Writing Tips¶

Here I have stored all my favorite writing tips I've learned on my own or from other great writers. But at the end of the day, if you remember any writing tips, remember the 4 Principles of Good Writing.

Good writing is . . . 1. simple 2. clear 3. consistent 4. meaningful

The Simple Writing Principle¶

Remember the KISS acronym. Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS), right? The entire point of writing is to communicate something, whether that's a story or a corporate email. So simple writing is better writing because it's better communication.

Tip: The best tip for simple writing is to try and make sure each sentence is only conveying one idea and not trying to fit two or more ideas into a single sentence.

Tip: Another tip for simple writing is to not have more than one sentence for each idea. Reduce redundant sentences that are just reiterating the same thing.

Complex Example: If you’ve been wondering how to change careers for a while you might make the mistake of rushing into the first opportunity that comes your way and switching to a new career can be a huge change in your life, and that change can bring uncertainty and unwanted stress. It’s easy to get caught up in the necessary steps involved in changing careers, and ignore the things that are important for your health.

Simple Example: Switching careers can be stressful. Don't rush into the first new opportunity that comes your way. Instead, take the time you need to figure out what you want in a new career.

The Clear Writing Principle¶

If the entire point of writing is to communicate something, then clear writing is better writing because it's also better communication. Clear writing avoids ambiguity, misunderstandings, or double meanings.

Tip: Reread all your writing out loud to help detect any potential confusion in the way you outlined the information.

Unclear Example: She saw the man with the telescope.

In this sentence, there are several interpretations a reader could make. Maybe she saw a man who had a telescope or maybe she saw the man using a telescope.

Clear Example: Using her telescope, she saw a man walking on the beach.

Now we have more context to know exactly what was going on in this sentence.

The Consistent Writing Principle¶

Writing, just like communication in general, has all kinds of patterns and formulas. Keep these patterns consistent so that your writing flows seamlessly.

Tip: Make your writing consistent by using the principles of parallelism in your writing.

What is parallelism? Parallelism is the use of similar patterns, grammar, structure, and rhythm in writing.

Nonparallel Example: She enjoys reading, hiking, and to swim.

This nonparallel writing example sounds clunky because the third verb doesn't match the same verb structure that the rest of the verbs are using.

Parallel Example: She enjoys reading, hiking, and swimming.

Doesn't that sound more natural? That's because this writing example uses parallel structure when it gives all the verbs in the sentence the same form.

So the next time you feel like your writing sounds a little clunky, think about the structure of each sentence and word and if they match or not.

The Meaningful Writing Principle¶

Don't waste your time or your reader's time with fluff. Each sentence should have its own clear meaning and purpose. Short, well-written, purposeful content is always better than long, badly-written, purposeless content.

Tip: Give each sentence a clear purpose and cut out any words, phrases, or sentences that don't add to this purpose.

Show vs Tell¶

To show not tell, you want to be purposeful in how much information you provide and how you provide that information.

Be purposeful in how much detail you provide
Be purposeful in how you provide details
Leave room for the reader’s imagination
Scatter information throughout the story
Avoid monologuing
Don't describe the way characters look too much
Don’t introduce new characters by having them tell their entire life story in one sitting.
Use the information you need to convey to brainstorm major and minor plot points.

Make & Keep Promises to the Reader¶

Every piece of written content has an intent, promises that are made to the reader that needs to be fulfilled and satisfied.

Spell it out.¶

Novels like to have spelled-out words rather than symbols, abbreviations, etc.

Spell out numbers unless they are complex or use decimals
Spell out money and "dollars" etc.
Spell out abbreviations
Use "to" instead of an en dash between numbers
Say the state name instead of the abbreviation

Focus on what matters most.¶

A lot of great art is actually quite blurry around the edges. Not all the details matter so spend your energy on the ones that do. Above all, be the reader as you write and focus on the details that the reader will see and not so much on the details you care about as the god and creator of this universe.

Add secrets and mysteries.¶

People are intrigued by secrets and mysteries, but not secrets and mysteries that have no answers, or rather, no satisfaction of any kind. People want to enjoy a sense of completion, they want to come full circle, they want to figure things out, not just have things to figure out.

Readers love pain.¶

But not because they actually love pain, but they love the things that come around pain. They love justified pity, they love the validation that comes when you've been wronged and someone somewhere understands and feels for that wrong—even if that someone is the reader of this pained character's book.

Readers want everything to be delicious.¶

Even their vegetables. Authors can make that happen. They can even make fight scenes delicious. They can make explanations delectable. They can make conflict taste divine. Sometimes it's not that what your consuming is good for anyone, but in some way or another, it's delicious anyway.

Facilitate Reader Insertion.¶

Reader insertion is the bible of writing long-form literature. The reason anyone dedicates their precious time to long-form literature these days is because in some way they are mentally able to insert themselves into the story or into a character's shoes. Reader insertion is the lifeblood of what makes good writing good and good writing work so well. People want to be seen, they want to be understood, they want to be felt for.

Readers want to feel emotions when they read.¶

They want to feel all the things. They want to feel pain, sadness, anger. The biggest fun of reading is feeling everything from rage to passion. The idea that evoking positive emotions will lead to positive results does not exist in writing. Our readers want to feel it all.

Maintain the Reader's Trance/Suspension of Disbelief¶

The trance, the suspension of disbelief, whatever it is something happens when you're reading that puts your brain into a certain kind of mental space. Things in a book need to at least make enough sense that it never takes the reader out of that trance. Being jostled out of the astral plane can be jarring and at best, annoying. When something snaps us out of that trance, that willing suspension of disbelief falters and we begin to feel "we're being lied to." elements of the story become difficult to digest, to wrap our minds around, and the fabrication of it all becomes more apparent. Obviously all of it is a fabrication, but that willing suspension of disbelief isn't really done on purpose. Its a willful suspension not a forced suspension. The mind of the reader gives consent to be entranced and roll with the flow of the story when done right.

Be wary committing to unforgivables.¶

Be wary of putting things in your writing that can't be easily forgiven by your reader. Like the dog theory, you don't ever kill the dog because it's hard for the reader to forgive. If you think about it, this just falls again into the idea of the readers trance and not breaking it.

Writing Women¶

Women are just people. If this comes as a surprise to you then you have no business writing women at all and need to go make friends with womankind first.

Women are not a special brand of the human species, they are not man-adjacent, man being the original "human."

All the failings of male authors writing female characters boil down to them seeing women as a subclass species of human beings and not just human beings.

Differing experiences and being completely different animals are two vastly different conditions. A mouse experiences a much different life than I do, but that's not what makes a mouse different from me.

If you still have trouble understanding, give your female characters male names and write them as male characters. Then change their names at the end using the Find + Replace tool. Now you'll save yourself from subconsciously creating female characters that are so "other" they barely even qualify as supporting characters.

Info Dumping vs Info Scattering¶

The primary way you avoid info dumping is by learning how to info scatter instead. The primary way to successfully scatter information throughout your story is to utilize situational learning.

Situational learning is a type of learning that happens through situations, coming upon information through events, relationships, and connected context clues.

In real life, when you learn something about the world or learn more about a friend or family member's backstory, you rarely learn that lore because they randomly decided to tell you all of it, all at once, in one sitting.

In real life, more often than not, you learn information about people and the world around you situationally, piece by piece, here and there, and as you connect bits of information and context clues together.

For example, you learn that your friend Susan doesn't like heights because she's the only one who didn't show up to the group hike on Saturday or because when the hike Susan did agree to turned out to be much higher than she realized, Susan panicked and froze and it took you 30 minutes to talk her back down the path.

You'll rarely learn information like this because someone randomly decided to tell you the detailed backstories and phobias of everyone in your friend group one evening.

Situational learning can be used in story writing too.

Instead of writing long pages where a knowledgeable character narrates lots of information all at once, use the need to convey this information to plot your story's major and minor events.

Write so that as things happen within the story, we stumble upon a nugget of information here and there, like a scavenger hunt.

Writing Mediums¶

Writing Templates¶

Online vs Print Writing¶

Writing for Online	Writing for Print
Use quotation marks to show words as words.	Use quotation marks only for audible speech.
Use numerals for all numbers.	Use the golden rule for all numbers.
Avoid italics.	Use italics for thoughts, nonverbal speech, emphasis, or written letters.
Use bold for emphasis.	Avoid using bold. Use italics for emphasis.
Use brand logos, colors, and font to write online materials. Use heading 1 as the title style to reflect	Use standard text and heading styles for writing printed materials.
## SEO Writing
### Metadata
The word metadata means data about data. Metadata provides information about a webpage or article like the title, a summary (meta description), author, and more.

Title Tag¶

An HTML meta tag that acts as the title of a webpage. Typically, the title tag is the title search engines use when displaying search listings, so it should include strategic and relevant keywords for that specific page.

Between 30-60 characters long (ideally 55 characters or less)
Include the primary keyword once near the beginning

Meta Description:¶

A tag that can be added to the “head section of an HTML document. It acts as a description of a webpage’s content and is displayed in the SERPs. Directly affects organic click through rate.

Needs to be 160 characters or less
Include the primary keyword once near the beginning.
Use secondary keywords too if it sounds natural.
Explain what users can find if they click on the link to this page. Will they be learning something, buying something, winning something? etc. Use action words like "Learn more about this topic" "Apply for this loan" "Shop for new shoes" "Find answers"

URL Slug¶

the last part of a URL after the last backslash (/) that gives this specific page it’s own specific URL

H1 Tag¶

(Heading 1, Title Heading): the on-page title of the webpage or article, the very first heading found in heading style 1.

This is the main title and needs to be 2-5 words long
Include the primary keyword only once.
The primary keyword is the main topic, and the entire article should relate back to this keyword and title.
There should only be one H1 tag on the entire page.

H2 Tags¶

the main headings for each section of the webpage or article that are in heading style 2 and are found in the body of the page.

These are subtopics of the main page topic.

It is most helpful to include the secondary keywords in each H2 tag, but as always, user experience is more important than the SEO. If placing a secondary keyword in the H2 tag doesn't sound natural no matter which way you try, don't put it in.

H3 Tags¶

the subheadings or secondary headings sometimes found under heading 2’s that uses the heading 3 style and helps further organize content within a heading 2 section. Generally, we don’t want to go past the heading 3 style so the heading hierarchy does not become too complex.

Alt Tags/Alt Text¶

Alt text is the plain text descriptions for any visual elements on a page. Alt text helps search engines read and understand visual elements and provides screen readers something to read to the visually impaired to describe to them what the visuals on the page are.

Purposes: - Increases visibility on visual elements for search engine crawlers - Increases accessibility for the visually impaired, gives screen readers something to read to describe visual elements - Increases visibility of content on image search engines, driving image searchers to the site - provides text that can appear when the image won’t load

Guidelines: - Describes the image - Summarizes any messaging - 125 characters max - do not use "image of", "graph of", "photo of," etc., the html code will already indicate that this is an “image” - don’t write alt text for decorative visuals (mark the graphic as “decorative” in the CMS) - include keywords when they fit naturally

Alt Text: What Is It & Why It Matters for Accessibility & SEO

Anchor Text¶

the hyperlinked words that readers can click on to visit another page related to the text that is hyperlinked.

Internal Links¶

the links on a webpage that point to another webpage on that same website

Inlinks: (inbound links, internal links) "internal" links on a webpage on your website that points to another webpage on the same website.
Outlinks: (outbound links or external links) "internal" links on a webpage on your website that point to a webpage on a different website.

Backlinks¶

the links on a webpage that point to another webpage on a different website, or the other websites that link to a page on our website.

SEO Elements¶

Keywords: the words and phrases used to try and indicate to search engine’s successfully what a page is about and what search queries our content answers.

Keyword Density: a ratio between the number of keyword mentions and total words on a page that shows a metric for the amount of keyword usage on a page.

Keyword Volume: a number that indicates the amount of searchers interested in that keyword.

Keyword Difficulty: a number that indicates the amount of competition you are up against in trying to rank for that keyword.

Relevancy: how relevant that keyword is to your company’s industry.

Search Intent: the intent that searchers have in submitting that keyword into a search engine.

Content: SEO content is online content designed to rank in search engines (like Google). Also, content written for SEO is typically optimized around a specific keyword.

Backlinks: A backlink is when one website links to another with an anchor text. An example of a backlink is any article you find that links to another source or website.

User Experience (UX): Search engines no longer evaluate web pages on keyword use alone. Instead, a website must understand user intent and provide a rich user experience to rank highly in organic search engine results.

Trustworthiness: Trust is about the legitimacy, transparency, and accuracy of the website and its content. Raters look for a number of things to evaluate trustworthiness, including whether the website states who is responsible for published content.

Authoritativeness: Refers to your overall reputation in your industry. Especially among experts and influencers in your niche. Google quality raters are instructed to review the authoritativeness of the creator, the content, and the website.

Keyword Usage: Terms added to online content to improve search engine rankings for those terms. Most keywords are discovered during the keyword research process and are chosen based on a combination of search volume, competition and commercial intent.

Internal Link: An internal link is a hyperlink between two pages on the same website. They pass PageRank (or SEO value) as well as context through anchor text and surrounding content. Most definitions of internal linking use the word domain instead of website.

Link Building: Link building is the process of acquiring hyperlinks from other websites to your website. For search engine optimization, the goal of link building is to increase the quantity of high-quality inbound links to a webpage in order to increase ranking.

User Intent: In the context of SEO, user intent refers to the goal or objective a user has when they type a query into a search engine. In simpler terms, it's the “why” behind the “what.”

SEO Vocabulary¶

Anchor Text: The clickable word or words of a link. This text is intended to provide contextual information to people and search engines about what the webpage or website being linked to is about.

Crawl Budget: The total number of URLs search engines can and want to crawl on a website during a specific time period.

Domain Authority: A score, between 0-100, SEO software company Moz uses to predict the ability of a website to rank in search results.

Heading: Heading tags (H1-H6) separate content into sections, based on importance, with H1 being the most important and H6 being the least important. Headline tags should be used naturally and should incorporate your target keywords where relevant.

Hub Page: An authoritative central resource (e.g., page or article), dedicated to a specific topic (keyword), that is continually updated and linked to, and links out to topically relevant web pages.

Keyword (KW): The word, words, or phrase that an SEO professional or marketer targets for the purpose of matching and ranking for what users are searching for. The words used on webpages can help search engines determine which pages are the most relevant to show in organic results when a searcher enters a query. Keywords usually represent topics, ideas, or questions.

Keyword Cannibalization: A type of self-competition that occurs when multiple pages from one website rank for the same query on a SERP. This can result in a lower CTR, diminished authority, and lower conversion rates than from having one consolidated webpage that ranks well.

Keyword Density: The ratio of how many times a keyword is mentioned compared to the total word count.

Keyword Stuffing: Adding irrelevant keywords, or repeating keywords beyond what is natural, to a webpage in the hopes of increasing search rankings. This spam tactic is against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

Meta Description: A tag that can be added to the “head section of an HTML document. It acts as a description of a webpage’s content and is displayed in the SERPs. Directly affects organic click through rate.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): The process of optimizing a website – as well as all the content on that website – so it will appear in prominent positions in the organic results of search engines.

Search Engine Results Page (SERP): The page search engines display to users after conducting a search. Typically, search engines show about 10 organic search results, sorted by relevance.

Title Tag: An HTML meta tag that acts as the title of a webpage. Typically, the title tag is the title search engines use when displaying search listings, so it should include strategic and relevant keywords for that specific page.

User Experience (UX): The overall feeling users are left with after interacting with a brand, its online presence, and its product/services. Ease of understanding content and navigation of website.

Keyword Research¶

The main topic of the page should be the primary keyword. This keyword and the secondary keywords that support it should be selected based on numerous factors.

Here are some factors to consider:

Volume:¶

More volume is not always better, you must consider the other factors of KW research before moving forward with a keyword based solely on the volume.
Sometimes more converting keywords have less volume due to relevancy. Other keywords might bring a lot of views to a page but no conversion.

Relevancy:¶

This one is IMPORTANT. Look at the SERP results for the keyword. Does it relate to our business or the topic of the page? For example, if you are selling a clothing item called a jumper and find that the keyword "jumper" is popular. First, research the SERP results. The keyword "jumper" is popular for the movie called "Jumper" not the clothing. You don't want to try to rank for this because it isn't relevant to your product.

Intent:¶

Avoid keywords that have a different intention than what you are providing. For example, the keywords "hey Google" are used by people who their intent is to activate google voice, not necessarily read a piece of long for content about it. You would never rank or maintain a ranking due to the intent of the keyword.
If the intent of the keyword is to act on something quickly, you wouldn't want to target that keyword as a blog article because the intent of a blog page is to read long form content and to educate, not to quickly act on something.

Competition & Authority:¶

This is measured in SEMrush as "keyword difficulty". Anything higher than 80 is VERY competitive.
Check the SERPs to see who you would be competing against. If it is big companies that are well established, have a better website, better content and their site has a super high authority score, you must be confident that you have the resources to try to compete with them.
Companies like Forbes, Moz, Netflix etc. have a lot of money and are paying a lot of money to stay on top of Google. If you don't have the resources to beat the competition for that keyword, spend time on less competitive keywords that you know you can win.
Consider who the expert is on the topic. If your company is not an expert on the topic, then it's best to find something more related to your business. For example, trying to rank for "Covid Symptoms" you best be some sort of medical expert in the field, or you will never maintain a rank. People want sources they can trust in the field.

Topical Keywords vs Supporting Keywords¶

Some keywords are ideal for the main topic of a hub page, some are better for the main topic for blog articles and others are best for supporting keywords or subtopics.

There are a lot of things to consider, and nothing is set in stone, but here is a general guideline to get started in deciding where keywords will thrive the best.

Main Page Topical Keywords:¶

These would be your H1 and primary keyword for the hub page.
Keywords that are high volume (usually more than 20K monthly search volume).
Relevancy is important, even if the volume is low. Needs to be super relevant to our industry and services. Direct support services.
Keyword difficulty can be over 80.
We are considered one of or THE Expert on the topic.
We want to avoid having too many high-volume, high-difficulty keywords on one page. Check to see if some of these can be their own topic for a page versus just a supporting keyword.
Hub pages are typically going to be longer than 2,500 words and cover multiple topics on a broad scale.

Blog Page Topical Keywords:¶

These would be your H1 and primary keyword for the blog article.
These are lower/medium keyword volume (usually less than 20K monthly search volume)
Keyword difficulty needs to be below 80.
Relevant to our industry and directly supports evergreen pages.
We are considered one of the experts in the field on that topic.
Supports our brand. For example, community service keywords help support our brand but do not directly relate to our industry or services.
Blog Articles differ in length but tend to be less than 2,000 words and are more focused.

Supporting Keywords:¶

These are usually lower volume keywords BUT can be medium or high volume too if they are supporting the main topic, but too close to the main topic to be its own page or article. For example, "dog food" and "food for dog" are too close to both be topical keywords. Instead, you could have "dog food" as the topical primary keyword and "food for dog" as a supporting keyword.

Keyword Usage¶

Keyword Exactness¶

The more exact you are with the keyword the better, but user experience and common sense always trump keyword usage. If it doesn't sound natural, you can use alternatives.

Alternatives¶

Alternatives can be used if the keyword doesn't sound natural in the context of the paragraph or sentence. For example, if the keyword is a question, you can state the question in answer form like "what is a payday loan" can be mentioned as "...a payday loan is..." or another option is stating it slightly different if needed ie. "To understand what a payday loan is..." Using "what" "is" and "payday loan" together can be used as an alternative if needed.

Keyword Usage Don'ts¶

Do NOT try to rank for the same keyword on multiple pages. This is called cannibalization and is bad for SEO. Each page should have 1 primary keyword that is unique to that page and supporting secondary keywords that are specific to that page only.

Keyword Usage SEO Do's¶

Use the keywords as naturally as possible with the context of the paragraph and sentence. Placing a keyword anywhere just to place it does not win rankings, it could actually hurt the performance of the page. The user experience should ALWAYS come before keyword usage and SEO.
Use keyword hierarchy to guide the user and Google as to what your message is. The primary KW is your main topic, the secondary keywords are your subtopics.

Primary Keyword¶

The primary keyword is the main topic of the article or page and is required.
It must be mentioned in the main title (H1) exactly, title tag and meta description only once and near the beginning.
Mention in one of the first sentences towards the top of the page.
Keyword density should be 1-2% of total word count. For example, if the word count is 1,356 then the keyword mentions on the page should be 13-26. NOTE: Less than 1% is not enough to rank and more than 3% could be penalized for keyword stuffing.
Check to make sure you are not mentioning a primary keyword from another page on the website more than a couple of times. When you do mention a primary keyword from another page, use it as anchor text and link to that page. This will tell Google you are not trying to rank for that keyword on this page, but only referencing it and including the link to the correct page.

Secondary Keywords¶

Required keywords that we are targeting.
Use in an H2 title and 1-2 times in the paragraph with it. (Only if it sounds natural)
H2's can exclude a secondary keyword if it helps improve the user experience.

Other Keywords¶

Optional keywords that should be used if there is an opportunity, but not required.
These do not have to be included in H2 tags, but certainly can be.
They support the page and add SEO value but are not considered the target keywords.

SEMrush Recommended Keywords¶

These are keywords that SEMrush recommends based on the competition winning the top rankings. It is important to include these, but only if they are relevant and naturally flow in the article.
Include 50%-75% of them in the text.

Anchor Text¶

What is Anchor Text?¶

Anchor text is a really helpful SEO and user experience tool that uses text as a link to additional content. The anchor text tells search engines that the text is related to the page but is actually covered in more depth on another page.

When to Use Anchor Text¶

If you mention a keyword that you are trying to rank for on another page, use it as anchor text and link it to the other page.
Never use a keyword you are trying to rank for on that page as anchor text to link to another page.

How to Use Anchor Text¶

The anchor text you use should include either the primary or secondary keywords you are targeting on the page you are linking to. For example, if you are trying to rank for "dog treats" on the Dog Treats page, use the anchor text "dog treats" if you mention it on the Dog Collars page.
Do not overuse anchor text for one keyword. For example, if you mention dog treats 5 times on the Dog Collars page do not link to each reference of dog treats, instead consider only mentioning dog treats once because the main topic of the page is dog collars, not dog treats.

Short-Form Writing¶

Be culturally current and engaged.

It is paramount that you are continuously culturally engaged as a short-form writer. Part of why this is necessary is to stay up to date and stay linked into the cultural evolution of modern language and discourse.

Short-form writing is an art piece.

Short-form writing isn't just literature, it's also art. It has visual and phonetic importance.

For readers to commit to short-form content, it needs to be worth their precious time.

People want to consume media that matters to them, that they feel deserves the little time and energy people have right now.

Less is more.

Obviously. Trim the bushes. Cut down nonessentials. Then cut down some more. The words in short-form language need to be a picture, a graphic, a sigil of the exact meaning and syntax you want to express. Never a sentence.

Writing for current society means understanding the ebb and flow of trends.

Trends are social viruses. They are transmitted socially and they come and go in different forms and phases. Society is a metaphysical ocean of thoughts, ideas, and feelings. Pay attention to the underlying thoughts, ideas, and feelings. Maybe vampires are a trend, but why? Check the waves and tides of the societal ocean to understand the why of trends and you'll understand your society better and write for that society better too.

Novel Writing¶

I am a huge planner and I know it's possible for pantsters to write great stuff, but I personally believe that for me, the best writing comes from detailed and extraneous outlining.

Create a Reference Sheet

The plot and characters of the story itself should be organized. Creating a master reference sheet will help make sure it is organized and highlight where more organization is needed.

Make & Keep Promises to the Reader

Every piece of written content has an intent, promises that are made to the reader that needs to be fulfilled and satisfied.

Spell it out.

Novels like to have spelled-out words rather than symbols, abbreviations, etc.

Spell out numbers unless they are complex or use decimals
Spell out money and "dollars" etc.
Spell out abbreviations
Use "to" instead of an en dash between numbers
Say the state name instead of the abbreviation

Focus on what matters most.

A lot of great art is actually quite blurry around the edges. Not all the details matter so spend your energy on the ones that do. Above all, be the reader as you write and focus on the details that the reader will see and not so much on the details you care about as the god and creator of this universe.

Add secrets and mysteries.

People are intrigued by secrets and mysteries, but not secrets and mysteries that have no answers, or rather, no satisfaction of any kind. People want to enjoy a sense of completion, they want to come full circle, they want to figure things out, not just have things to figure out.

Readers love pain.

But not because they actually love pain, but they love the things that come around pain. They love justified pity, they love the validation that comes when you've been wronged and someone somewhere understands and feels for that wrong—even if that someone is the reader of this pained character's book.

Readers want everything to be delicious.

Even their vegetables. Authors can make that happen. They can even make fight scenes delicious. They can make explanations delectable. They can make conflict taste divine. Sometimes it's not that what your consuming is good for anyone, but in some way or another, it's delicious anyway.

Facilitate Reader Insertion.

Reader insertion is the bible of writing long-form literature. The reason anyone dedicates their precious time to long-form literature these days is because in some way they are mentally able to insert themselves into the story or into a character's shoes. Reader insertion is the lifeblood of what makes good writing good and good writing work so well. People want to be seen, they want to be understood, they want to be felt for.

Readers want to feel emotions when they read.

They want to feel all the things. They want to feel pain, sadness, anger. The biggest fun of reading is feeling everything from rage to passion. The idea that evoking positive emotions will lead to positive results does not exist in writing. Our readers want to feel it all.

Maintain the Reader's Trance/Suspension of Disbelief

The trance, the suspension of disbelief, whatever it is something happens when you're reading that puts your brain into a certain kind of mental space.

Things in a book need to at least make enough sense that it never takes the reader out of that trance. Being jostled out of the astral plane can be jarring and at best, annoying. When something snaps us out of that trance, that willing suspension of disbelief falters and we begin to feel "we're being lied to."

Elements of the story become difficult to digest, to wrap our minds around, and the fabrication of it all becomes more apparent. Obviously all of it is a fabrication, but that willing suspension of disbelief isn't really done on purpose.

It's a willful suspension not a forced suspension. The mind of the reader gives consent to be entranced and roll with the flow of the story when done right.

Be wary committing to unforgiveables.

Be wary of putting things in your writing that can't be easily forgiven by your reader. Like the dog theory, you don't ever kill the dog because it's hard for the reader to forgive. If you think about it, this just falls again into the idea of the readers trance and not breaking it.

Common Writing Mistakes¶

Jumbled timeline
Switching between past and present tenses
Lack of an overarching theme, point, purpose, message, lesson
No promise made so no expectations or hopes were ever formed
No kept promises, whether promises were never made in the first place or they were made by accident and forgotten by the writer

Copyrights¶

Google Alerts - Monitor the Web for interesting new content - set up your own Google Alert email for mentions of you online

https://www.copyscape.com/ - check for stolen content on Google

Report Content On Google - Legal Help - report content to Google

What to Do When Someone Steals Content on Google¶

First: Send a DMCA Take-Down Request email directly to the culprits

Copyright Email¶

[NAME],

My name is Kimber Severance and I am writing to notify you of the copyright infringement and unlawful use of my copyrighted material that appears on the service for which you are the designated agent.

The infringing material, which I contend to belong to me, includes the following: [description of the work]

The infringing material appears at the following location:

[URL(s) of the infringing material]

The original material is available at the following location:

[URL of the original material]

This letter is the official notification under Section 512(c) of the The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (DMCA) and I request the immediate removal of the aforementioned infringing material from your servers.

I also request that you immediately notify the infringer of this notice and inform them to cease any further posting of the infringing material to your server in the future.

I am providing this notice in good faith and with the reasonable belief that the use of the described material in the manner complained is not authorized by myself, my agents, or the law.

I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accurate adn that I am the owner of the copyrighted material involved.

If you have any questions, please contact me directly at YOUREMAIL.

Sincerely,

YOURNAME

YOUREMAIL

If they don't respond, file a DMCA complaint with Google at Report Content On Google - Legal Help