|
|
Tags for This Article:
OpEdNews (512) Writing (192) Writing (152) Heartwarming- Heartwarmers (65) OpEdNews FAQ (57) Story Writing (25) Story Writing (21)
|
Add to My Group
Pick a topic you care about. Start writing. Assume that what your first write is just that, a first draft. Give yourself permission to heavily edit it, or even to throw it all out. Expect to keep just a percentage of your "first dump." That's what it is-- a dump, dredged, pulled, teased or seduced from your inner self, the deeper the better. Avoid cliche phrases that don't say anything that clearly describe the contents of the article. A lot of novice writers are tempted to use such phrases. It's a mistake, because they don't really attract the reader and are only witty or cute once the article has been read, which is less likely, with this kind of weak title. On the other hand, a witty title that includes phrases, but that tells the key elements of the article can be excellent. If you would like your readers to take an action, you can create an action page that your article will be linked to, which will enable your readers to send a message to their federal legislator and or local daily newspaper. Type the message you want the legislator to get, which will become the title of the page, like "Oppose bill number 123 enslavement of non-believers." The page will be created when your article is published, along with another page, linked to from your article, that is a log of the most recent 25 messages sent via the action page in response to your article. At the time of this writing, OpEdNews is the only site on the planet that offers this capability. When you're done filling in the fields, click on "preview article" select some subject tags and locale categories that are relevant to your article. You can pick up to 18. The more you pick, the more inside pages your article will appear on. You can always click the locale field where you live. When you're finished selecting tags, click on the USE THESE TAGS button. Next, next step. A new page will appear. Click on the link to see what the page looks like. If it looks good, go to the other page and click publish. If it doesn't look quite right, or you need to make a modification, click on revise. Once you click on publish, your diary will be published, live. If you decide to publish as an article, it will go into the editor's queue. If you start out submitting it as a diary, you can proceed to publish it as a public diary, or, you can change your mind and publish it as an article, probably in the OpEdNews Op-Eds category or as a news or life/arts/science sections.That's it. If someone comments on your article or diary, you'll get an email notifying you. It is proper netiquette to respond to comments. ONe of the best parts of blogging is the conversation that develops. This is particularly true for blogging diaries. You can also blog to your personal diary. When you do this, no link to the blog is posted in the diaries column. Only people who come to visit your blog home page will see these postings. Soon, we'll have the site set up so you can adjust setting so only friends can see your personal diaries. Later, we'll allow you to adjust settings so you can decide which people can see your diaries, even in columns. Later, you'll be able to see the demographic characteristics of the people who comment on your writing and later, you'll be able to see the demographics of the people who check out your article and blog pages.
Rob Kall is executive editor and publisher of OpEdNews.com, President of Futurehealth, Inc, inventor . He is also published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com. He is a frequent Speaker on Politics, Impeachment, The art, science and power of story, heroes and the hero's journey, Positive Psychology, Stress, Biofeedback and a wide range of subjects. He is a campaign consultant specializing in tapping the power of stories for issue positioning, stump speeches and debates. He recently retired as organizer of several conferences, including StoryCon, the Summit Meeting on the Art, Science and Application of Story and The Winter Brain Meeting on neurofeedback, biofeedback, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology. See more of his articles here and, older ones, here.
Copyright © OpEdNews, 2002-2008 |
|
