![Writing the Forward If you write a biography of another person as a book, story or article, or as fiction in a novel, you'll need a foreword. This is what you're doing as you first meet the person you're interviewing. Have two tape recorders going at the same time in case one isn't working properly. Get permission to record. Write what you're doing as you first meet the person you're interviewing. It should be about 16 double-spaced pages or 8 printed pages, or less. Writing the Preface What is the person most conscious of? What is the individual whose biography you're writing doing right now as you first interview that person? What's the biography going to zoom in on? Describe the body language. In Andrew Morton's Monica's Story, Monica stifles a yawn and pulls on black leggings as the preface opens with the title "Betrayal at Pentagon City." The prefaces summarizes the most important event in the entire biography. It should be about 10 double-spaced pages or 5 printed pages. Is your character going to be the right person at the right time in the wrong place? Or the wrong person at the wrong time in the right place? How to start your first chapter or paragraph with immediate action rather than beginning with the characters in transit Either start with the person immediately becoming involved in the action if he is not well-known or, if your person is in the news and a known celebrity or royalty, start with the date and season. It's all right to begin with the birth of your biographical character if the childhood has some relationship to the biography. You can describe the parents of the character if their relationship has a bearing on the life of the main character you're portraying. The less famous or news-worthy your character, the more you need to start with the character involved in the middle of the action or crisis, the most important event. Avoid any scenes where the book or story opens and the character is in transit flying to some destination. Start after the arrival, when the action pace is fast and eventful.](http://cdn2-b.examiner.com/sites/default/files/styles/image_content_width/hash/d0/77/1361243284_9635_12.jpeg?itok=ZZd0VKGM "Writing the Forward If you write a biography of another person as a book, story or article, or as fiction in a novel, you'll need a foreword. This is what you're doing as you first meet the person you're interviewing. Have two tape recorders going at the same time in case one isn't working properly. Get permission to record. Write what you're doing as you first meet the person you're interviewing. It should be about 16 double-spaced pages or 8 printed pages, or less. Writing the Preface What is the person most conscious of? What is the individual whose biography you're writing doing right now as you first interview that person? What's the biography going to zoom in on? Describe the body language. In Andrew Morton's Monica's Story, Monica stifles a yawn and pulls on black leggings as the preface opens with the title "Betrayal at Pentagon City." The prefaces summarizes the most important event in the entire biography. It should be about 10 double-spaced pages or 5 printed pages. Is your character going to be the right person at the right time in the wrong place? Or the wrong person at the wrong time in the right place? How to start your first chapter or paragraph with immediate action rather than beginning with the characters in transit Either start with the person immediately becoming involved in the action if he is not well-known or, if your person is in the news and a known celebrity or royalty, start with the date and season. It's all right to begin with the birth of your biographical character if the childhood has some relationship to the biography. You can describe the parents of the character if their relationship has a bearing on the life of the main character you're portraying. The less famous or news-worthy your character, the more you need to start with the character involved in the middle of the action or crisis, the most important event. Avoid any scenes where the book or story opens and the character is in transit flying to some destination. Start after the arrival, when the action pace is fast and eventful.")
The religious and spiritual or inspirational markets want stories that give them pictures and choices and show how you solved your problems. The reason people read your story is to find out how to solve their own problems and make decisions. Give them information they can use to make decisions, even if you write fiction. Have some authority and truth in the fiction, particularly about facts and historical information.
People buy your story to make choices, including choices in the later stages of life or choices in growing up and making transitions. As people move from one career to another or from one stage of life to the next, they want to read about how you made that passage in time and space, and what choices you made.
Writing nonfiction, biography, life stories or fiction for inspirational markets
Life story writing should be more preventive than reactive. Biography writing is reactive because it responds only when people are in need, in transition, or in turmoil. What sells is preventive story writing. Give transformation, growth, and problem solving information so people will be able to prevent making your past mistakes. Show them how you've learned from your mistakes and pass on your wisdom, growth, and change.
Readers want to share your understanding. Put rewards and possibilities for personal growth into your life story. Don't merely dump your pain and prior abuse on readers or your history of how you were tortured. That's not going to solve their problems. What will is writing about how you've worked at understanding challenges. Look at your readers as your future selves.
Approach life story writing as you would approach writing song lyrics. Pick an industry and focus on the industry as you develop a life story built around an industry or event. If you write about your own life story, do interviews. Interview people who have known you to get a many-sided view. You'll discover blind spots you would never have noticed about yourself. Treat your life story not only as a diary with a one-sided view, but as a biography. Interview many people who have had contact with you as you grew up or during the experience you're targeting.
Writing the Forward
If you write a biography of another person as a book, story or article, or as fiction in a novel, you'll need a foreword. This is what you're doing as you first meet the person you're interviewing. Have two tape recorders going at the same time in case one isn't working properly. Get permission to record. Write what you're doing as you first meet the person you're interviewing. It should be about 16 double-spaced pages or 8 printed pages, or less.
Writing the Preface
What is the person most conscious of? What is the individual whose biography you're writing doing right now as you first interview that person? What's the biography going to zoom in on? Describe the body language. In Andrew Morton's Monica's Story, Monica stifles a yawn and pulls on black leggings as the preface opens with the title "Betrayal at Pentagon City." The prefaces summarizes the most important event in the entire biography. It should be about 10 double-spaced pages or 5 printed pages. Is your character going to be the right person at the right time in the wrong place? Or the wrong person at the wrong time in the right place?
How to start your first chapter or paragraph with immediate action rather than beginning with the characters in transit
Either start with the person immediately becoming involved in the action if he is not well-known or, if your person is in the news and a known celebrity or royalty, start with the date and season. It's all right to begin with the birth of your biographical character if the childhood has some relationship to the biography. You can describe the parents of the character if their relationship has a bearing on the life of the main character you're portraying.
The less famous or news-worthy your character, the more you need to start with the character involved in the middle of the action or crisis, the most important event. Avoid any scenes where the book or story opens and the character is in transit flying to some destination. Start after the arrival, when the action pace is fast and eventful.
Characters
You can make a great career writing true story books about people in the news, celebrities, and the famous. If these are the type of books you want to write, focus on the character's difficult childhood if it's important to the story and the character is famous or in the news frequently. To create the tension, get into any betrayals by the third chapter. Show how your character's trusting nature snared the individual in a treacherous web, if that's in your story. If not, highlight your main crisis here in the third chapter.
By the fourth chapter, show the gauntlet or inquiry your character is going through. How did it affect your character and the person's family? How will it haunt your character? Where will your character go from here? What are the person's plans? Sacramento is a city of novelists.
Focus on an industry or career, whether it be the world of modern art or computers to get the inside story of the people and the industry and how they react and interact. What is your character's dream? How does your character realize his or her dream? How does the person achieve goals in the wake of the event, scandal, or other true story happening? Take your reader beyond the headlines and sound bits.
Discover your character in your story and show how readers also can understand the person whose life story you're writing. It makes no difference if it's your own or another's. You may want to bring out your story's texture more by adding a pet character and focusing also on the pet's reactions to your characters. For information on possible religious markets for your life stories be sure to visit the links to religious book publishers and paying religious markets on writerswrite.com.
Counseling Anarchists: A short, psychological women's interest novel
Here's another set in Sacramento novel, Counseling Anarchists. An excerpt reads poetically in this novel, "The men who came to strangle me were shrinking my world like the most delicately tinted of bubbles, shrinking in ever narrowing circles from the upward gush of my own infancy. You've got to be crazy to see a psychiatrist. Don't call me if you're gnawing on a bad day, and all you want to do is have a discussion.
"We all marry our mirrors, someone who reflects how we feel about ourselves at the moment. Every wife is a mirror of her own husband's failures, and every husband a reflection of his wife's successes. "If you want to make money, you find a void in society and fill it. With more than 60 percent of women being snuffed, it's no wonder a sharp promoter saturated the market with anarchists feeling their inadequacies.
"Their words fall like an embroidered saddle on a jackass. Remember when only female failures married when career success eluded them? Anarchists' dolls don't expand into motherhood. They're squeezed into silver plated girdles where the only private space is a purse.
Or you might try this Sacramento author's paperback novel for young adults and children as well as their parents titled, Astronauts and Their Cats. It's set at the space station and is a humorous sci fi novel. If you want to write novels for kids or anyone else, you might take a look at this Sacramento author's book, Writing What People Buy.
Interested in an ethnic novel about interfaith marriage? Check out this Sacramento author's paperback psychological novel of ethnology in The Courage to Be Jewish and the Wife of an Arab Sheik. Two other novels by this Sacramento author set in familiar locations include The Date Who Unleashed Hell and Verbal Intercourse. Also by this Sacramento author are novels such as Anne Joan Levine, Private Eye and Cleopatra's Daughter. (This novel is about a modern interfaith, interracial Cleo set locally in California and NY areas).
There's a copy at the Carmichael public library. Sacramento public library downtown's local author's section has the novel, New Afghanistan's TV Anchorwoman. Or you might try this ethnic novel by this Sacramento author, A Private Eye Called Mama Africa. All the novels can be browsed at the publisher's site online or obtained at most online booksellers such as Amazon.com.
Ethno-Playography: Sample Plays, Monologues, and Instruction in Writing Multicultural Plays
If you want to read a play as well as learn to write plays, try this Sacramento author's paperback book, Ethno-Playography. It can be browsed online or obtained from most any online bookseller. The idea of combining ethnology with writing plays that portray ethnic-oriented experiences in the US in current times is a popular genre. Skit writing can be a 45-minute play script featuring the lives of seniors focusing on highlights of each life story.
Novels of Intrigue with Career Women as Characters
The novel is titled, Is Radical Liberalism or Extreme Conservatism a Character Disorder, Mental Disease, or Publicity Campaign? -When The One Universal We Have In Common-Imagination-Divides Us. A Novel of Intrigue. Basically, fiction through public relations techniques, is about making the world a kinder and gentler place at the local level.
The story shows how a curious anthropologist turned journalist returns tougher by experiencing culture through the eyes of media. But on the other hand, what happens when the media analyzes culture as a publicity campaign focusing on finding the perfect mother to the world?
Each of the author's novels portrays a character, usually a forensic psychologist, psychiatrist, anthropologist, radio talk show personality, or curious investigator in each of the dozen or more novels, seeking to do good deeds and find out what can be improved to make the world a gentler place, at various local levels and in various time zones. The novel analyzes deeply the various personality traits of its characters.
The novels are found in the Arden Arcade library and in the Carmichael branch libraries, although some books are in the main library, downtown branch, the Sacramento Central Library. Several other of the nonfiction books by this author are in the CSUS library. In the novel, Is Radical Liberalism or Extreme Conservatism a Character Disorder, Mental Disease, or Publicity Campaign? -When The One Universal We Have In Common-Imagination-Divides Us. A Novel of Intrigue, set in Sacramento and in the city of Folsom, the main character, a forensic social scientist has dialogues on personality analysis.
Novel of Romance & Intrigue set in Sacramento and Davis, The DNA Detectives: Working Against Time.
If you enjoy this suspense story excerpt below, you also can read a longer version of it as a paperback novel, since in 2002 it has been published it as a novel and is listed at Amazon.com. It's all imaginative suspense fiction with romance, and it's available in paperback, set in a fictional Sacramento movie theater and in the rural areas of the region around Davis.
If you want to read more romantic intrigue fiction, see the novel from which this story is excerpted, Amazon.com: The DNA Detectives: Working Against Time. Basically, inspirational stories can take the form of fiction or nonfiction, life stories or short creative nonfiction, advice based on research with experts and their writings or focus on writing to motivate and inspire in factual, detailed ways, vignettes, or through creativity enhancement and solving problems in ways people can easily follow step-by-step. Inspirational markets are there for mind-body-spirit genre, motivational nonfiction, or any other category of writing from vignettes to plays, monologues, skits, or video and film scripts.
Intergenerational stories on healthy trends
Inspirational stories of children motivated for health or older adults working toward senior health have a special niche market that all ages find intergenerational as parent and child roles gradually reverse. It makes no difference what religion or spirituality essence you select, but writing a life story for the religious or inspirational markets is in demand and expanding its need for sharing life story experience in the form of books, stories, or featured articles and columns. What the religious or inspirational markets are looking for is sharing what you've learned from your mistakes or experiences, how you arrived at your choices, and how you've grown and were transformed, gaining wisdom that everyone can share.
Shorter, inspirational or motivational anecdotes or vignettes can be a start before you move the inspirational genre to a wider variety of life stories, novels, plays, or movie and TV scripts. See, Writing 7-Minute Inspirational Life Experience Vignettes. Do you write inspirational romance, historical, or religious romance novels or stories? Or do you write creative nonfiction using motivational, inspirational, religious, or mind-body-spirit themes?
Romance novels and stories can have an inspirational theme to them as do historical works and other genres with inspirational themes, even mysteries and thrillers. You might want to attend a meeting of the local Sacramento chapter of Sacramento Valley Rose, which is the local romance novelists group. There's a retreat for romance writers in May in Monterey. For example, May 13-15, 2011 was the sold-out biannual SVR Writing Retreat with Margie Lawson at Asilomar, Monterey, CA.
By sharing your experiences and life story, readers will learn how you made decisions and why, what wisdom you gained from your growth or transformation, and what made it possible for you to grow and change and become a stronger and better person. The stories you'd write about would be those universal messages we all go through, such as rites of passage, dealing with the stages of life in new ways, finding alternatives, and how you handled the challenges.
If an inspirational mystery story, play, film script, or novel writing is your field, you also can join your area's local Mystery Writers groups in your city. First check with your public library main branch. Then check out the blog and find out more about upcoming meetings. See what's happening in your city by checking resources for writers in your area. One example of local resources for writers is the site, Resources for Writers | California Writers Club, Sacramento Branch. Look for national societies or groups with chapters in your city.
![Writing the Forward If you write a biography of another person as a book, story or article, or as fiction in a novel, you'll need a foreword. This is what you're doing as you first meet the person you're interviewing. Have two tape recorders going at the same time in case one isn't working properly. Get permission to record. Write what you're doing as you first meet the person you're interviewing. It should be about 16 double-spaced pages or 8 printed pages, or less. Writing the Preface What is the person most conscious of? What is the individual whose biography you're writing doing right now as you first interview that person? What's the biography going to zoom in on? Describe the body language. In Andrew Morton's Monica's Story, Monica stifles a yawn and pulls on black leggings as the preface opens with the title "Betrayal at Pentagon City." The prefaces summarizes the most important event in the entire biography. It should be about 10 double-spaced pages or 5 printed pages. Is your character going to be the right person at the right time in the wrong place? Or the wrong person at the wrong time in the right place? How to start your first chapter or paragraph with immediate action rather than beginning with the characters in transit Either start with the person immediately becoming involved in the action if he is not well-known or, if your person is in the news and a known celebrity or royalty, start with the date and season. It's all right to begin with the birth of your biographical character if the childhood has some relationship to the biography. You can describe the parents of the character if their relationship has a bearing on the life of the main character you're portraying. The less famous or news-worthy your character, the more you need to start with the character involved in the middle of the action or crisis, the most important event. Avoid any scenes where the book or story opens and the character is in transit flying to some destination. Start after the arrival, when the action pace is fast and eventful.](http://cdn2-b.examiner.com/sites/default/files/styles/profile_large/hash/d0/77/1361243284_9635_12.jpeg?itok=uG_saRUZ "Writing the Forward If you write a biography of another person as a book, story or article, or as fiction in a novel, you'll need a foreword. This is what you're doing as you first meet the person you're interviewing. Have two tape recorders going at the same time in case one isn't working properly. Get permission to record. Write what you're doing as you first meet the person you're interviewing. It should be about 16 double-spaced pages or 8 printed pages, or less. Writing the Preface What is the person most conscious of? What is the individual whose biography you're writing doing right now as you first interview that person? What's the biography going to zoom in on? Describe the body language. In Andrew Morton's Monica's Story, Monica stifles a yawn and pulls on black leggings as the preface opens with the title "Betrayal at Pentagon City." The prefaces summarizes the most important event in the entire biography. It should be about 10 double-spaced pages or 5 printed pages. Is your character going to be the right person at the right time in the wrong place? Or the wrong person at the wrong time in the right place? How to start your first chapter or paragraph with immediate action rather than beginning with the characters in transit Either start with the person immediately becoming involved in the action if he is not well-known or, if your person is in the news and a known celebrity or royalty, start with the date and season. It's all right to begin with the birth of your biographical character if the childhood has some relationship to the biography. You can describe the parents of the character if their relationship has a bearing on the life of the main character you're portraying. The less famous or news-worthy your character, the more you need to start with the character involved in the middle of the action or crisis, the most important event. Avoid any scenes where the book or story opens and the character is in transit flying to some destination. Start after the arrival, when the action pace is fast and eventful.")
![Whatever the type of book you want to write for each genre, there usually is a book telling you how to write it. If you write book proposals for yourself or for other authors, they usually are sent with a cover letter.In you cover letter, to motivate an editor to read your proposal, use what's called "exclamatory magnets to hold the attention of anyone reading your letter and proposal.Try using exclamatory magnets like ‘Velcro’ in the second paragraph of your cover letter. There are three types that help solve problems:1. a fear magnet—where you list a series of corporate or business fears and then tell how you'll solve the problems.2. a story magnet—where you briefly explain how you will provide benefits to the company, using professional expertise or media contacts.3. an exclamatory magnet or surprising statistics—where you mention surprising numbers or statistics associated with your career that startle the employer in a positive way. Use statistics to grab attention and motivate the reader to think about you.Writing persuasively to sell what you have to offer using active wordsFinally, a persuasive cover letter closes by making you stand out from the crowd and get hired. (A resume doesn't reflect the more action-oriented parts of your personality—it only states facts.) End the letter on a positive point. Show the employer how hiring you to apply your skills to the company's needs will bring positive results. What are positive results for an employer?Positive results include more profit, increased production, problem solving, less employee turnover, lower costs of hiring employees, improvement of reputation, credibility, and image in the media, and bottom-line results-- increased revenues. Positive results for you include happiness and security with the results you obtain from a cover letter, resume, or proposal.Does your fate really depend upon positioning yourself first on a pile of resumes and cover letters or proposals? It does in the mind of a reader with the authority to bring you in as part of a team. For further information on positioning yourself, read Al Ries and Jack Trout's book, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, Warner Books, NY, 1986. It provides advice about how to stand out from the crowd and win.If you're writing a cover letter and a book proposal to see whether there's an interested publisher, you may enjoy the books listed below.Amazon.com: Cover Letters, Follow-Ups, Queries & Book Proposals - Samples with Templates, Who's Buying Which Popular Short Fiction Now, & What Are They Paying? How to Write, Customize, & Sell Tales Online or On Paper, Ethno-Playography, How to Publish in Women’s Studies, Men’s Studies, Policy Analysis, & Family History Research: 25 Ways to Organize Your Communications Training Business, and Do You Have the Aptitude & Personality to Be A Popular Author?Creative Genealogy Projects: Writing Salable Life StoriesPlay Writing Resources - Free stuff for fiction writersFive Lectures on Salable Essay Writing, Creative Genealogy WritingAmazon.com: The DNA Detectives: Working Against Time Sacramento Latina: When the One Universal We Have in Common Divides Us - Google Books ResultSuspense novel - Murder in the Women's Studies Department, A Professor Sleuth Novel of Mystery,One novel set in the Sacramento area is: Is Radical Liberalism Or Extreme Conservatism A Character? - Google Books.Anthropology through fiction via the eyes of this Sacramento author, begins with the novel on speaking to strangers on international flights, featuring an anthropologist as the main character. It's called. How to Start Engaging Conversations on Women's, Men's, or Family Studies with Wealthy Strangers.Writing inspirational books about pets? Check out the novel and short story collection book - Dogs with Careers: Ten Happy-Ending Stories of Purpose and Passion.Who's Buying Which Popular Short Fiction Now, & What Are They Paying?Historical novel interest? See, Proper Parenting in Ancient Rome. ](http://cdn2-b.examiner.com/sites/default/files/styles/profile_large/hash/ab/a4/1361243353_8108_7.jpeg?itok=RfXczuic "Whatever the type of book you want to write for each genre, there usually is a book telling you how to write it. If you write book proposals for yourself or for other authors, they usually are sent with a cover letter.In you cover letter, to motivate an editor to read your proposal, use what's called "exclamatory magnets to hold the attention of anyone reading your letter and proposal.Try using exclamatory magnets like ‘Velcro’ in the second paragraph of your cover letter. There are three types that help solve problems:1. a fear magnet—where you list a series of corporate or business fears and then tell how you'll solve the problems.2. a story magnet—where you briefly explain how you will provide benefits to the company, using professional expertise or media contacts.3. an exclamatory magnet or surprising statistics—where you mention surprising numbers or statistics associated with your career that startle the employer in a positive way. Use statistics to grab attention and motivate the reader to think about you.Writing persuasively to sell what you have to offer using active wordsFinally, a persuasive cover letter closes by making you stand out from the crowd and get hired. (A resume doesn't reflect the more action-oriented parts of your personality—it only states facts.) End the letter on a positive point. Show the employer how hiring you to apply your skills to the company's needs will bring positive results. What are positive results for an employer?Positive results include more profit, increased production, problem solving, less employee turnover, lower costs of hiring employees, improvement of reputation, credibility, and image in the media, and bottom-line results-- increased revenues. Positive results for you include happiness and security with the results you obtain from a cover letter, resume, or proposal.Does your fate really depend upon positioning yourself first on a pile of resumes and cover letters or proposals? It does in the mind of a reader with the authority to bring you in as part of a team. For further information on positioning yourself, read Al Ries and Jack Trout's book, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, Warner Books, NY, 1986. It provides advice about how to stand out from the crowd and win.If you're writing a cover letter and a book proposal to see whether there's an interested publisher, you may enjoy the books listed below.Amazon.com: Cover Letters, Follow-Ups, Queries & Book Proposals - Samples with Templates, Who's Buying Which Popular Short Fiction Now, & What Are They Paying? How to Write, Customize, & Sell Tales Online or On Paper, Ethno-Playography, How to Publish in Women’s Studies, Men’s Studies, Policy Analysis, & Family History Research: 25 Ways to Organize Your Communications Training Business, and Do You Have the Aptitude & Personality to Be A Popular Author?Creative Genealogy Projects: Writing Salable Life StoriesPlay Writing Resources - Free stuff for fiction writersFive Lectures on Salable Essay Writing, Creative Genealogy WritingAmazon.com: The DNA Detectives: Working Against Time Sacramento Latina: When the One Universal We Have in Common Divides Us - Google Books ResultSuspense novel - Murder in the Women's Studies Department, A Professor Sleuth Novel of Mystery,One novel set in the Sacramento area is: Is Radical Liberalism Or Extreme Conservatism A Character? - Google Books.Anthropology through fiction via the eyes of this Sacramento author, begins with the novel on speaking to strangers on international flights, featuring an anthropologist as the main character. It's called. How to Start Engaging Conversations on Women's, Men's, or Family Studies with Wealthy Strangers.Writing inspirational books about pets? Check out the novel and short story collection book - Dogs with Careers: Ten Happy-Ending Stories of Purpose and Passion.Who's Buying Which Popular Short Fiction Now, & What Are They Paying?Historical novel interest? See, Proper Parenting in Ancient Rome. ")
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