Angela Booth's Writing Blog

Use images to inspire your writing

Your right brain thinks in images, and when you write, you translate images from your right brain into words. Usually this process happens so quickly that you're unaware of it. If you can make this process conscious, you can goose up your creativity. Stephen King calls this process "writing with the third eye --- the eye of imagination and memory."

When you learn to access your image banks consciously, you'll find that if you write fiction, you'll be showing, rather than telling. You'll be able to make your readers see and feel your scenes. If your writing is flat and uninspired, "imaging" is an instant cure.

If you write nonfiction, you'll be writing holistically, moving from the whole to the parts and back again, effortlessly.

Try it. Here's a selection of images.

Choose one. Free write 200 words.

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Writing basics: How to write narrative essays

Narrative essays tell a story. They can be complex, or simple. For example, you could write a narrative essay about your first job, how you found it, and how you lost it.

As in any story, you'll tell about events, using description (remember to use your senses), and stringing the events together.

Although you'll need to make a point and convey the insight the experiences have given you, you may not know what the point is until you've finished the essay. You may not even know when you've completed a couple of drafts.

Keep working with the material. The insight often comes to you in a flash.

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Interview with Jerry Bruckheimer: make it real

Great article, "Producer Jerry Bruckheimer, The Top Gun Of Prime Time", with information that you can use in your own fiction and nonfiction:

He thinks his shows plug into a zeitgeist for "process, and I love process. I love being put in a place I know nothing about and showing how it actually works." Before the "CSIs," Bruckheimer says, he would watch a crime drama and often think "this is BS," so he wanted to show how a crime would be actually solved -- albeit in 47 minutes.

We all want to know how things work. Satisfy your readers' curiosity.

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Giggle of the Day: journalism is a … trade like plumbing

Hilarious quote on Vodkapundit's "Pay No Attention To The Arrogance Behind The Curtain":

  

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But look a little closer, and see the newsreader's eyes widen when the TelePrompTer starts to stutter, or see the slight tremble in the hand that holds the notepad when the survivors tell the reporter to mind his own damn business. Look a little closer, and then the jig is up. Somewhere in the dim recesses of the journalistic soul lies the horrible suspicion: this is really a pretty shallow--and maybe unseemly--way for a grownup to make a living.

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Read the whole thing. :-)

 

How to write a how-to essay

How-to books and articles are everywhere, and anything and everything that you know how to do can be a subject for your how-to.

 

When you're writing a how-to essay, it's different from writing a how-to article. In a how-to article, you're describing a process so that someone else can learn how to do it too.

 

When you're writing an essay, you're describing a process to share an insight about life. For example, in a how-to article about backing up your computer, you're teaching the reader how to backup his computer. First you do this, and this… In a how-to essay, you're describing the backing up process to make a point.

 

Your how-to essay is similar to a narrative essay: at the end of writing your how-to essay, you need to discover the insight, the point you're making. This insight may not appear until you've written the essay.

 

Today, write a how-to essay. The essay can be about anything you know how to do. How to bake a pie, or how to create a backup program on your computer. :-)