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I think that the most important lesson I learned from my mentor, author Arline Chase, concerned foreshadowing. Here is the Random House Webster’s definition of foreshadow: to show or indicate beforehand. In other words, to provide some hint, clue, or indication of something that is going to happen.
Why is foreshadowing important? I learned this lesson the hard way. In many of my first short stories—which I recommend as a medium to anyone testing the waters to see if they want to write fiction—I thought that I was being so crafty with my endings. I wrapped up the crime (or whatever) with a complicated summary that explained to the reader how all had come about. Arline hit me alongside the head with the following admonition: You can’t do that! You’ve got to play fair with the reader! It didn’t take me long to understand what she meant. If you’ll allow me, I will get to my point indirectly.
When a reader completes a thriller (my personal genre favorite), he or she should come away with two feelings. First, she should feel that she’s been entertained, that for her hard-earned money the author not only provided her the license but...
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Remember that you want to make a good impression and that the presentation of your manuscript is the first step. When you're preparing a manuscript, whether it's an article, a short story, or a novel, there are certain styles that make your piece stand out. You want it to look professional—not like the large percentage of manuscripts that appear as if the writer took no care at all in the presentation.
Writers disagree on whether editors really care about the typeface and the line spacing and whether the manuscript follows a certain style or format. Some editors don't care about these things, but all are impressed with presentation by writers who took time to prepare them in the conventional manner. There are at least two reasons to follow the general conventions.
First, while some editors don't care, most do, and it's always better to please the ones who care.
Second, manuscripts prepared in the conventional style are easy to estimate for word count. Newer fonts are spaced differently, and word processors do not count words in the same way as a typesetter counts them. Especially for books and for articles that have to fit a certain...
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Someone once told me,
"Being a writer is like being a prostitute, really. At first you're only doing it for yourself, then you decide to tell a few friends, let them in on the action, then you decide to let a couple strangers in, pretty soon you're welcoming the entire world."
Such a very accurate quote. When I heard this, I was at a very formal luncheon with a few kids from my journalism class in which we produced the school's newspaper: The Jagged Edge. It was an awards ceremony for individual work as well as our newspaper as a whole to be recognized. Granted, it was a local newspaper that was sponsoring the event, nothing major, but it was a big deal for me - for us.
In our class - Digital Design- I can't explain what it's like. I don't know if any of you have been in such a class before, but we're like family. There aren't many of us, but I'd say about 80% of us are dedicated to journalism, all aspiring to be journalists. That 80% was there with me, sitting around the table all dressed up, proud of our lowly funded newspaper. The newspaper without color, without someone sponsoring us, giving us all the money we needed,...
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