The Writing Life: Working for Ebenezer

You do not want to work for clients who
are under the delusions they live in
London in the mid-1800s.

Advice:  DON'T DO IT

Here's my nomination for "Still-Believing-in-Slavery" Freelance Writing Client of the Day

Saw this post on eLance. I cut and pasted it without alteration. How medieval is this guy?

"Greetings. Are you willing to complete 500 word articles for $1.00 each (as many as you can handle per day)? I need writers to write (unique and non-plagiarized) up to 10 articles (500 words each) every day for 6 months. 10 x 500 words articles Bidders from native English speaking countries are in demand. The assigned writing tasks are time based, which will require to be sent one by one. Normal workload: One by one and to be delivered within 1-2.5hrs for 500 - 1000 words (if possible). Funding and pay only after acceptance (usually same day)."

He's probably figuring $12 an hour is pretty good wages for doing basically nothing while sitting around at your computer all day in your underwear. After all, he figures:

• If you can type 100 words per minute that's one story every five minutes or 12 in an hour. 
• If you can (if possible) do 1000 word stories, it only reduces you to $6 an hour unless you can type 200 words per minute. 
• If you type back to back stories without a break at 100 wpm off the top of your head (with a little research if you can manage it), then you should be able to do 96 stories in a day for an 8 hour day (120) if you work 10 hour days..

In actual practice, you could probably do one original story in 1-2 hours if you push it, earning a magnificent 50 to 75 cents per hour or about $20 a week. At that rate over the six months this contract runs, I'd gradually become homeless and starve to death even at my current weight class.

AND THIS GUY LIVES IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. I figured he was probably someone from Somalia or Nigeria.

What is he the White House's statistician or something - can't count worth a flip? Sheesh!

Anybody out there, who has ever written for a living, want to give him the correct answer to his question?

I guess he doesn't remember how much he used to whine when the teacher gave him essay tests back in junior high.

© 2015 by Tom King

Jogging for the Busy Writer

Exercising the Vocabulary: Skill-Tweaking Strategies for Would-Be and Professional Writers

We all get bogged down writing stuff for profit that may or may not be something that's totally in our wheelhouses. Sometimes you just need to do something for yourself. I'd like to invite you writers out there to sign up with Blogspot. This website builder lets you easily build your own weblog. I have six going now. If you want to make a lot of money at blogging, go to Wordpress, but that's not what my Blogspot blogs are for. What I do with them is use them as a personal place for my creative non-commercial stuff and as a dumping place for things I post on forums or on Facebook that I think are particularly erudite and that I hate to just fire off and then forget that I wasted an hour working on that incredibly clever answer to someone's snarky question or comment

Sometimes others' posts and comments can kick you off into a nice essay. So, don't waste it. By creating a humor/philosophy blog, a political blog, a religious blog, a how-to blog (my most popular), a top 10 list blog and a poetry blog, I have a place to put all those bits and bobs I would otherwise waste on mere "comments". Plus, I have a Google Adsense account and have posted their ads on my weblogs. I make a couple of hundred dollars a year off my blogs and the more entries I post, the more money I make on ads. Just make sure to share your new posts on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google Plus. You'd be surprised how many people will read your stuff that way and get to know you as an author. THEN when your book comes out, they're more likely to invest in a copy AND you've got a place to advertise your new book.

Much of the content I post, I make deliberately "evergreen" except in the political blog. If a post is tied to a subject, an issue or a solution to a problem, people will keep visiting it. One of my most popular blogs ever was one on how to unstick a sticky piano key. I was looking for instructions on how to do it myself and found that no one had ever written one. So I did it and photographed the steps and wrote it up. I've had more thank-you notes on that one blog than you can know. My build-it-yourself canoe rack for pickups is another one that's done well. People send me pictures of the ones they have built and I post them.

Ever so often I post a link to an old blog on Facebook to generate traffic. I've had a couple of my posts go viral without my name on them. One, a skit based on Abbot & Costello's "Who's on First" bit has Lou buying a computer from Bud. You can look it up on Youtube. Several folk have posted comedic versions of the skit "Lou Costello Buys a Computer" on Youtube. I had to really work to get my name credited as the writer. I retained the copyright but still give permission to any acting teacher that wants to use it for teaching kids comedic timing. It's pretty widely used.

Anyway, you'd be surprised where your work may wind up or who may see it. You may not make a lot of money, but who knows? A pet interest of yours, turned into a blog, just may take off like Michelle Malkin's political blog or Brett McKay's "The Art of Manliness".

The sidebar to the right has links to some of my more popular blogs on this and other blog sites I write and manage. There's no telling what bit of your recycling may catch fire on the Interweb, but if it's not put out there, you'll never know.

At the very least, when you pitch face forward into your keyboard, you won't just leave behind a long string of random letters on the screen and a lot of debt. Your kids, your grieving spouse and your inquisitive grandkids will be able to read all your old blogs and see what is in reality, a personal memoir of you that will hang there in cyberspace for who knows how long after you're gone? (so be careful what you write, that is if you don't want your tombstone pushed over by a lot of angry relatives).

- Tom

P.S. I originally wrote this for a writer's forum and then posted it here on my How-to blog. I guess that makes me a literary recycler.
P.P.S  My poetry weblog is the one where I practice my wordcraft. I highly recommend poetry as a writing exercise. Writing poetry is like jogging for the vocabulary. I have in mind a workbook I intend to do on using writing exercises in poetic forms as a way to hone your vocabulary and sentence structure skills to sharpen your communication. If you'd like to check out my poetry blog, here's the link.

How to Write Effective Promotional and Explainer Videos

(c) 2012 by Tom King

Introduction:

They are called everything from marketing videos to startup videos, Internet commercials to promos.  No one in the marketing industry seems quite satisfied with the term “explainer” videos, but nothing else seems to capture the concept quite as well. In fact, this could be the first tip we offer as to how to write a killer explainer video script.

Say what you mean. Know who you’re talking to.

Before you do anything else, remember that it is best to make yourself clear to those who will view your video. Know who your audience is and prepare yourself to speak their language. If you’re speaking to a college educated audience, you’re vocabulary will be rather more sophisticated than if you’re trying to sell your goods or services to a more blue collar audience. An explainer video is no place to show off your artsy side or to exercise your vocabulary. 

Identify your call to action.

We make explainer videos for a purpose. We want viewers to do something specific once they’ve seen the video, whether it’s to buy a product online, make contact with a sales person or to visit the rest of the website. Knowing what you want the viewer to do before you write is essential. Without a call to action, the viewer may drift off into the sunset without doing what you wanted him or her to do. Write down your call to action in one or two sentences before you start writing the script.

Choose a look.

Once you know why you are making the video, who the video is for and what you want them to do at the end of the video, it’s time to decide on a look for the finished product. Do you want a calm, sedate talking head in an office, a funny story, bold outdoorsy documentary, a colorful animated romp or friendly classroom feel? The look of your video will to a great degree determine the cast you choose, the setting for the action and the words your actors speak. Make notes describing settings, clothing styles, backgrounds, colors, music, tempo, etc..

Cast your video

Of course, you won’t be hiring people at this point, but at least have strong types of people in mind. You may not be able to get Brad Pitt or Julia Roberts, but you can use them as mental placeholders while you write. Your video will sound more authentic if you write to specific characters. Choosing strong characters helps you avoid ending up with a script where everyone sounds like everyone else.  It’s far easier to capture the rhythm of speech, the inflection and tone of a character if you write one you know well. Make a character list and describe each character in detail.  If you want someone like John Wayne in your video, put that in your notes for whoever casts the video.

Planning and blocking the action.

Sit down with the notes you have and create a storyboard.  Draw pictures or make boxes on a blackboard and put ideas on sticky notes in the boxes. However you do it, block out what will happen, how the characters move, when things happen and how long each action takes.  This will dictate how much dialogue you have to write for each segment of the video.  Get key people involved in the project to join you for the story-boarding process. You’ll get better ideas from the group and they will help you avoid wasting time with dumb ideas that seemed brilliant to you at the time you wrote them down.  The story-boarding process will help you determine a good length for the video and creates an outline for your scripting. Often the storyboard will practically write the script for you. 

Remember these tips as you lay out your explainer video storyboard:

·        

• Keep it short. If you have a captive audience, say at a fair or workshop, six to eight minutes is about maximum. On a website on the other hand, keep your time to less than half that. In the editing process keep trimming the video till it stops just before you lose your audience’s attention.

• Put the important stuff first if you don’t want your audience to miss it. Try to get your message spelled out in the first 30 seconds of the script.

•  Make your video personal and specific to the audience. They have to feel like you’re talking straight to them. If they don’t, their attention will drift.

• Watch the pacing. Don’t use more than 125 to 150 words of dialogue in a minute and don’t keep up that pace for more than a minute at a stretch. Create a conscious rhythmic interplay between dialogue and action that keeps re-engaging the viewer every 30 to 60 seconds all the way to the end of the video.

• Be careful with humor. It should support the story. Unless humor supports your message, it becomes a distraction and poorly executed can lose you your audience.

• Use screen-writing software. These handy programs run anywhere from free to several hundred dollars and help you format your script as you go so that you can focus on creating screen directions and dialogue rather than how far to indent and formatting cues.

Write your first draft.

Writing is a disciplined process requiring you to be absolutely honest with yourself. You’ll write pages of stuff that seems totally inspired, only to have to go back and toss out all you’ve done and rewrite it. It’s good to have a partner who will read your stuff as you finish each segment and honestly tell you what he or she thinks. It will save you a ton of time over writing the whole thing and then revising, but work the way that best suits you. Every writer has his or her own process. Use what works best for you. When you’ve got your first draft, show it to the team.  Revise and repeat until most everyone on the project likes it.

Tips for First Time Explainer Video Writers

1

• Tell a story.  Avoid the temptation to rely too heavily on bullet point slides in an explainer video. People think in stories with an arresting beginning, some conflict in the middle and a satisfying resolution. 

• Don’t hammer the viewer with statistics and dry factoids.  Tell the story of your product or service. Statistics and facts are only useful when they support the story-telling. 

• Show how your company makes its customers’ lives better or their jobs easier or their bottom lines healthier. Don’t just tell the viewer you can help.  Show them using powerful stories. 

• End your video with a clear resolution and an unmistakable call to action. 

• Test your video.  Movie companies spend a lot of time testing the endings to their films. They want people to leave the theater satisfied with the ending so they’ll encourage others to buy tickets.  In the same way you should audience test your video to see if people understand the message you were trying to get across and respond to your call to action. Ask the audience what they liked and what they didn’t like and take careful notes.

• Rewrite and reshoot. If audience testing reveals the audience didn’t understand your message, if they didn’t like the ending or if they didn’t respond to your call to action fix it.

In Short:

There’s not a lot of glory in writing promotional videos, explainer videos and ads for small businesses and nonprofits. The great American novel it ain't.  Still, in this day and age, videos are critical promotional tools. Hiring someone to write and producing effective videos is hideously expensive if you’re starting a new business or working for a small nonprofit. If you’ve got decent writing skills, however, you can do it yourself.  After all, who knows more about your business than you do, so who better to articulate your message.

The video that we made from my first promotional screen-writing effort won gold awards at two international film festivals in the promotional film category. The judges said the film stood out in the category because of its emphasis on story-telling rather than the mere recitation of statistics and facts. The advice I got when I wrote my first script was the same that’s given here. Good luck with your video.

Tom

Beating Writer's Block

© 2012 by Tom King

Three basic factors cause writers to bog down in the writing process when trying to complete writing assignments - psychological, mechanical and process factors. Writers have different speeds and slow is not necessarily bad writing in the same way that fast writing is not necessarily good. Novelist Margaret Mitchell took ten years to write “Gone With the Wind”. Science, historical and science fiction author, Isaac Asimov, used to turn out a big thick book every month. If, however, you're a writer on a deadline, your speed can be a critical factor in whether or not you work and enjoy regular meals.

All three factors that impede writing can be overcome with a little practice and self-discipline.

Psychological Factors

One of the biggest factors that slows down the writing process lives inside your own head. Writers write, so the writing teacher's maxim goes. If you hate writing, you shouldn't be a writer. That said, even folk who love writing sometimes encounter the dreaded writer's block. Everyone who writes for a living or for fun has probably sat down at a page and puzzled over that first sentence. Writing projects can be like bobsleds. It takes a push to get them going, but after that it's pretty much downhill.

Except when it's not.

Psychological blocks often spring, ironically, from our desire to write well. While an excellent goal for a writer, sometimes good writing just doesn't naturally spring from the topic at hand. At times like these, it's best to forget about quality and go for quantity. That's why they call them “first drafts”. You can always come back and clean it up. Often you'll find yourself coming back and pitching out the first paragraphs of a piece. Sometimes you just have to take a run at it and several paragraphs in, you find your angle or capture the voice of the piece. You can always edit later. It's having nothing to edit later that's the real problem.

An excellent way to train yourself to write whether you feel like it or not is to keep a journal or write a weblog. Give yourself a minimum number of words to write. Started out with a goal of 400 words per day. Force yourself to write those 400 words no matter how pathetic the writing. The point of the exercise is to teach you to get into the “flow” of writing.

Renowned psychologist, Mihály Csíkszentmihályi demonstrated the power of the single-minded immersion experience he called “flow”. Flow often happens as we take a run at an absorbing task like writing and gradually become immersed in doing the task. All sorts of endorphins light up the brain, ennabling it to better access information and utilize skills the person already possesses. It's why, even though you don't feel like writing, you should just go ahead and write anyway. The physical process of writing can actually help you achieve the flow experience with your writing.

Mechanical Factors:

1. The Keyboard: Bad typing skills impair more journalists than one can imagine. If your typing skills stink, buy yourself a Mavis Beacon Typing Tutor program and hone your touch typing skills. Forcing yourself to type correctly will speed up your typing speed in spite of yourself. If you are really bad at typing or don't know how and are learning, you might try the Dvorak keyboard. The original QWERTY keyboard was designed to slow down typists and prevent key jams on the mechanical typewriters of the day. John Dvorak developed a new key arrangement that places the most used letters under the typist's dominant fingers. If you're just starting out, the Dvorak keyboard can give you a higher top speed than the old QWERTY and a good deal more comfort as you type. Dvorak computer keyboards are inexpensive to buy and standard keyboards can be converted to the Dvorak system. It takes about a month of practice for a QWERTY typist to regain his/her speed on the Dvorak, so plan on learning during a vacation. Otherwise, just work on your QWERTYskills.
2. The Computer: As computer operating systems become more bulky and new software adds to the burden placed on your computer's RAM memory, you can find yourself getting ahead of your word-processor. Consider a memory or motherboard upgrade to speed up your computer so it can handle the ever-increasing demands todays software places on your rapidly aging hardware.
3. Paper and Pen: Some writers, believe it or not, still write first drafts in long hand with pen and paper. Prolific writers like J.K. Rowling and Stephen King write their first drafts in longhand. If you're stuck, try writing your first draft with a pen on paper. The mental exercise is different from typing. A study cited by Newsweek claims that handwriting engages more sections of the brain than mere typing. Whichever way works best for you, it's often helpful, if you're stuck, to switch writing methods for a bit to stimulate those creative juices. Always keep a yellow writing pad and a comfortable pen handy for times when you get bogged down.

Process Factors

What to write? Even if you're assigned a topic, the research part of the process can bog you down. Here's are some writers tricks to speed up the process.

1. Find a good quiet place to write with few distractions. Everybody wants to write by a second story window with a view of the woods, the lake and the gardens, but few are able to cope with the distractions going on just outside. Don't make yourself so comfortable you have to fight sleep in order to write. When you reach a good stopping place – STOP. Get up, stretch, take a break. You will go back to writing with renewed vigor.
2. Narrow the topic of your writing. Keep the subject matter within the scope of your assignment. Don't take on a broader topic than you can fit into the space or you'll bog down trying to edit.
3. Copy down your references as you go. Mark and clip information you plan to use for your article in a word-processor document or on yellow legal pad.
4. Outline your article and plug in the bits of research information. Write by sections, Let the first draft sit overnight if you can. This lets you come at the material with fresh eyes the next day. Edit the draft. Even with fiction, create a story guide that summarizes the five essential elements of story-telling – characters, the setting, the plot, the conflict, and the resolution. Even novelists who say they don't work from an outline.
5. Run the second draft past someone whose proofreading skills you trust. Then, do a final once-over before sending it off.

Conclusion:

If you do a lot of writing, take notes on how you write, when you are writing well and quickly. Try to reproduce the conditions in your workspace when you are working best. Everyone is different. Pay attention to what works for you. Create cheat-sheets and outlines of the types of writing you do so that all you have to do is write the sections of the template. Even with fiction writing, you may want to create a story outline to work from that covers the basic elements of the story at minimum – characters, setting, plot, conflict and resolution. The trick when you're bogged down or stuck is to jump start your writing, even if what you write is only an outline, a journal entry or blog or a really bad version of what you wanted to write.

Get your soap box rolling with a nice firm push.

References:

Mark Foster: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
http://www.markfoster.net/struc/Mihaly_Csikszentmihalyi-wiki.pdf

M.W. Brooks: Introducing the Dvorak Keyboard
http://dvorak.mwbrooks.com/

The Bane of Your Resistance: Hands-On Solutions for Writer's Block
http://baneofyourresistance.com/tag/writers-who-draft-in-longhand/

Working Writers: Nine Ways to Speed Up Your Writing
http://workingwritersandbloggers.com/2011/06/07/nine-ways-to-speed-up-your-writing/

Five Essential Elements of a Short Story
http://www.katiekazoo.com/pdf/KK_FiveEssentialElements.pdf

Creative Writing Now: Easy Novel Outline
http://www.creative-writing-now.com/novel-outline.html