Freelance Writing Tips

Thousands of writing opportunities exists, but it is hard to find one that pays. Start by writing for smaller publications to build up a portfolio you can show to smaller companies. If you’re planning to write for newspapers/magazines, you’ll need a portfolio to show how serious you are, but don’t think about quitting your day job unless you’re making enough money to live off of.

If you’re young, sumbit a poem or story to some children’s magazine (e.g. Owl). If you’re a teenager, join your school’s yearbook or newpaper commitee and help sumbit writing to them. If you’re in college, write strong essays for class.

It will be very important to become part of the writing community. Subscribe to magazines like “The Writer” and “Writer’s Digest”.

Go to your local bookstore and but the “Writer’s Market” book since it has some cool little tidbits in it about freelance writing.

When you’ve found what you want to right about, send the first paragraph of your article to the editors of the magazine/newspaper along with the outline of the rest of the article. Call in two weeks if you don’t get a reply unless the guidelines for subission is different for that company.

If you’re planning to write for a big magazine, it could take up to four to six weeks to get a reply back.

Just write your article and don’t mold after the way others write articles since this article is suppose to be uniquely yours. If you become really popular, you might even get your own fans.

Some nice websites will be The Freelance Nation   http://www.thefreelancenation.com/; Get a Freelancer http://getafreelancer.com/; Elance http://elance.com/; and ScriptLance http://scriptlance.com/ .

There’s also a site called Trust-index (http://www.trust-index.com/) where your clients can vote on the work you do.

Thanks for reading, catch ya later, alligators.

Good Writing Tips for Teens

Guess what! I’m a teenager and if you’re reading this article you probably are, too. There are many young teen writers like me where these tips will be very useful.

Decide. Figure out what type of story you want to right and how in the end it will turn out. In the past I used to just write and think of things at the top of my head, which works sometimes, but it’s best to decide how it will all work out.

Think. Sometime you’ll end up sitting at your desk, frustrating over ideas for your project. You don’t have to get mad over not finding any ideas, just look everywhere around you and even in your dreams. Also, think about past experiences that could become a good story.

Characters. Once you’ve got the story idea down, think about the characters that will be in it. Look at your characters like they’re really there and ask them questions that will make them unique. Ask them their age, how they look/dress and hairstyle. Soon enough you’ll literally be living in the minds of your characters and you can easily predict their next move.

Mood. Now that you’re a teen, you’ve got to learn to start writing some sad endings and sad chapters. Unless you’re writing for little kids, writing an always happy story can get quite boring for audience. You probably had one tragedy when you were little, and you most likely changed after that. Once your character has witnessed or experienced a tragedy, they’ll be able to change, too.

Beginning. Have strong beginning to catch the reader on, a good middle to make them keep reading, and a proper ending to satisfy the reader. Every now and then we become bored with what we’re writing, but that’s OK. Leave your story alone for a few days and read, listen to music, or whatever to distract yourself. Look at the ideas you’ve written down or at your main story plan. Ask your characters what they would do next.

Finished! Once you decide to become a published author, many or very few rejection letters will follow you. Just keep enjoying your time writing and eventually a publisher will accept your book. Or you can start up a website and share your stories that way. If people you don’t know say they like your work, that usually means they’re telling the truth. Maybe you’ll be lucky and find another beginning writer. Then you could recommend them to this site. XP

Remember, though, don’t stay up late into the night writing. It’s very unhealthy and you probably have school the next day. Writing a book can be a hobby or a job for you. Write how you feel it should be for you. If you’re writing like it’s a job, it takes discipline.

Good Writing Tips

Here I will provide you some tips on becoming a good beginner writer. It takes a lot of time to become good, but if you believe in yourself, you will succeed.

One, write everyday. You can write in long or short sessions depending on your time or what you feel is best for you. I usually like to write two pages a day, but you can write a paragraph or ten pages a day. If you had a really good dream, get out your notepad and write it down. It could become a great story one day.

Read a lot of things. Reading regullarly will help you improve on your style and give some more ideas for a story or article you’re thinking of doing. There are a lot of unique words you can learn from reading, too, which would be useful when you write.

Expand your vocab. Read the newspaper everyday and get yourself a dictionary. They also sell dictionary and thesaurus in one, especially Webster’s. The bigger your vocab, the more expressions you can give your characters and the more detailed your settings can be.

Good grammar. Good grammar can mean the difference of writing a graceful sentence to writing a very awkward one. When you are writing ideas down, grammar doesn’t matter that much as long as you can figure out what the idea is when you read over it. When you start writing your idea down, that’s when you have to check for good grammar. There’s some good grammar books out there. Search Painless Grammar on Amazon.com

Use notebooks. You should have two notebooks with vocabulary words and the definitions and one notebook for inspiration from a dream or recent event.

Join writing groups. You could also try writing at Wikipedia. They need some more loyal people who won’t put down fake info. More people tend to become better and feel good about their writing when they help others.

Brainstorm. To stay focus on your writing, find a main idea to it. Use any idea you can imagine even if it sounds stupid or impossible. For me, all my bad ideas soon become very good ideas.

Plan your writing. Use whatever technique I listed that works for you, or make your own. You could draw a brainstorm ‘cloud’ or even branches on a tree to list your ideas. I write and time myself everday, thinking up ideas and writing them down.

Be well-informed. Even if you’re writing fiction, researching can help change your story incredibly. It’s easy to do research; just look at a nonfiction book or at a magazine. Television even helps sometimes if you know what’s going on.

Be specific. Sentences without enough explanation will make your story boring quickly. It’s like a newspaper saying “Crime rates have gone up,” instead of saying “Crime rates have gone up 20%.”

Write your purpose. You should try to change your writing and style every time you switch to a new group of audience. Writing about flowers would probably be good in a poem, but not on a status report. Also, don’t use too much jargon usually reserved for other topics than the one you’re writing about.

Edit your writing. Once you’re done, check over your writing about three times to make sure its posh and polished.

Ask someone to read writing. If you can find someone with the time, give your writing to someone you trust to do an extra prevision.

Make sure people understand. Try to test your writing on the audience it was intended for. If it works, you’re on your way to being a good writer.