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21 Dec 09 Why Watching Movie is Important For a Writer

Where I come from, a kid is not allowed to watch much of the television, at least not in my time. Kids have to sneak in their home’s living room when no one is around. This was done to save the young from damaging effect of television soaps. I do not think stopping a kid from watching television or movie is completely wise as it may stifle the imagination.

As a writer (freelance, web or otherwise), are you doing it to yourself?

Are you stopping yourself from consuming those lovely shows and soaps that you always liked?
If you are doing this then it is a big mistake, a huge one. You need to stop at once and start indulging in movies, soaps, and plays.

Why?

A movie is a fertile ground for a writer to learn trick of the trade. It teaches you many things including:

  • Character sketching
  • Emotional responses
  • Dialogue writing
  • Scene creation
  • Story telling

And along with these story mechanics, a good movie also tells you:

  • How to engage an audience?
  • How to make them wanting for more?
  • What words to use to strike chord with the audience?
  • What style of narrative to use for the problem at hand?

A movie also tells you about your market and about what words to use, what kind of sentences to construct, and how long or short sentences and paragraphs should be. One also learns the art of creating favorable ambience to get the emotional response sought by the article.

It is very important for you as a student of writing to watch movie and learn from it. Be a keen observer, and do not just consume a movie, observe it. In order to learn something from the movie, you have to dissect the various scene and emotional responses that led to the dramatic ending the movie had. You can then use it to create the experience you want in your audience.

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18 Jul 09 5 Tips To Better Writing

Whenever you’re writing any sort of internet content, whether it be for a blog or otherwise, you always strive to write better content.  Writing is a business of trying to constantly make yourself grow and flourish in different ways, to improve your writing, and the overall quality of your content.  Writing is a hard thing to do well, and takes an awful lot of practice for you to get better at, but there are a few tips you should be aware of as you make your way down that road.

  1. Know your audience
  2. Avoid common grammatical errors
  3. Focus on your readers
  4. Chop off useless sentences
  5. Don’t preach

Know your intended audience, as you will be writing for them.  So if you’re writing a piece of information about cycling for example, you would want to include some insider knowledge involving the latest bicycle tech or other equipment.  Showing that you are in the know regarding your topics validates your opinions to your readers, and keeps them coming back for more info.

Avoid commonly made grammatical mistakes.  Nothing frustrates a reader like their inability to quickly skim through your writing because of grammatical errors that should have been caught before the final draft.

Put your focus to your audience.  If you are trying to demonstrate a point, or act as a guide for any topic stay away from using the word “I” in favor of “you”.  For example, you wouldn’t want to write “I do this, so you should too.”.  You want to gravitate towards more of a “you should do this, and here’s why” to create a dialogue with the reader, and show them why what you’re writing is important to them.

Never rephrase the same sentence a few times in one of your works just to act as filler.  That’s repetitive and will put your reader to sleep.  You want a short concise, well edited, grammatically correct piece of work.  Get to the point, but make sure the road to that point is engaging.

Never preach that your method is the best because it’s your method.  That will turn off a reader faster than you would think.  Nobody wants to read a self inflating brag fest that does little more than bloat your own ego.  People want to read how what you have to say applies to them, not that they should follow your example because you’re so awesome.

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