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Best of Word Trippers

If you don’t subscribe to my ezine Word Tripper of the Week, you’re missing out on a regular opportunity to sharpen your word use skills. You’ll find easy explanations of confusing word pairings such as “accept vs. except” and “affect vs. effect.”

Abstruse, obtuse – Abstruse means hard to understand, complex, or highly abstract. It stems from a Latin word meaning concealed or hidden and typically describes texts or arguments. Obtuse describes someone who is (or seems to be, based on behavior) not sharp in thinking, perception, or feeling; it can also refer to a remark, argument, or object that is dull or blunt.

“The teacher lost his students’ attention while describing abstruse philosophical topics to his class. He was too obtuse to notice their lack of participation.”

***

Afflict, inflict – Both words mean to cause pain, suffering, distress, or discomfort. Afflict with the preposition with usually describes an illness or condition. Inflict with the preposition on concentrates on the force with which the pain, suffering, distress, or discomfort is administered.

“He did not intend to inflict shame on his friend with his calloused remark. It would later afflict him with a deep sense of remorse.”

***

Anticipate, predict – Anticipate means to think of something that could happen in the future; to expect or look ahead to something with pleasure. Predict means to declare or indicate in advance; to foretell based on observation, experience, or scientific reason.

“It’s easy to predict the youngsters will have a tough time sleeping as they anticipate their trip to Disneyland.”

***

Archetype, prototype – Derived from the Latin term typus meaning image, the nouns archetype and prototype both relate to an original pattern or model. Each prefix establishes the distinction. Arch refers to the most accomplished or high ranking of something; proto primarily refers to a standard configuration, or an initial model or version of something. Thus, archetype has come to mean an ideal example while prototype is an unrefined version of something that’s expected to evolve.

“With her perfect GPA, inspiring extracurricular activity, and impressive athletic accomplishments, she’s the archetype of a great student and possibly a prototype for a successful entrepreneur.”

Barbara McNichol is a nonfiction editor, who works with authors, speakers, and business professionals to add power to their pen through the written word. Barbara wrote Word Trippers: The Ultimate Source for Choosing the Perfect Word When It Really Matters. She offers helpful writing tips weekly and a course to take your writing and editing to the next level: “WordShops: Strengthen Everything You Write.”

7 Writing Mistakes Editors Are Constantly Fixing

Wednesday, March Post a comment

What can editors tell writers about improving their writing before they even begin the editing process? Here’s a summary:

Mistake #1. Being so self-absorbed as a writer that you’re unaware of the reader’s experience. The fix? Know your core message and write to that message, leaving out the experience of writing.

Mistake #2. Addressing readers as readers rather than as a single key person whose interest you want to capture with your message. The fix? Keep a single interested person in your target audience top of mind as you write.

Mistake #3. Skimming the surface, not going deep enough. The fix? When describing an experience, explain what you felt, what the other person felt as best you can, and what exact words were spoken. Go deeper with the details.

Mistake #4. Having no rhyme or reason to the order of the paragraphs. The fix? Make a conscious decision about the order based on logic, facilitating your readers’ comprehension.

Mistake #5. Overusing weak verbs and throwing in extraneous phrases and wobbly words. The fix? Rewrite using active verbs; question the use of every adjective and adverb; throw out wobbly words: really, very, much, some, that. “I Really Think That We Should Not Use Some Words Very Much.”

Mistake #6. Using multiword noun phrases when one active verb will do. The fix? Whenever possible, get an active verb to do the “work.”

Mistake #7. Writing sentences that ramble (on and on and on and on). The fix? Limit sentences to 15–21 words max and vary sentence length.

Bonus mistake: Mixing metaphors and flat-out choosing the wrong word. The fix? Use a word choice guide to help you select the perfect word when it really matters.

The Queen’s Gambit – Ep 1: “Openings”

Tuesday, March Post a comment

My daughter Amber recommended The Queen’s Gambit (Netflix) to me because she knows I loved the period piece “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” and I’m a chess nut. Good call on her part. After watching Episode 1: “Openings” I thought I might write a series of reviews of the show discussing its use of story devices and comparing it to Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey.

The Prologue

Episode 1 opens with Beth Harmon (Anya Taylor-Joy) waking up, dressing while someone rustles in the bed, taking some pills, rushing from her hotel room, and bursting into a chess match for which she is late. A gaggle of reporters are taking flash photos of her as she shakes her opponent’s hand (an annoyed middle-aged white man) and apologizes profusely for being late. Then, as the chess clock ticks, we flashback to her childhood.

A lot happens in this opening. It establishes our hero as a chess celebrity, a drug abuser, somewhat promiscuous, and possibly under some sort of chess trial. This man is apparently important and she is very differential to him. It sets up a bunch of questions in our minds (who is this woman, who is this man, why is she taking pills, what is the nature of this chess match?) This is a teaser and leads us into the backstory of our hero. It might also be considered a proper prologue setting us up for the main story.

The Ordinary World

As our story begins, we meet young Beth (Isla Johnston) as a nine-year-old child at the scene of a car crash that kills her mother. She’s taken to an orphanage (it is assumed the father is dead) where she’s given a nice cot and meets the folks who will be taking care of her as well as some other orphans—one in particular is Jolene (Moses Ingram).

This is clearly a period piece as all the cars are 1940s style and the police uniform is from the same era. This shot is designed to set the stage for our hero’s Ordinary World.

Jolene is Beth’s first mentor. The mentor character is typically the one who helps the hero understand their new situation or Special World. Jolene explains that the pills she’s given will make her “feel good” and not to overuse them. Jolene also notices the effects of withdrawal when Beth stops taking the pills and explains that as older children, they’re likely “lifers” at the orphanage. Jolene is not so much a mentor as an “expositioner.”

This is an interesting device since we’re actually being introduced to Beth’s Ordinary World by showing her walking into a new situation after having lost her mother (notice how often heroes are orphans, especially in Disney tales). We see this displacement often in storytelling; it creates a fish-out-of-water effect. Mind you, this is not the Special World of the story but just the baseline world our story is taking place in. By having Beth enter a new situation in the opening of the story, she needs Jolene to explain everything to her—and to the viewers as well. Soon, Beth will cross over into the actual Special World of competitive chess.

You might compare this to Karate Kid (1984) where young Daniel has just moved from New Jersey to California with his mother to start a new life. It’s not the Special World of the story but allows us to get a lot of backstory because he’s the new kid in town. In Daniel’s case the Special World is that of competitive karate.

We also see a bit of foreshadowing in the form of the drugs the orphanage staff feed the children. All the children are given green pills (the same green pills we see in the opening scene of Episode 1).

Next, we’re treated to a flashback as Beth remembers her mother burning books and pictures after her father tries to convince mother Mary to come home with him. We see Beth clutch her mother’s bound dissertation on mathematics. Then, we see tear-streaked Mary looking in the car’s rearview mirror saying “I’m sorry” to this younger Beth.

This is classic backstory exposition. It implies mother Mary is a math genius and that she may have some emotional or mental health issues, possibly setting up the mystery of how the accident occurred. Both of these are foreshadowings of Beth’s drug abuse and genius-level chess abilities.

The Call to Adventure and the Refusal of the Call

Beth is given the task of cleaning the teacher’s erasers and goes to the basement to do so. There, she sees the janitor Mr. Shaibel playing chess alone. Beth has never seen chess and demands to be told what it is; Shaibel refuses and sends her away.

Here, the “call” is the chess board reaching out to Beth and capturing her interest. It’s also a “call” to the mentor. And in a twist to the classic monomyth, it is the mentor who refuses the call to adventure. He sends the hero away. And she must return to make the mentor take up the challenge to train her.

This also calls back to the “reluctant mentor” we see in Karate Kid. Mr. Miyagi is approached by Daniel to teach him karate, and Miyagi refuses. (When the teacher is ready, the student will come.) This is also Beth’s introduction to the Special World. Mr. Shaibel is her new mentor, and he will guide her into the Special World of competitive chess.

The Meeting with the Mentor

That night, we see Beth wrestling with her thoughts, and she takes some of the green pills she’s been palming. While in bed, she imagines the chess board on the ceiling. The next day, she returns to Shaibel’s basement and explains that she understood what she saw (this piece moves like this, that one like that. “You learned all that from watching me?”), and now the mentor is interested. Shaibel gruffly allows her to sit at the board, and he begins playing her—but he always plays the white pieces. Eventually, he gives her his personal copy of Modern Chess Openings and allows her to alternate playing both black and white pieces.

Beth has become indoctrinated into competitive chess, and Shaibel has recognized her genius. He accepts her as an apt pupil and comes to realize she is worthy of his mentorship. As mentors do, he is passing on his wisdom and gives her a personal gift that will allow her to traverse the Special World. Compare this to Obi Wan Kenobi’s gift of the lightsaber to Luke Skywalker and taking Luke on as a student of the Jedi way.

Crossing the First Threshold

Later, Beth is introduced to Shaibel’s friend: Mr. Ganz, the head of the chess team at the local high school. He challenges Beth and loses with Beth predicting “mate in three.” We also see Beth beat both men at simultaneous chess. Beth even leaves the table, calling out her final moves destroying Ganz without looking. Ganz arranges for Beth to play simultaneous chess against the boys on his chess team. She wins all the matches with ease. She relates to Shaibel how poorly the boys played and how surprised she was at how easily defeated they were.

Beth has crossed the first threshold: she’s met her first adversaries and conquered them. Now, she will have more trials and new oppositional forces.

We’re also seeing something terribly important, subtle, and necessary in this story: the education of the audience in chess terminology. For the viewer to understand how gifted Beth is, we must be told enough about the game so that we can appreciate it when Beth does well—or perhaps later when she fails.

We can see this in such movies as Top Gun (1986) where Maverick evades and defeats his opponent by performing a maneuver that causes the enemy to fly past him. This is critical in the climax of the film where Maverick saves his buddy using the same technique. In both cases, it’s imperative that the audience has a basic understanding of the hero’s prowess so that we can appreciate it later. To do this, the storyteller must interweave education of the audience with the hero’s journey.

Note that one of the openings Shaibel teaches Beth is the titular The Queen’s Gambit. I have no doubt we’ll see this mentioned again, and it will likely be critical to the story’s climax (see Chekov’s Gun).

The Missing Inner Quality

In the final scene, Beth is watching a movie with her fellow orphans and sneaks away to steal a screwdriver from Shaibel’s toolbox. Using the screwdriver, she unscrews the lock to the infirmary and takes a giant jar containing the green tranquilizer pills. She gulps down a handful of the pills. As she turns to escape with the jar in her arms, her teachers and friends find her standing on the chair caught red-handed. She succumbs to the overdose of pills muttering “Mom?” as she passes out and falls to the floor, dropping the jar, which shatters and floods the room with the pills.

This scene does double-duty. It exposes Beth’s missing inner qualities—drug addiction and the loss of her mother—and provides a cliffhanger so we’ll tune in next week.

These missing inner qualities of Beth’s are the true essence of this story. Beth will have an outer journey as she becomes a chess master. But she will also have an inner journey as she overcomes her drug addiction and comes to grips with her tragic loss. Hero’s journeys are always two-pronged: the outer tangible goal and the missing inner quality. The hero may or may not achieve the outer goal; it really doesn’t matter. But for the audience to achieve catharsis, the inner missing quality must be resolved.

This is a classic cliffhanger. We will tune in next week to see how Beth survives this; we know she will since we saw her in the future during the prologue. I’ll be here next week to look at more structure and story of The Queen’s Gambit.

Greg Smith is a writing coach, editor, and publisher. He founded the Agile Writer Workshop in 2011 with the mission of finding a method to help beginning writers complete a first draft in 6 months. The Agile Writer Method is based on the writings of experts in mythology, screenwriting, psychology, and project management. His seminars on the Agile Writer Method have informed and delighted thousands of writers, scholars, and university students. Agile Writer authors have written over 50 first draft novels and 10 published novels. Greg is a developmental editor for novelists and memoirists. He also coaches authors through the self-publishing maze. Greg runs the popular Agile Readers Book Club where new writers can get a beta read from a dozen or more readers.

Small Claims Copyright Court is Coming!

Monday, March Post a comment

In years past, writers who found themselves in the unfortunate position of finding their work infringed upon would have only one course of action: to take the infringing party to federal court to pursue damages there. This often would require not only a massive time commitment, but the potential for a great expense in court fees, attorney fees, and damages.

In late December 2020 and as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021[1], the CASE Act (Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act[2]) was signed into law. This new amendment to copyright law is an alternative for writers who have been infringed upon as it commissions a Copyright Claims Board (CCB) made up of three copyright officers specially appointed from the U.S. Copyright Office to hear certain small claim infringement cases. The new claims board is set to be established by no more than a year and a half from when the CASE Act was signed into law (or by June 2022).

The CCB will greatly reduce the costs of taking an infringement case to court (at the minimum, $100 and no more than the costs of filing a claim in federal district court). Writers or other copyright holders who wish to bring a claim before the CCB will be able to do so without the need for legal counsel, and the proceedings will be streamlined.

The CCB’s system will be a completely voluntary process, meaning that those who are defendants in an infringement claim will have the option to opt out of the process completely within 60 days of a filing. That said, one of the great incentives for a defendant to appear before the tribunal is that all damages are limited by design to a total of $30,000. In federal court, statuory damages can run up to $150,000 per instance of infringement, and additional damages could be awarded on top of that amount.

The CASE Act will provide an even playing field as the copyright holders will be required to have their work formally registered with the U.S. Copyright Office[3] prior to filing an infringement case before the CCB. Importantly, this requirement for copyright registration in infringement cases (brought to federal court) was recently underscored in the suit Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corporation v. Wall-Street.com[4].

The CASE Act was also designed to help prevent so-called copyright “trolls” from bringing frivolous claims, excessive counterclaims, and fraudulent defenses in front of the CCB. The tribunal would be empowered to penalize bad actors by setting limits on how many claims can be filed each year, awarding attorneys’ fees in extreme cases, and even dismissing all claims filed by abusers of the system.

The passage of the CASE Act and its CCB is significant to copyright law in the United States, and writers can take comfort in knowing that they will have an additional—and less expensive—recourse at their disposal should they find themselves infringed upon.

Mary Jo (“MJ”) Courchesne is the owner and principal consultant of Gryphon Publishing Consulting. A publishing veteran with more than 20 years of experience in trade, academic, and direct-response publishing, she has spent nearly two decades specializing in licensing, subsidiary rights, and permissions. MJ is a frequent and polished presenter on licensing and copyright. When it comes to intellectual property, she firmly believes that everyone from authors to publishers to corporations should know their rights. To that end, MJ instructed in the George Washington University’s Masters in Publishing program for 13 years, first for 11 years as adjunct professor for a course titled Editorial Content, Rights, and Permissions and subsequently as lecturer in a course on copyright. She currently serves on the Board of Experts for the National Association of Independent Writers and Editors and is a member of the Independent Book Publishers Association and the Society of Children’s Books Writers and Illustrators. MJ has also held memberships with other publishing organizations such as the American Society of Picture Professionals and Washington Publishers.

[1] https://rules.house.gov/sites/democrats.rules.house.gov/files/BILLS-116HR133SA-RCP-116-68.pdf see page 2544 for the start of the CASE Act in the Consolidated Appropriations Act omnibus bill

[2] original text: https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/2426/text

[3] https://copyright.gov/registration/

[4] https://www.scotusblog.com/2019/03/opinion-analysis-a-copyright-owner-cant-sue-for-infringement-before-the-register-has-processed-it

A Decade of Change

Friday, January Post a comment

Tax Legislation

The effect of 2020 will be felt for many years to come. The personal trials and tribulations alone would take many moons to share; in spoken word, in cinema, and in books – both fact and fiction . . . to say the least. For my purposes, purely now, as a tax professional, 2020 was the year all hell broke loose. Three of the major tax legislations in the past 10 years seemed to be competing for the spotlight.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) of 2017

Arguably the biggest change in tax law in over 35 years, the TCJA implemented changes that affected big corporations, as well as individual taxpayers and small business owners. For big business, the most notable change was a decline in the tax rate from 35% to a flat 21% (must be nice). For us regular folks, individual taxpayers saw the elimination of personal exemptions in lieu of increases in the standard deduction. The Child Tax Credit and Additional Child Tax Credit were increased for families with children. TCJA also eliminated the controversial “individual mandate” for the Affordable Care Act (ACA, a.k.a. Obamacare). For the small business owner, of course, came the Qualified Business Income Deduction (QBID). The QBID was a very real and tangible business income deduction that allowed small businesses to reduce their taxable income and, therefore, reduce their tax liability. And these TCJA provisions are just an overview of this massive legislation, setting the stage for the SECURE Act that went into law January 1, 2020.

The Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement (SECURE) Act of 2019

The SECURE Act was a much smaller piece of tax legislation than the TCJA. This legislation, in my opinion, focused most of its energies on the individual taxpayer. More specifically, the SECURE Act was all about retirement rule changes!

The age limit for traditional IRA contributions was repealed.

Very simply, beginning with contributions made for the 2020 tax year, age was no longer a limitation with respect to traditional IRA contributions.

Another biggie – the required beginning date (RBD) for required minimum distributions (RMDs) was increased from age 70 ½ to age 72 or the year the taxpayer retires (whichever is later) for an employer-provided plan.
Another provision, affecting beneficiaries inheriting retirement assets, called for distributions to be completed, generally, within 10 years of death.

Note: This might sound like a no brainer. Some would say, “Give it to me all at once!” However, if you are inheriting, say, $1 million, that would be a lot of money to have to pay taxes on all at once.

Not to worry, we are only getting started – enter the CARES Act.

The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act of 2020

Try to keep up here. The massive TCJA kicked off 2018, only to be followed by an admittedly more focused SECURE Act that went into effect in 2020. And then before the paint was dry on the ink outlining the SECURE Act, in comes the CARES Act. A full-fledged five-alarm fire solution for a worldwide pandemic. Mind you, some of us tax pros were still digesting some of the provisions of the TCJA. The most notable provision in the CARES Act were the stimulus payments. $1,200 for single taxpayers, $2,400 for married individuals filing a joint return, and $500 bucks for each (soon-to-be distance learning) kiddo. The questions, in those early days of the news of a stimulus package, overwhelmed the tax office. Are they going to give us money? Do we have to pay it back? Do I have to file my 2019 tax return to be eligible? As for small businesses, the questions were just as perilous. Is there going to be any help with payroll? How does my business qualify for these loans they are talking about? Real-estate professionals, gig workers, those unemployed, all with the same basic question – how am I going to survive this madness?

Poise in a Pandemic

The $2.2 trillion economic stimulus CARES Act would become the largest economic stimulus package in U.S. history. And as of December 27, 2020, there is talk of an extension to the CARES Act. However, before we get bogged down with what could be coming, let’s just drill down into some of the more popular provisions of the CARES Act.

The Recovery Rebate Credit

More commonly referred to as the “stimulus check.” However, on your U.S. Individual Income Tax Return Form 1040 line 30, this year, this credit is referred to as the “recovery rebate credit.” And NO, you do not have to pay it back. And, if you did not, for some reason, receive your full amount when all the checks went out (and have some form of documentation to show as much – proof), you can claim the difference on your 2020 tax return and possibly get that money back, since this is a refundable credit (if you don’t owe more than you would be getting back).

I repeat, “You DO NOT have to pay the stimulus money back!”

Consider it a gift from Uncle Sam . . . that we all paid for first. A re-gift of sorts, lol.

Retirement Plan Distributions

Now let us get into our favorite topic: retirement. I mentioned earlier that the SECURE Act did well to enact tax law changes that benefited the individual taxpayer, and especially with respect to retirement provisions. The CARES Act pushed some of the key provisions even further. One in particular, that a number of my clients, and friends and family as well, have benefited from is the waiver on the 10% penalty on withdrawals from qualified retirement plans or IRAs – for COVID-19–related reasons. Mind you, those reasons are pretty broad. In a nutshell, a COVID-19–related distribution is one made during the 2020 calendar year to an individual who is diagnosed with COVID-19 by a CDC-approved test, whose spouse or dependent is diagnosed with COVID-19, or who experiences adverse financial consequences as a result of being quarantined, furloughed, laid off, or unable to work due to lack of childcare due to COVID-19; having work hours reduced; or reducing hours of a business owned or operated by the individual. And there are provisions whereby you can pay this money back over a three-year period as though you never took it out in the first place. More to come on that later.

Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs)

Simple, the CARES Act has waived RMDs for calendar year 2020. If you are currently taking RMDs, you are not required to do so for 2020. This also includes your first RMD, which you may have delayed from 2019 until April 1, 2020.

This too Shall Pass

I know it can feel like this is too much to process . . . because it is. However, we are going to get through this one step at a time. These are the broad strokes.

References

H.R.133 – Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021

Three Big Ways Small Business Would Benefit from the New COVID Relief Package

30 years after the Tax Reform Act: Still aiming for a better tax system

An Overview of Itemized Deductions

Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement (SECURE) Act

Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act

Kajli Prince (“Prince”) has over 20 years of experience in small business tax preparation; he is the office manager of H&R Block’s Sudley Manor Office in Manassas, Virginia. As a self-published author, Prince holds a special appreciation for NAIWE and its members. One of his passions is sharing relevant information with people and showing them how best to use it for their benefit. Prince is a small business owner of 25 years, and his specialties include emerging currencies (e.g., virtual/crypto currencies), information technology, intellectual property, and business administration.

How to Choose a Good Domain Name

Monday, January Post a comment

Everyone knows it’s necessary to have a strong internet presence if you’re going to be a modern writer. Perhaps one of the most difficult decisions you’ll make is the domain name for your site. Or maybe not.

Domain names are becoming less and less important. Today, people are searching for site links with Google using the name of the company, writer, or book title, and not bothering to remember site names. However, you still want your domain name to be professional so you don’t look like a scammer.

Guidelines

That being said, here are some guidelines to good domain name choices.

Short(< 15 characters)
Descriptive of the company, or individual
Easy to say (and spell)
Fairly unique across the web (org and HerosWay.org are very close and two very different sites)
Avoid punctuation(like dashes greg-smith.com)
Avoid numbers(thai-diner-2.com [Do people spell out TWO or the digit 2 or the words TO or TOO.])

NOTE: Single-word domain names have already been scarfed up by the domain harvesting companies. So “Wonderful.today” is never going to be available without paying a hefty fee on the order of thousands of dollars.

NOTE: DO NOT PAY FOR BROKER SERVICES. Brokers claim to be able to get you a deal on harvested domain names, but they almost never broker a deal for less than several thousand dollars.

Top-Level Domains

Your domain name doesn’t have to end in ‘.com’ or any of the usual suspects. Consider a different top-level domain (TLD) for your website.

.pro
.site
.group
.world
.page
.today
.guru
.info
.fyi
.name (All of the usual last names are taken, so be creative, or use both first and last names.)

I’m stunned and amazed that .writer is not a TLD.

Suggestions & Resources

I’d recommend a domain with two words, both short. Like WritersBounty.com or such. For international, consider “WritersBounty.world”—the domain harvesters haven’t stolen dual-word domains yet!

Here’s an extensive list of TLDS and prices you can expect.

And here’s GoDaddy’s search engine for domain names. Make sure yours isn’t already taken!

Finally…

Regardless of what you choose, be sure to do a sanity check with friends, relatives, and coworkers. Google your own domain name components to see what else shows up and see if you’ve picked something that yields unexpected results (go ahead and Google “writers bounty” from my example, above; you may be surprised). Above all, have a little fun!

5 Characteristics of an Effective, Catchy Blog Post Title

Wednesday, January Post a comment

A blog post’s title has an important job: to get someone to read the post.

It holds that huge responsibility on the shoulders of about 60 to 70 characters—not a lot. That means you have to get creative to make sure every word, letter, space, and punctuation mark in your headline is totally necessary and carries its fair weight.

What makes a good blog headline depends largely on the context where a reader sees it—as they scroll through social media, search on Google, browse your email newsletter, or peruse your website, for example.

But some characteristics of good titles apply across platforms.

Regardless of the platform where you promote a blog post, the title should:

Be eye-catching: Your first hurdle is to catch a potential reader’s attention on the platform where you promote a blog post. Your article title competes with everything else the reader will encounter on the platform, so it has to stand out—what we call a “thumb stopper.”
Make a promise: What will a reader get out of reading your post? The title should tell them not just what you know a post is about but exactly how it’ll serve them.
Leave a curiosity gap: Now you have to get a click. If your headline gives away—or appears to give away—the main points of your post, readers have no reason to click through and learn more. Make the promise clear enough to pique interest, but leave enough questions in the reader’s head to get them to read more.
Be honest: Whatever promises you make and questions you raise in the headline, you must follow through in the blog post. Don’t be salacious just to get a click; it’ll cost you trust with the reader.
Encompass the post: Consider your blog post a hierarchy with the title at the top—it should be a comprehensive explanation of the post. If the title only teases a single detail from the post, you’ll likely exclude some readers and disappoint others.

Dana Sitar has been writing and editing for digital media since 2011, most recently as a copy editor for fintech and personal finance. She trains journalists, writers, and editors on writing for the web through sessions at the annual ACES editors’ conference, Utah Valley University, online courses, and private trainings. Dana has written about work and writing in digital media for publications including the New York Times, HuffPost, a column for Inc. Magazine, and dozens of writing and content marketing blogs. As a branded content editor for The Penny Hoarder, Dana managed a team of writers, editors, and social media experts to create multimedia branded content to help advertisers reach an audience of 12 million across platforms including social media, email, blog, and video.

What You Need To Know To Write Effective Headlines for 4 Major Platforms

Wednesday, January Post a comment

Unless you write for an authoritative news site or have a rabid audience, you likely rely on external platforms to attract readers to your blog posts.

Whether readers click through to your site and how they perceive your post when they get to it, both depend on the context of that platform where they first discovered it.

What mindset were they in on the platform?
Why did they approach the platform in the first place?
What else did they encounter on the platform before finding your post?

Consider the common platforms and their context and headlines readers will encounter first on those external platforms as you write blog posts.

Social media: Probably the first we think of when we consider platforms for blog post promotion. Social media includes sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram (Stories), and Pinterest. Readers here are easily distracted and encounter a wide variety of content. They aren’t thinking about your site or the topic of your blog post before seeing your headline.
Search: Search engine optimization (SEO) is a popular way to craft blog posts that show up in Google search results and attract new readers. Readers here enter a query into the search engine and choose your blog post from among up to 10 related results. They approach the search with a specific question or topic in mind. If your headline promises a good answer and the blog post follows through, they’ll likely be highly engaged with your content.
Email: Readers who subscribe to your blog or email newsletter want to see your latest content, so they’re highly engaged and loyal. Your subject line gets them to open the email, and your headlines within the email should entice them to click through to read the articles in full.
Your home page: Readers who visit your website looking for something to read are extremely loyal. But you still have to catch their attention and get them to click on the content! Understand your core audience and what they most want from you, and use your home page content and blog post headlines to demonstrate that you can deliver.

There Is a “Best” Pattern for Creative Work: Find Yours

Thursday, December Post a comment

Creativity is a much-studied activity that no one truly understands. And some of what we don’t understand about it includes

how it occurs
what triggers it
how we can control it.

So in this post I’m intending to write entirely about my own experiences doing—and not doing—creative work.

Creativity Is a Flow

One of the first things I noticed about my own creativity is that it just flows out of me. I can have a creative thought in the shower, at dinner, walking along, chatting with friends, reading a book, watching TV or a film, listening to music, or even falling asleep.

I’m not really able to turn it off. I have given birth to creative thoughts in the strangest places, at the least appropriate times, and in the most difficult circumstances. Over the years, I learned to write down a lot of this stuff, because when the creative fever passes, I often can’t recall what I was thinking while I was in its throes.

I Can’t Force Creativity

Although creative ideas flow out of me with astounding regularity, the flow is not under my conscious control.

As I said, I’m not able to turn off my creativity, and—symmetrically enough—I’m not really able to turn on my creativity either. Although I haven’t ever tried this experiment, I’m willing to bet I can’t meet the challenge of coming up with a certain number of creative thoughts in a certain period of time.

Sure, on demand I can come up with quite a few random thoughts, and you might even be generous enough to call them “creative.” But I wouldn’t honor them with such a highfalutin rubric. Most of them will probably be silly, stupid, childish, crazy, or some combination of all four.

For me, trying to fill a quota will generally not produce creative thoughts that (as they should, in my view):

meet a need
point toward a purpose
exhibit relevant meaning
feel satisfying
spark a lot of enthusiasm in others.

I Can Make Creativity Happen

Nevertheless, I have found ways to set the table for creativity, so I can sit down and wait to see if any ideas show up to feast.

These ways include:

setting forth a clear purpose for the creative ideas I’m anticipating, which could be anything from “selling breakfast cereal” to “explaining the motivation of a character,” and beyond
sitting quietly without distractions and waiting for inspiration to hit
avoiding other activities, such as sharpening pencils or straightening my desk (If I’m there to write, I’m there to write—and do nothing else.)
piggybacking or building on any creative ideas that do show up, as a method of generating more ideas (Maybe the character needs money. [Yeah, that’s a good idea!] Maybe she needs it to pay for her mother’s life-saving surgery. [Yeah, that’s another good one!] Maybe she needs to borrow it from her boss. [Yeah, that could happen!] You get the idea.)
avoiding any judgment of my creative ideas (That process comes later. For now, during the idea-generation process [part of which I described in the previous bullet], there’s no room for negativity, objections, rejections, or rebuffs of any kind.)

I understand that I am very lucky to have some kind of a creativity muscle in me that has performed so well so far. I recognize that many people feel they don’t have one. I hope they are wrong. In fact, I am pretty sure they are wrong.

In my view and experience, most people of average or better intelligence can tap into a wellspring of creativity if only they have the courage to try and the techniques to support their creative efforts.

I Can Exhaust My Creativity

If you will join me in considering creativity to be much like athleticism, as in the metaphor of my having a creative muscle, you will readily see that every creative effort I make is going to require a commensurate effort at recuperation. I breathe in, I breathe out. I exert, I rest. I strain my brain, and then I make an attempt to soothe my brain.

What’s more, as with athletes, the quality of my performance as a creative person has exhibited good seasons and bad seasons, good days and bad days, even good times of day and bad times of day. There are periods when the ideas come thick and fast, then other periods when I have nothing creative to contribute. Of course, there are many periods that fall in between these extremes.

Just like an artesian well that brings fresh water from hidden sources, my flow of creativity seems to exhibit its own pace. I have never tried to plug it up, but I imagine if I did the urge to be creative would build up pressure until it would overflow.

I have occasionally tried to drain my creativity too much, and I have then found myself in a period where my creativity ran dry. Fortunately, this has lasted only for a relatively short period of time. But I have known people who have come to the end of their creativity.

It seems sensible that the creative juices can thin out and even dry up as the creative person ages—not always, of course, but often enough to warrant notice. In the same way that athletes lose a step in the latter part of their careers, creative professionals may similarly find themselves coming up with fewer or weaker ideas. I honestly don’t know if this is happening to me. So far, I don’t perceive any such changes. But if and when it begins to happen, I’m hoping I’ll accept the changes with grace.

You Can Find and Nurture Patterns of Creativity

All of these attributes of the creative flow lead to an inescapable reality: creativity exhibits patterns. I have mine. I would expect that you have yours.

If you can chart and understand these patterns, you have a fighting chance to nurture them. This will allow you to increase both the total amount of creativity you generate over your lifetime as well as your ability to direct your creativity when and where needed in hopes of accomplishing specific tasks and meeting specific goals.

I’m not telling you what your patterns of creativity might be. I’m merely encouraging you to expect that your creativity muscle is probably subject to one or more patterns, with highs and lows, strengths and weaknesses, good and bad periods, and the like. Look for them, and make use of them so you can more fully benefit from the creative flow that emanates from somewhere inside you.

Robert Moskowitz is an award-winning independent professional writer who has written and sold millions of words in just about every format over five decades. He instinctively sees the big pictures, breaks each one down into coherent slices, meaningfully prioritizes and sequences those slices, and then executes the tasks inherent in each slice in very productive ways. Put more simply, Robert knows how to succeed as an independent writer, covering all the bases from soliciting assignments to delivering polished work, from pricing jobs to budgeting and managing personal finances, from organizing a conducive office environment to establishing and following sensible guidelines regarding life, work, and productivity. Having done all this, and having paid attention to how he did it, Robert is now in a position to pass along what he knows to others.

Blurred Lines? Know the Journo Norms

Friday, December Post a comment

We’ve all been there, scampering for sources. Somehow, they usually fall into place. For me, I always over-source, reaching out to many experts at the same time to ensure I receive comments from more than one.

But what do you do when you have too many sources? Obviously, they don’t all make the cut.

This happened to me recently. I spoke to a few people and wound up not using comments from the final interview. One source had pretty much repeated everything that everyone else said, so I left it at that. I already had plenty of material to work with.

That was fine, until the source’s media team contacted me. They were disappointed that I didn’t use his comments.

Do You Have to Publish Responses from All Your Sources?

I didn’t like the “feel” of being told they were disappointed in me. After all, I was a media reporter—I didn’t work for them.

Sadly, a lot of communications folks who work privately think that reporters do work for them. I don’t mind the occasional “let us know when this posts” message, and I try to send a link whenever I can. But they don’t get to dictate which sources we use and which we don’t.

I was very clear about this in my response. I had to explain Journalism 101 style that I can’t possibly use every source I connect with on a story. I do a lot of my less-pressing interviews via email and often get multiple sources. None have ever seemed to get upset when I didn’t use their comments—we just agreed I’d reach out in the future. (And I usually do because I save all my messages!)

Should You Share Your Work Before It’s Published?

There’s another thing that these media teams, or a source, may ask you to do that’s blurring the line. Many want to see what you’ve written so they can approve it. That happens when they push out their internal content, but it’s not supposed to when working with an outside outlet. Many newspapers and media outlets specifically tell their reporters not to share the work until it’s published. That’s just how it’s done.

If you don’t use all your sources, that’s okay. Of course, you value a source’s time, but you don’t owe it to each one to publish everything they said. There are different reasons why sources are omitted or cut during the editing process. It’s not personal.

And in the same vein, remember that it is okay when you are writing for an outlet—and preferred by most—that you not share your article, or even pieces of it with the featured source, until it’s published. I’ve had to explain to many sources that this is the norm in the industry. Some get it, some don’t. I try not to work with those who don’t. Remember, the interviewee may not have actual reporting experience. They may not “know” how things are done, as wonderful as they may be at getting you sources.

Have a source that wants to know if you’ve represented them accurately? I get it, as some are misquoted. In that case, I’ll read back something to the source to let them check it for accuracy. This is why I do a lot of interviews via email—that way, I get things in writing (though there is room for misinterpretation there too if we aren’t careful).

I hate to see journalists beat themselves up because a PR person expects them to follow the same norms as they do with corporate communications. Many journalists are trying to be the nice guy and “do the right thing,” but our norms are different. People need to understand and accept them. Journalism is not corporate communications—we are not working for a certain institution. We are working for the free press.

If they don’t, well, there are always other sources.

Kristen Fischer is a copywriter and journalist living at the Jersey Shore. She worked as a reporter and copyeditor for Gannett before launching her full-time freelance business in 2005. Her work has been published in Parents, New Jersey Monthly, Prevention, Woman’s Day, SheKnows, and Healthline.

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