10 Tips for Winning Writing Contests

Contest Tip Sheets: "1. Begin with a bang. Editors routinely say they read the first paragraph of a piece, and if they don't care about what happens next, they stop there, because the incoming mail stack is too high. Contest judges often face even higher manuscript stacks. A quick way to weed out the losing entries is to discard all those where the first page doesn't give them a reason to go to the second page. Before sending in an entry, read every article or book chapter you can find on openings, beginnings, leads. Then compare yours to what the experts say. This applies equally to fiction and nonfiction."

National Novel Writing Month - National Novel Writing Month

National Novel Writing Month - National Novel Writing Month
site is due to be relaunched today

and I must get my head together for November

reading and thinking

NOTES ON WRITNG

General Advice: Clues For New Writers Of Crime Fiction

The first time you put on a pair of ice skates, were you eligible for the Olympic figure skating team? No? Well, chances are, your first attempt at writing could use a little work before it sails out over the slippery surface of publishing.

A friend of mine says, "Writers are the only artists who expect their first paintings to hang in the Louvre."
The Official Website of Jan Burke

Rule #5 is "Turn off the television. For eight months.
Spend more time writing. You never waste time by writing—you only waste
time by not writing

FROM Google Groups : misc.writing.moderated

This blog

this blog is on hold until I rediscover the energy and impulse to write fiction

please visit some of the others http://hughw36.blogspot.com/
is my main blog

sincerely

Hugh W

Which point of view?

the leading character and the storyteller are not usually the same person

Which POV point of view is a technical and artistic decision

When I hang out with writers we discuss POV as technique

google search POV+techniqu


Stylistic Devices - Points of View

First-person narrator

The narrator tells the story from his / her point of view (I).
It is a limited point of view as the reader will only know what the narrator knows.

The advantage of the first person narration is that the narrator shares his / her personal experiences and secrets with the reader so that the reader feels part of the story.

Third-person narrator

The narrator is not part of the plot and tells the story in the third person (he, she).

Usually the narrator is all-knowing (omniscient narrator): he / she can switch from one scene to another, but also focus on a single character from time to time.

http://www.ego4u.com/en/cram-up/writing/style/point-of-view

google search First-person+narrator

google search third-person+narrator

Fantastic Narrator

read on
http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/gm/penney14.html

An author can relate a tale through a third person narrator detached from the story or by allowing one of the characters involved in the action to describe the events.

Different stylistic techniques also present varying possibilities within these forms of narration.

Why do

BBC - Get Writing - Hugh Watkins

BBC - Get Writing - Hugh Watkins
I had forgotten about that page until it turned up in a test search
via http://www.freefind.com/
I did not logon much more,
after I was recruited from this BBC board to Writing Buddies

On language and style

I have been cooking my viking novel for many years, a retelling of
some sagas, and thinking about style and languge I relfected on my
style and if I should reject words of latin origin and especially not
put them inthe mouths of characters because they would be anachonisms.

To succeed totally in that would mean I would be writng in pure
icelandic or saxon - so that was a non-starter

The skill of the writer in introducing new words into the english (or
another) language is to make them self definng by their context.

I reached for my dictionary - on line or OED 3 on cd - even such a
word as communism has a pitfall

Do you mean Communism or communism?
because the remarks about revolution apply only to the former.

see Merriam Webster dictionary - communism

remark:-
Main Entry: 2 com·mune
Pronunciation: 'käm-"yün; k&-'myün, kä-
Function: noun
Etymology: French, alteration of Middle French comugne, from Medieval
Latin communia, from Latin, neuter plural of communis

I see no reason to suppose latin is a younger language than greek
see evolution of the alphabet

but a language will exist long before it is ever written

from a thread in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wittgenstein-dialognet/
we were discussing
Laurian:-
In Jowett's translation of the "Laws" of Plato, one may find the following sentence "The principle of piety, the love of honour, and the desire of beauty,
not in the body but in the soul. These are, perhaps, romantic aspirations;"

It seems that Jowett was to great a translator to make such a trivial mistake.
For it seems that to translate anything from Plato by "Romantic" is a stupid anachronism.

AND :-
It seems that Jowett was to great a translator to make such a trivial mistake.
For it seems that to translate anything from Plato by "Romantic" is a stupid anachronism.

To be more explicit:
(1) "Plato had communist views" - is a well-formed sentence
(2) "Plato believed/said that communism is good" - is an unacceptable sentence .