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"Finding The Book Writing Resources, Tips, And Help You Need!"
Writing can be more difficult that just compiling your thoughts on a few pieces of paper. In fact, it can be a challenge to find something new, interesting, and publishable to write about. Even if you have the basic designs for a book, you still...
Ghostwriting for Fun and Profit
We've all heard of ghostwriters. For some, a ghostwriter is the ghostly assistant to junior detectives on a PBS kids' show. For most, however, a ghostwriter is someone who writes for another, in the name of another.
Many celebrities use a...
How to Break Into Writing for Newspapers
Besides waking up with a morning coffee, millions of us wake every day to blaring newspaper headlines about police gunning down a suspect, or a fire that leaves a family of four homeless, or a city council that wants to make it illegal to dump...
Starting a Freelance Writing Career (or How I Sifted Through the Muck and Found My Way)
So, the decision is final. I am a writer. Actually, I have always been a person who writes, but I have never applied the term to myself in a professional sense. Having pushed aside my financial fears and gained the requisite self-confidence, I...
Writing For The Web: More Places To Get Ideas
There are many places all over the place to get article ideas. Part 1 of this series explored some of the locations on the internet. This part goes into some of the places you can find ideas outside of the web. Libraries - Believe it or not,...
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Dreading the Writing Assignment? Outlines to the Rescue
Writing technical articles is a challenge. There you sit, surrounded by reams of research, notes and interviews. Where do you start?
Remember 5th grade English? You start with an outline.
Outlining has fallen on hard times lately. Mind mapping and brainstorming are much more fashionable. These techniques are great when generating ideas, but once youve got your ideas germinating youve got to outline them. Without an outline, your article will:
- Be an unstructured mess.
- Take three times as long to write.
Dont let this happen to you outline. If its been a while since 5th grade or if your progressive school didnt stoop to teach you actual English skills let me remind you why its important and how to do it.
- Outlining keeps you from writing an unstructured mess. Readers, especially American readers, prefer distinct sections in their media. For example, look at American screenplays. Movies invariably have three acts, and anything that doesnt have them is considered an art film. Effective speeches often contain three parts, and readers like three points because the structure makes easier to retain information.
- Outlining shrinks your writing time by a third to a half. How do you whittle down that pile of research notes and interviews into an article or white paper? You guess it outline it. By assigning sections to your notes before you start writing, youll categorize, simplify and clarify. Not bad before youve even written an introduction. For example, lets say youre writing an article about mirroring. You can divide such an article into several different sections depending on what your client wants
to get across. Here are some examples of different outlines:
- 1) Explanation of mirroring 2) Differences between local and remote mirroring, 3) Contrasting mirroring with other forms of replication, or
- 1) Define mirroring 2) List environments that require mirroring 3) Decision matrix for assigning different mirroring levels.
Once youve done your research its simple to assign pieces to different sections. Believe me, itll light a fire under your writing time.
Christine Taylor is president of Keyword Copywriting, which helps marketing and PR pros leverage their relationships with technology clients. E-mail her at chris@keywordcopy.com, call her at 760-249-6071, or check out Keywords Website at www.keywordcopy.com
Christine writes technical marketing communications for data storage, networking and pharmaceutical clients, including:
- EMC
- Commvault
- Quantum
- StoneFly Networks
- Sybase
- Maranti Networks
- ClariStor
- Fujitsu
- AES
- Obagi Medical Products
She specializes in trade journal articles, white papers, press kits and online content. She serves as a contributing editor to Computer Technology Review and acts as editor-in-chief for Storage Inc. and Storage Management Solutions.
Before moving into technical journalism and marketing she served 20 years in the IT trenches, including systems administration at Avery Dennison's Research and Development division.
chris@keywordcopy.com
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