advice
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What (if anything) makes a cover letter effective?
While I will go on to say what makes the most effective cover letter, it is important to remember that your short story will speak for itself. The ‘greatness’ of a cover letter may slightly colour the editor’s preconceptions and help to either add or detract from how memorable your writing is, but shouldn’t have…
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8 quick tips: How to scare your reader
Eliciting emotions in your reader is what writing is all about. However, with Halloween almost upon us, fear is one of the most difficult emotions to elicit. You don’t have the luxury of ‘jumps’ that horror movies rely on. So, how do you scare your reader with only words? Unfortunately, there’s no sure-fire equation that…
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8 quick tips: How to scare your reader
Eliciting emotions in your reader is what writing is all about. However, with Halloween almost upon us, fear is one of the most difficult emotions to elicit. You don’t have the luxury of ‘jumps’ that horror movies rely on. So, how do you scare your reader with only words? Unfortunately, there’s no sure-fire equation that…
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Does your writing stand out from the crowd?
We received the following email from one of our mailing list subscribers recently and it outlined a problem that we know will affect many writers out there.‘From the feedback I’ve had, I know that my writing is of a good standard but often fails to stand out, or lacks ‘an edge.’I’ve been told a few…
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Finding the time to write and live a balanced life
You may have noticed that we ask everyone who joins our mailing list what is holding them back from being a successful writer. Something that keeps cropping up, unsurprisingly, is finding the time to write and juggling it with a busy lifestyle.This article will be a little different than usual because I’m going to mostly…
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Finding the time to write and live a balanced life
You may have noticed that we ask everyone who joins our mailing list what is holding them back from being a successful writer. Something that keeps cropping up, unsurprisingly, is finding the time to write and juggling it with a busy lifestyle.This article will be a little different than usual because I’m going to mostly…
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Common Writing ‘Mistakes’ – Part 3: Overwriting
This is the final part of our series on common mistakes (click to read part one and two) and today we’re looking at overwriting.What goes wrong?Overwriting can come in many forms but at its heart it can be summed up as writing too much. When the writing is particularly elaborate, it’s sometimes called purple or…
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Common Writing ‘Mistakes’ – Part 3: Overwriting
This is the final part of our series on common mistakes (click to read part one and two) and today we’re looking at overwriting.What goes wrong?Overwriting can come in many forms but at its heart it can be summed up as writing too much. When the writing is particularly elaborate, it’s sometimes called purple or…
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Common Writing ‘Mistakes’ – Part 2: Sentence fragments
This article is the second of a three part series where we look at common flaws in the submissions we receive. If you missed it, part 1 was on the misuse of speech marks. Next up we cast a critical eye on sentence fragments.What goes wrong?Let’s keep this simple, for a moment. A fragment is…
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Common Writing ‘Mistakes’ – Part 2: Sentence fragments
This article is the second of a three part series where we look at common flaws in the submissions we receive. If you missed it, part 1 was on the misuse of speech marks. Next up we cast a critical eye on sentence fragments.What goes wrong?Let’s keep this simple, for a moment. A fragment is…