a few words of wisdom from authors regarding writer’s Block, motivation and editing skills.

Love songs are everywhere. But does anyone have a definition of love, which &ndash people claim &ndash makes the world go around? Sure, it’s easy to tell when you’re in love with someone. [The heart pounds and you act like an idiot.] But it’s much harder to say if you actually love someone.

Enter the mind of Harry Jenkins, as he is about to make love to Natasha,

And then he laughed at himself as he sank beneath the covers. No sane man would question such free and voluptuous pleasure, as if it could only be valued through thought. Only an idiot or a fool would try to analyze love and passion.

Nonetheless, like the fool, I seek a definition. Perhaps it is the lawyer in me. On the subject of love, Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist, is a sobering read. All of us, supposedly, carry within us, an animus [if you're female] and an anima [if you're male], which is the idealized image of the person you love. And so, when you are in love you are projecting this idealized image on a real, live person who might be naturally quite entitled to be different.

After the honeymoon, those annoying little cracks in the image appear, which could certainly explain the high divorce rate. When you find the real person doesn’t exactly match your superimposed ideal, what do you do?

All of these thoughts led me to explore people’s ideas of all kinds of love, not just the romantic variety, in Final Paradox, the second in The Osgoode Trilogy.

Harry Jenkins is the lawyer protagonist throughout the trilogy, which contain story lines of murder and fraud. He is in the thrall of the beautiful Natasha. His aging father, who abandoned him as a child, has just asked his forgiveness. Harry can’t seem to find that in his heart. Natasha asks him&ndash

What do you think love is?

He shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s about wanting someone as part of your life. Wanting them always with you.” He looked into her eyes. “Why? What do you think?”

“I think it’s about getting outside yourself and seeing another person’s life from their point of view. At least that’s a start,” Natasha replied.

Harry heard his father’s words. It’s all about you, is it? Would he always be the kid, he wondered?

Another character musing about love is Norma Dinnick &ndash an elderly client of Harry’s who trips back and forth between lucidity and madness. She recollects her stew of feelings for various men.

Going back to her hotel, Norma tried to understand. She knew about affection and caring from Arthur, her husband, who kept her safe from the emptiness. But she did not understand this business of love, which David talked about. She did know that such emotions gave her a sense of power. The sheer lust she experienced in the presence of George made her feel weak and vulnerable.

Norma simply doesn’t understand about love and neither does Bronwyn &ndash another character. An embittered soul, she has married a gay man and on her honeymoon - She wandered the narrow beach of sand and stone where the boats ferried back and forth to the grottos. No Peter. But then she saw him at a distance on the beach walking slowly with a younger man she did not know. Where had they come from? Right from the start, she had known. Of course, the bargain was unspoken, but well understood. For money and security, Bronwyn had sacrificed any chance for love.

But in the end, Harry does begin to get it. In bed with the lovely Natasha, he was

…transported outside his own body, he was overcome with the desire to know the dreams, fantasies and mysteries she held within. He would enter her world with love and understanding and never leave. The awe he felt in her closeness made his breathing slow and deepen in rhythm with hers. He watched his hand reach out of the shadows to smooth the sheet. She was at last in his bed and, fearing a mirage, he dared not wake her. In the past two weeks, his world had been shaken. His mind had become a jumble of colliding, conflicting events and consequences. Now he felt her power to draw his life together. A still peace gently settled over him like a silken web of meaning.

(Reprinted from Final Paradox by Mary E. Martin with permission).

In the 1600’s most cultured socialites considered chapbooks vulgar. These ‘flimsy’ booklets were often sold in less than reputable establishments and contained a variety of less than quality poetry, stories, ballads and political dissent. Often filled with spelling mistakes, factual blunders and little in the way of quality assurance these chapbooks often connected with the uncultured alone.

Today you will find several colleges that are working to collect copies of aging chapbooks. International universities have collections of hundred and even thousands of these manuscripts.

What are chapbooks?

This type of literature provides a relatively small grouping of thoughts or poetry in a booklet form that is generally unacceptable in traditional book markets. The length of a chapbook rarely exceeds 50 pages and can be assembled using a home printer and publishing software or using an office supply store that provides copying services.

Chapbook History

In the past these booklets were sold by peddlers to others who enjoyed the simplified nature of the work.

Some chapbooks were purchased if only because paper was scarce and the pages of the chapbook were used to wrap food items for transport.

Chapbooks have historically received very little respect and ultimately faded away for a time with the advent of mass produced newspapers and other periodicals.

In many respects historical chapbooks are now considered desirable folk art and are appreciated in ways the original authors would find surprising.

Chapbooks Today

In the twenty-first century chapbooks are seeing a prominence they have not seen in the past.

Today chapbooks are successfully used to promote an author’s poetry or short stories. They are marketed online and in specialty shops. Some chapbook developers have used the work for philanthropic purposes while others have funded group projects and the distribution of personal writings.

A fundraising effort for families involved in the Sego Mining Disaster in West Virginia saw a poetry chapbook used to provide needed finances for those dealing with loss.

With the advent of easy-to-use publishing programs and printers who can mass-produce a chapbook at reasonable prices, there are more people than ever looking to impact others through the distribution of chapbooks.

Chapbook Future

Some chapbooks may be downloadable through PDF technology while other writers of chapbooks may move solidly toward ebook technology in the future in an effort to distribute their chapbooks thus avoiding paper distribution entirely.

It is safe to presume that the time-honored tradition of chapbooks will see these little publications delight, encourage and challenge readers for centuries to come.

The formal definition of an intro is a brief introductory passage. What is important is that you get the story right; it needs to encapsulate the essence or spirit of your overall point, try communicating through example. Capturing the essence is not enough; if nobody reads far enough to grasp the main point of the story then its purpose is lost.

If you are going to start writing, make sure it is a short intro. When readers see a headline they expect the writing below it to contain content which relates to that headline. There is only so much time a reader will spend with an intro about sports when the headline suggested the article was about vacations. Even if the intro, at its end, would have captured the essence of what the author was trying to say. Ask yourself; is it short enough that a reader is not losing his patience before the writing returns to the topic at hand?

The piece above contains an intro that is quite short. This kind of intro has the potential to work very well as long as the reader knows what they are reading. Readers know what the article is going to tell them in broad terms and so they know what to look-out for within the story.

Starting with a long introduction that appears to bear no relevance to the headline is the number one killer of otherwise good writing. When using long anecdotes you need to let your readers know before you begin how it relates to your topic, or many readers will drop out of your article before you have a chance to illustrate your point.

More essence in fewer words; the function of an introduction is to convey something about your broader point. Think about your intro as a whole and consider which details help do this and which do not. Extra details like dates, names, descriptions and diversions, if not necessary to the essence of the anecdote, serve only to distract the reader.

For more details and my inspiration for this article you can visit my site mentioned in the Author field.

You are sick of duplicate content? Welcome to the club. What should you do different than 95% of article writers on the net?

Article directories and the web in general have been flooded by a tsunami of junk content on just about any topic you can imagine.

However, a great deal of this content does not contain anything useful and is pure advertisement or keyword stuffing. This type of content will hardly get read by anyone.

The people that produce this type of content I call article zombies. Their content does not have a soul. It does not inspire you or give you anything useful. They just bore you to death.

Before you start writing about a topic please make sure that you:

Have something meaningful to share

This does not need to be insider knowledge about a certain topic, but maybe an interesting opinion, a different view - some aspects not everyone already knows.

Know your target population

Before writing an article, know who your audience will be. Would you go on stage with your eyes shut? You need to know who you speak to. What are the interests of your audience? What pain or problem do they try to avoid?

Write for people - not search engines

SEO may be your initial motivation. But remember: There are more humans than search engines. Real people will read your article. If they don’t like what they see do you think they will click on the link in your resource box?

Read your own words aloud before sending or submitting it somewhere

Too often you write something, but when you start reading it aloud in your own voice - it sounds stupid. If that’s the case it probably is. When you make the transition from words in a computer to spoken voice - this is the first reality check for your train of thoughts and your narrative style.

Do not recycle existing articles

I know everybody tells you to take private label articles and rewrite them. My advice: Don’t do it. If you start rewriting somebody else’s article it will lose its own voice without getting your personal style into it. What you end up with is just a piece of text without a soul.

Have a strong feeling about what your are writing

This feeling does not always have to be positive. If you are mad at something - write it down. If you disagree with somebody else’s article - great - write down your view. If you feel fascination - your words will be fascinating, if you are sad - so your words will be.

But if you feel nothing your words also won’t have emotions.

So now let’s get into the right mood and produce some really good content for your website - but first of all - for your visitor. Your visitor are human beings. Offer them what you would offer to a visitor in your home: The best you have to offer.

In a sequence essay, you are writing to describe a series of events or a process in some sort of order. Usually, this order is based on time. You organize the essay by writing about each step of the process in the order it occurred.

Example question: Write an essay outlining the stages of the salmon life cycle.

Introduction: Describe what a salmon is like.

Supporting paragraphs:

1. Describe young salmon.

2. Describe adult salmon.

3. Describe what salmon do before they die.

Summary paragraph: Summarize the main steps of the salmon life cycle.

The introduction paragraph is the first paragraph of your essay. It introduces the main idea of your essay. A good opening paragraph captures the interest of your reader and tells why your topic is important:

1. Write the thesis statement. The main idea of the essay is stated in a single sentence called the thesis statement. You must limit your entire essay to the topic you have introduced in your thesis statement.

2. Provide some background information about your topic. You can use interesting facts, quotations, or definitions of important terms you will use later in the essay.

Example (if you were writing about hockey)

Hockey has been a part of life in Canada for over 120 years. It has evolved into an extremely popular sport watched and played by millions of Canadians. The game has gone through several changes since hockey was first played in Canada

Supporting paragraphs make up the main body of your essay.They develop the main idea of your essay. This is a critical part of learning how to write an essay. Like all good paragraphs, each supporting paragraph should have a topic sentence, supporting sentences, and a summary sentence. These are most important when learning how to write an essay.

How to write them:

1. List the points that develop the main idea of your essay.

2. Place each supporting point in its own paragraph.

3. Develop each supporting point with facts, details, and examples.

To connect your supporting paragraphs, you should use special transition words. Transition words link your paragraphs together and make your essay easier to read. Use them at the beginning and end of your paragraphs.

Examples of transition words that can help you to link your paragraphs together: For listing different points :

First

Second

Third

For counter examples:

However

Even though

On the other hand

Nevertheless

For additional ideas :

Another

In addition to

Related to

Furthermore

Also

To show cause and effect:

Therefore

Thus

As a result of

Consequently

The summary paragraph comes at the end of your essay after you have finished developing your ideas. The summary paragraph is often called a “conclusion.” It summarizes or restates the main idea of the essay. You want to leave the reader with a sense that your essay is complete.

How to write one:

1. Restate the strongest points of your essay that support your main idea.

2. Conclude your essay by restating the main idea in different words.

3. Give your personal opinion or suggest a plan for action.

Finally, the editing stage. The editing stage is when you check your essay for mistakes and correct them.

An important reminder when learning how to write an essay: The internet is an invaluable resource for information&ndashregardless of subject matter.