Polishing Public Speeches

Most of us, at one time or another, were exposed to public speaking through our education. It may have been a college course, or even a high school class. Perhaps the entire semester was comprised of a series of speeches, or perhaps only a single speech was required in a wider communications class.

Those courses taught us some of the basic principles of public speaking. We studied them, memorized them for testing, tried to make an effort at putting them to use during our unbearable classroom presentations and then moved on at term’s end, happy to be free of public speaking again!

As working adults, however, we are beginning to realize that those skills we were supposed to learn might actually be valuable to us now. We can see that those who are able to make a favorable impression with their public speaking skills have greater opportunity for job advancement. We realize that great presenters have a wonderful marketing tool at their disposal. Many of us admire those who are able to stand up and eloquently present a viewpoint or idea in other non-business aspects of life.

Unfortunately, our skills remain limited. That brief bit of study did not really stick as much as we might now wish it had. Additionally, the course itself was probably limited in the first place. Let’s be honest, classroom speeches in front of a bunch of terrified and frustrated kids really isn’t the greatest laboratory for testing the principles of public speaking. Besides, the speeches themselves were probably quite a bit different from what we would be doing today if we had the skills.

So, here we are. We are wishing we would have taken more classes on public speaking and wishing we had paid more attention in the ones we did attend. We recognize that our skills are limited and that improving them would really offer an opportunity to improve the quality of our own life. However, reality is going to stop us from going back to school.

We do not have the time. Spending for the tuition seems outrageous. Studying for the coursework around the rest of busy lives does not seem pragmatic. Our history with public speaking classes leaves us doubting that attendance would really help that much, anyway. With no real alternative in sight, we are simply resigned to the prospect of having to work from a disadvantage from here on out. We will have to keep struggling without having that tool in our communication arsenal.

That commonly held opinion is as wrong as it is self-defeatist. It is possible to gain the public speaking skills we desire without returning to school. There is no need to make a long-term commitment to a classroom study program. You can learn how to give better speeches and to conquer speech anxiety without going through all of those hassles.

There are two keys to making this happen. First, you must have a sufficient level of dedication. You must be willing to learn and to make a strong effort at improving your skills. No one will supply a magic solution that will make you a top orator without effort and commitment on your part. Second, you must find a resource to help guide your study.

A good public speaking learning tool will include information on speech anxiety, the basic elements of constructing a speech, handy delivery tips and tricks, and some more advanced information and help about things like properly utilizing humor, statistics and visual aids in presentations. This guide does not need to be five hundred pages long and it certainly should not cost thousands of dollars. Find a resource that covers the necessities at a fair price and then put yourself to work mastering its lessons.

An investment in a good guide, combined with a willingness to learn a new skill (or to polish existing skills) is all that is necessary to develop top-notch public speaking skills.

Public speaking skills are a great way to improve one’s position in the business world and can help improve one’s overall life by enhancing self-confidence and buttressing other interpersonal communication skills. As much as everyone professes to hate speaking in public, all of us want to be good at it. Fortunately, that is possible for those willing to learn.

Most of us, at one time or another, were exposed to public speaking through our education. It may have been a college course, or even a high school class. Perhaps the entire semester was comprised of a series of speeches, or perhaps only a single speech was required in a wider communications class.

Those courses taught us some of the basic principles of public speaking. We studied them, memorized them for testing, tried to make an effort at putting them to use during our unbearable classroom presentations and then moved on at term’s end, happy to be free of public speaking again!

As working adults, however, we are beginning to realize that those skills we were supposed to learn might actually be valuable to us now. We can see that those who are able to make a favorable impression with their public speaking skills have greater opportunity for job advancement. We realize that great presenters have a wonderful marketing tool at their disposal. Many of us admire those who are able to stand up and eloquently present a viewpoint or idea in other non-business aspects of life.

Unfortunately, our skills remain limited. That brief bit of study did not really stick as much as we might now wish it had. Additionally, the course itself was probably limited in the first place. Let’s be honest, classroom speeches in front of a bunch of terrified and frustrated kids really isn’t the greatest laboratory for testing the principles of public speaking. Besides, the speeches themselves were probably quite a bit different from what we would be doing today if we had the skills.

So, here we are. We are wishing we would have taken more classes on public speaking and wishing we had paid more attention in the ones we did attend. We recognize that our skills are limited and that improving them would really offer an opportunity to improve the quality of our own life. However, reality is going to stop us from going back to school.

We do not have the time. Spending for the tuition seems outrageous. Studying for the coursework around the rest of busy lives does not seem pragmatic. Our history with public speaking classes leaves us doubting that attendance would really help that much, anyway. With no real alternative in sight, we are simply resigned to the prospect of having to work from a disadvantage from here on out. We will have to keep struggling without having that tool in our communication arsenal.

That commonly held opinion is as wrong as it is self-defeatist. It is possible to gain the public speaking skills we desire without returning to school. There is no need to make a long-term commitment to a classroom study program. You can learn how to give better speeches and to conquer speech anxiety without going through all of those hassles.

There are two keys to making this happen. First, you must have a sufficient level of dedication. You must be willing to learn and to make a strong effort at improving your skills. No one will supply a magic solution that will make you a top orator without effort and commitment on your part. Second, you must find a resource to help guide your study.

A good public speaking learning tool will include information on speech anxiety, the basic elements of constructing a speech, handy delivery tips and tricks, and some more advanced information and help about things like properly utilizing humor, statistics and visual aids in presentations. This guide does not need to be five hundred pages long and it certainly should not cost thousands of dollars. Find a resource that covers the necessities at a fair price and then put yourself to work mastering its lessons.

An investment in a good guide, combined with a willingness to learn a new skill (or to polish existing skills) is all that is necessary to develop top-notch public speaking skills.

Public speaking skills are a great way to improve one’s position in the business world and can help improve one’s overall life by enhancing self-confidence and buttressing other interpersonal communication skills. As much as everyone professes to hate speaking in public, all of us want to be good at it. Fortunately, that is possible for those willing to learn.

Article Source: http://www.redsofts.com/articles/ John Savage is an experienced public speaker and he has a Blog where you can learn to be a dynamic public speaker. Click here to visit his blog.

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Point of View in Fiction – What’s Right and What’s Wrong

The great Chinese ruler, Mao Tse Tung, once said, ‘In order to break the rules of a system, one must first learn and understand them.’ (Okay, I paraphrase – he was actually talking about Communism.)

But so it is with POV in fiction. Learn the rules first, then you can break them.

I get so many emails from writers asking how they should deal with point of view that I thought it might be interesting to discuss the subject here.

The truth is, there’s no right or wrong way to do things – but there are guidelines that, if you adhere to them, will mark you out as a good and competent writer. Similarly, if you ignore them (without understanding what you’re doing) then you’ll most likely come across as an amateur.

Before we go on, let’s make sure we know the terms of reference.

For most fiction, you have 4 basic alternatives.

1. First person, where everything is told from the limited POV of the protagonist – the classic ‘I’ story. Good because you can get right inside the feelings and motivations of the main character. Bad because only the narrator can propel the plot – that is, nothing can happen that the hero is unaware of.

2. Third person, where the writer (and reader) follows the action through the actions of one protagonist. Good because you can get inside and outside of the character, describing a rounded personality with some objectivity.

3. Omniscient, where the writer can describe the actions and inner feelings of all of the characters from any point of view that seems appropriate. Good because of its flexibility. Bad because it is open to abuse and mishandling.

4. A combination of all of the above.

Now, most aspiring writers have little trouble with options 1 and 2 – the limitations are relatively obvious when you use them. It’s in the 3rd option where writers start to flounder.

Consider this piece:

Jenny thought about what he’d said. He was right, she was lonely and would do anything to stop him from leaving. Finally, she said, “Do you care at all?”

“Of course.” Don looked away, trying to contain his angst. Should he tell her about Debra? He wanted to but knew it would only make things worse. He chose to lie. “We’ve grown apart, Jen…”

Gwen entered the room. Instantly, she could tell something was wrong. She scanned the lovers’ faces and decided to leave them to it. Head bowed, she left.

This is fairly typical of the kind of inexperienced writing I’m sometimes asked to comment on. The writer desperately wants the reader to know all sides of the story, thinking that this creates drama and intrigue – but simply put, it doesn’t. It creates confusion for the reader. What’s called ‘head-hopping’ makes a reader uneasy for one main reason:

Identification. Readers want to relate to one character at a time – it’s human nature. Therefore, it would be unnatural for a character to know what another was thinking. Indeed, it’s NOT knowing what the other character is thinking that goes a long way to creating drama!

The practice of ‘head hopping’ has all but been eradicated in most modern literature but is still prevalent in some romance, especially during love scenes. Sometimes the romance writer is so keen to let the reader know that love (or whatever) is being reciprocated that they abandon the line between two points of view and merrily leap from one brain to another, sometimes, I find, to the point of nausea!

Note this: just because something is or was common practice, doesn’t make it right. Writing is a craft and we, as craftspeople, should surely learn from the mistakes of the past and seek to improve our writing techniques.

Agatha Christie was famous for her head hopping – you might be in a room with Miss Marple and half a dozen others and never knows whose head you would end up in! This gave the reader the illusion they knew the innermost thoughts of characters. I say illusion because Christie did it to mislead – she was never totally honest with the reader – for good reason: she wanted to hold back the identity of the killer till the last page!

This kind of deliberate misdirection – the type that ‘cons’ the reader – is frowned upon nowadays. We modern writers have to be cleverer than that.

There’s a famous scene in Carrie, which Stephen King mentions in his book On Writing. Most of the book is told from Carrie’s POV but there’s one scene where Carrie leaves the room and the POV jumps, without a break, to her mother. King says he did this deliberately – to jolt the reader into accepting a particular plot point. This is a fine example of breaking the rules when you know them.

Despite the challenges for the aspiring writer, the modern trend is towards alternating chapters of third person omniscience and occasional forays into first person, not exclusively limited to the protagonist.

But why is the most challenging of styles now the norm?

One word: TV. Without so much as making a framed suggestion, television and movie scripts have forced us to think in terms of objective omniscience – a state where we are privy to the actions of most of the lead characters actions and reactions in real time. This works so well because it reflects the way we have come to view reality – a linear series of interactions that lead to a believable outcome.

It’s little wonder that most modern novelists concerned with ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ now use the same format – where each chapter introduces new characters whom we get to know and understand before moving on to another situation or group of individuals that we implicitly expect to have something to do with the plot.

But in the actual writing, where should we place the point of view? We should already understand that in any given scene we should identify with one character at a time – but which one? The best advice I ever received was that scenes are most effective when told from the POV of the person with most to lose.

For example, in a love scene, the partner with most at stake emotionally should be your focus. Similarly in a thriller, the hero who’s about to lose his life, his lover or his livelihood through his actions should be your focus.

In literary novels, your focus should be on the character most affected by the unfolding story. In fantasy and science fiction too, you’ll have noticed that the story is more often than not told from the POV of the hero charged with saving the world, the spaceship or the poor hapless villagers.

Follow this particular guideline and you won’t go far wrong.

Then, later, when you understand the power of placing the POV in the right place, can you feel free enough to experiment – by deliberately moving the focus around. Dickens was good at this. He would focus his attention (and thereby the readers’) on unsympathetic characters from time to time to heighten the effect of returning to the protagonist.

Modern authors too – like James Patterson and Thomas Harris – will occasionally tell parts of the story from the POV of the killer. To give us a sense of menace, madness and revulsion so that we identify more strongly with Clarice Starling and Alex Cross when we return to them.

To conclude – my advice is that you choose to write scenes, chapters, sections etc. from one POV at a time. And if you do feel the need to change POV midstream, have the courtesy to place a blank line in the text to alert the reader to the change!

This article is written by Rob Parnell. Visit his website at www.easywaytowrite.com

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Poetry in a Nutshell

Poetry is more than just rhyming and prose that is in meters and verses. It is an art form. It is something that can not be judged by its cover and can not be critisized to the point where it just “sucks.” Poetry is about expression. Poetry expresses the way we feel on a certain subject through imagery and other senses. It helps us deal with our daily problems, be it good or bad.

The emotion which is put within the poem brings it life. A poem without emotion is not a poem at all but simply prose. Poetry is what makes us feel happy or sad, mad or gleeful, loving or broken hearted. Poetry is life on paper. It does not need to be of a certain subject or even rhyme.

Poetry is poetry. It has its own mind. If it flows good if not… it needs work. The rules can be bent but not broken. Our life is our life and no one can tell us what we have been through but ourselves. We know best not some stranger reading our poems. Our poetry is our life, not what someone says.

Rhyming in poetry is not always the best way to express yourself. Rhyming actually takes away many words that could have been used. If you try to rhyme it cuts your dictionary into little pieces. It doesn’t need to be this way, choose flow over rhyme.

As a result of this, poetry is defined as a way of putting flowing words together in meter and verse to show emotion or tell a story.

Gary R. Hess is an author for Short Cute Poems

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Playing Chicken With Your Story

Part IV of the 8-Part BRING YOUR NOVEL TO LIFE Series

And now we come to the hard bit. You’ve got your theme, and you’ve figured out how to bury it so that it’s there for you, and SOMETHING meaningful is there for your reader. You’ve let go of the temptation to write a message book—always difficult—and have embraced telling your story for the sake of the story.

So you start to write. And you find yourself pulling back every time you get close to putting something on the page that might be controversial, that might offend someone, that might tick off a reader.

You’re trying to write for everyone, and in doing this, you’re going to end up writing for no one. You’re killing the passion you feel for the story, the life it might have, the resonance you could bring to it, out of your fear. You are systematically ripping out the soul of your book.

Here are three things I’ve learned and that you’ll need to make a part of your writing if you’re going to keep your story alive.

1) You cannot write for everyone, and you must not try to.

It is impossible to have the whole world as your audience, and it is impossible to have everyone love you. In fact, on about a one-to-one ratio, the more people you have who passionately love your work, the more people there will be who passionately hate it. Some of these readers—on both ends of the spectrum—will then go on to transfer their feelings about your work to you.

This is part of the gig.

You can, therefore, either strive to write the books that will stir the passions of readers, and give some of them stories that will move them and change them and bring wonder and joy and hope to their lives…or you can gut your work of all feeling, all life, all rage and fury and glory, in the hopes that the pitiful rag you’re left with will gain the admiration of the PC people, who live to have their feelings hurt.

Of the two, I’d rather have my audience among the people who are not offended by strong opinions and who are not afraid to have their own. So I’ll shoot for writing books people can love, accepting that this means I’ll have plenty of detractors, too.

2) If you do not have an opinion, you do not have a story.

Here’s one for you. “All men are potential rapists.” Have you ever heard anyone say that? Here’s a secret. Every person who has ever said that is an idiot. A small percentage of men, and a small percentage of women, are potential rapists, and a smaller percentage of each are actual rapists, and the rest are people who have morals and ethics and who would not, under any circumstances, rape anyone.

That’s an opinion, and you could write a good, powerful story by burying that opinion as a theme or a subtheme in your novel. It will give you heroes and villains, forward momentum, great conflict, struggles to prove innocence or guilt, moments of defeat and moments of triumph. It will give you something to care about, a reason to keep writing, and a reason for your reader to keep reading. The outcome will matter, because one side is right, and one side is wrong.

If you do not have an opinion, though, you do not have a story. The ‘no opinion’ stance means your hero will be no better (and no worse) than your villain—in fact, you’ll have to slide to the weaker position of having a protagonist and an antagonist, and even then, neither you nor your reader can really like one better than the other. Nobody is good, nobody is evil, everyone is just misunderstood.

‘No opinion’ means that it doesn’t matter whether someone wins in your story, or someone loses, because neither option is right, and neither option is wrong. You’re stuck with the ultimately boring, helpless stance of having Fate decree one outcome over another, and having the reader not really care anyway. If you do not have an opinion that can carry the story forward, all you’ll have is a long, tedious vignette in which nothing that matters happens, simply because nothing matters.

3) Every once in a while, people need to be offended.

Yes. I said it. Being offended can be good for the mind and the soul. It forces you to think. People who are easily offended are people who do not want to think, who do not have the courage of their convictions, who want to be fed pablum and sheltered from the hot spices of real life and real opinion and outcomes that matter. ‘Don’t offend me’ is the whine of the coward who does not want to have to judge issues on their merits (what, you want me to pick sides? Why can’t everybody be right?) and does not want anyone else to, either.

Well, everybody can’t be right. Some people, some issues, some positions, are just flat-out wrong. Pretending otherwise does not change that truth.

This is life. Issues have real merits. Thought is necessary for survival. If you fight your way through to opinions that you have earned by judging issues on their merits, you will be able to write stories with real kick. And even though you’re going to be burying those opinions in metaphor, the strength of your passion and the richness of your story’s stakes will be able to wake up a few sleepers who have been following along through life, not challenging themselves, because no one ever challenged them first.

Dare to have the courage of your convictions. Dare to think hard, to earn your opinions, and then to write them into your work. Dare to write stories worth telling. Dare to pick sides, dare to write your truth. Dare to be meaningful.

The book you save will be your own.

In BRING YOUR NOVEL TO LIFE, Part V, Dig Deeper With Your Novel’s Subthemes, you’ll find out three ways to bring in more of your passions and fears, and use them to make your story richer, and add layers of surprise and meaning.

Full-time novelist Holly Lisle has published more than thirty novels with major publishers. Her next novel, THE RUBY KEY, (Orchard Books) will be on shelves May 1st. You can receive her free writing newsletter, Holly Lisle's Writing Updates at http://hollylisle.com/newsletter.html

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Planning A Heart-Stopping Story

Part VII of the 8-Part BRING YOUR NOVEL TO LIFE Series

Over the last six lessons, you’ve figured out your theme, and you’ve worked out at least one and possibly several subthemes. You’ve learned how to use blended scenes, intercuts, and cliffhangers to work both themes and subthemes into your work. You have great conflict waiting to happen. What do you do next?

All of our discussion of themes and subthemes comes down to this. It’s time to figure out how your story is going to go.

After more than 17 years of writing novels as my full-time job, I’ve tried every method I could find for getting my stories into order without so overworking them during the outline process that I no longer wanted to write the book. This is the method I currently use, and am still refining. It’s simple, it’s quick, and it’s flexible—all three advantages which make writing more fun, and keep your work fresher for you. This is going to seem like the strangest imaginable way to get a passionate, compelling, suspenseful story on the page…but it completely blows away waiting for your Muse to inspire you in terms of effectiveness.

I am a heavy user of plot cards—3×5 index cards or the software equivalent–upon which I write one single sentence for each scene. That sentence outlines the characters and the conflict that will occur in that scene.

(Don’t understand scenes? The Scene Creation Workshop will help you get the hang of them. http://www.hollylisle.com/fm/Workshops/scene-workshop.html )

To write your novel, you’ll need to know:

• How many plot cards/ scenes you’ll need for your book,
• Which theme or subtheme (or blend) you’ll be dealing with for each scene,
• Which characters will be in each scene,
• Who the POV (Point Of View) character—the person through whose eyes the story is told—will be.

You’ll start with basic arithmetic plus your themes and subthemes to do this to figure out how many scenes you’ll need.

An average first novel in the current market is around 90,000 words long (if you’re writing for the adult, not children’s or YA markets).

• So we’ll start with 90,000 words as our target length.

For this example, we’re going to assume that you have one main theme and two subthemes that you’ve decided will each run the complete length of the book.

• Theme: HEROINE sets out to win a writing contest and prove to her dubious husband that her dream of being a writer is not a waste of time.

• Subtheme #1: HEROINE meets man at work who encourages her writing, and her pursuit of fulfillment, leading her to consider leaving her current relationship.

• Subtheme #2: HUSBAND watches his wife’s life change as she pursues her dreams, and he starts wondering what happened to his own dreams.

Let’s further say that you’ve decided your scenes will average a thousand words each, so you’ll need about ninety of them to get a full-length novel. (In real life, the math is rarely this easy–mine scenes generally average 1500 to 1750 words each, but every book and every scene is different.)

• Target Length of Book ÷ Average Length of Scene = Number Of Scenes

• 90,000 ÷ 1000 = 90 scenes for the book (PLEASE NOTE: This is an APPROXIMATION. Books are not so cut and dried that you’ll end up with exactly ninety scenes, nor will they each be a thousand words long.)

You want to give a lot of the story over to your main theme. We’ll figure 50% because it’s a nice, easy number, but it could just as easily be 60%. Or 73.8%, if you like to make things complicated. Let’s not go there, though.

• 50% for the heroine’s main story.

Then we’ll divvy up the other half of the book between Subtheme #1 and Subtheme #2. Say you decide that you want the heroine to dump her husband for the man at work. You’ll probably want to give #1 more time and space than #2. If you want her current relationship to grow stronger because her pursuit of her own dreams has inspired her husband to pursue his, then you’ll want to put more work into #2. And if you want to keep the reader in suspense about which way she’s going to jump, split them down the middle.

I think the suspense angle is interesting, so I’m going to give:

• Subtheme #1 25% of the book, and
• Subtheme #2 25% of the book.

Multiply 90 (Total Number Of Scenes) by .5 (50%–the percentage your main theme gets). You’ll get 45.

• 90 x .5 = 45 Main Theme Scenes

Now multiply 90 (Total Number Of Scenes) by .25% (the subtheme percentage).

• 90 x .25 = 22.5

You’ll get 22.5, which basically means you round up for one subtheme, and round down for the other one. Or write two short scenes. Or don’t worry about the remainder, because this is just a rough technique to give you a quick picture of how you’re going to break up your story. I’ll give subtheme #1 22 scenes, and subtheme #2 23 scenes, just because I’ve decided the husband reawakening his own dreams is a better story than the dude at work hitting on someone else’s wife, and at the end of the suspense, I’m going to have the heroine stay with her husband.

• 22 Subtheme #1 Scenes
• 23 Subtheme #2 Scenes

Anyway, I now know I’ll need 90 3×5 index cards on which to write out plot cards, and I’ll have 45 of them for the heroine’s pursuit of her dreams, 22 for her entanglement with the man from work, and 23 for her relationship with her husband.

NOTICE that nowhere in here have I addressed POV (Point Of View)—that is, which scenes are shown through which character’s eyes. The theme and subthemes do not select POV for you. As you write out plot cards, you’ll have to select the best POV based on what is happening in each scene. Let’s do a few now, and I’ll show you what I mean.

• Jenna, cleaning the attic on a rainy Saturday afternoon, discovers one of her journals from her teenage years in which she promised herself that she’d be a famous novelist by the time she was 25, and something stirs in her at the sudden, sharp memory of that dream. [POV-Jenna] (Main Theme)

• Kevin Hobart hears Jenna talking to a co-worker about her crazy desire to write a novel, and does a good job of faking casual as he invites her to a meeting of a writers’ group to which he belongs. [POV-Kevin] (Subtheme #1)

• Mac watches Jenna reading through piles of books about writing, taking notes and writing things down, and tells her she’s going to get her feelings hurt when she does all that work and no one wants what she’s done. [POV could be either Mac or Jenna] (Subtheme #2)

• Jenna meets Kevin at her first meeting, and even though she brought something she wrote to read, is intimidated by the process and refuses to read when her turn comes around. [POV could be either Jenna or Kevin] (Blend of Main Theme and Subtheme #1)

You may not get all 90 scenes when you first start outlining. That’s okay. You may not, in fact, get much beyond the first third of the book. That’s fine, too. You have a plan, and you can build and change things as you go. The greatest advantage of figuring out and using plot cards is that when you discover a better direction for your story, you can toss a 3×5 index card or two, and replace them with better, rather than tossing several thousand or more already-written words.

I realize it’s unnerving to look at the mechanical processes behind creating edge-of-the-seat fiction. It’s more romantic to imagine typing like a wild thing, writing without a plan, tossing balled-up pages in the wastebasket from across the room…and dressing all in black, and drinking espresso in a coffee house while lamenting being blocked, too. Passion is in what you put on the page, though, not in how artsy you look while you’re doing it.

In the final installment of BRING YOUR NOVEL TO LIFE, “Life, Passion…Deadline,” you’ll learn how to hold on to your story and its heart while working to a deadline.

Full-time novelist Holly Lisle has published more than thirty novels with major publishers. Her next novel, THE RUBY KEY, (Orchard Books) will be on shelves May 1st. You can receive her free writing newsletter, Holly Lisle's Writing Updates at http://hollylisle.com/newsletter.html

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Pick a Theme for Your Next Storytelling Program

Recently when I was asked to give a storytelling program at a Saturday night session hosted by our local MetroParks system, the woman who called wondered if I had a theme in mind. What a good idea! It not only helps with their write-up and advertising of the event, but also helps the storyteller plan a cohesive performance. Because I will be telling mid-March, I told her I would focus on trickster tales (in preparation for April Fools’ Day). I already tell some trickster tales – everyone and all ages enjoy them – and I know that there are many more that I haven’t yet discovered and worked on, but will in the next few weeks. This will be the added benefit for me, because I will add some new, fun stories to my repertoire. In this column, I discuss some ideas for themes.

Choose a theme that revolves around a special date.
This is one of the easiest ways to pick a theme. Every month has a special date or theme of its own. For February, we have Valentine’s Day – a perfect time to tell stories that touch on love, of which there are many. In March, we celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, and there are more Irish folktales that you can imagine (just don’t try to tell with an Irish brogue, unless you have one naturally). Last year a storytelling friend and I took part in an all-week Earth Day celebration. We told stories that focused on nature and animals – again, there are lots. The most obvious theme is Halloween, probably because of the enjoyment of ghost stories. There is no reason to avoid ghost stories, however, at any time of year, but October is the most popular time for them. Also, there are many special days and weeks throughout the year that aren’t necessarily national holidays that will give you ideas for a theme. There is no reason, either, that you can’t create a special day of your own to celebrate.

Pick a theme that has some special meaning for you.
I just received an e-mail from a newer teller who is disabled and is planning to work on stories that address the theme of being “different” from others. There is a plethora of stories with this theme – I mentioned one of my favorites, “The Ugly Duckling,” to her. Having worked in a restaurant for more than 17 years, I have quite a few restaurant stories – two original ones and many more true ones, slightly embellished. I am thinking of putting a whole evening performance of restaurant stories together. Ask yourself what you feel passionate about. If it’s politics, there are many political stories. I know another teller who is fascinated by how the flowers were named, and tells stories that are all related to flowers. And there are pour quoi stories that explain why something is the way it is (for example, why is the turtle’s shell cracked?). There are many stories about justice and judges. There are stories about women, giants – you name it!

Be sure to pick a theme that interests you.
I mention this warning, because as storytellers we often get calls from groups that have already picked a theme and want us to tell stories that adhere to that theme. This is fine, if it is a theme that turns you on and you feel will add an exciting dimension to your telling. But, if it doesn’t interest you that much (someone once wanted me to tell stories that related to the Chinese New Year), don’t do it. Remember the first rule of storytelling – only tell stories that you love. If you choose a theme of interest, I will guarantee that you will find stories you love that fit that theme.

So, pick a theme and get busy. Just make sure to have some fun and learn some new stories!

If you would like to try an issue of our FREE eclectic e-newsletter, Portfolio Potpourri, sign up by clicking This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and hitting SEND. Just for trying it, you will receive "10 Tips of Ways to Develop Your Personal and Professional STYLE." We never sell names and/or e-mail addresses, and if you ever wish to "opt-out" that's never a problem. Contact Chris King at: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.or at: P.O. Box 221255 Beachwood, Ohio 44122 Phone: (216) 991-8428

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Parenting Tip: 7 Ways to Master Storytelling and Mesmerize Your Child

Human beings have been telling stories for several millennia. And, as parents, we’ve all heard about the benefits of telling stories to our children. The only problem is that, as with so many things, no one ever teaches us how to tell a story. The best that most of us can do is to emulate our parents’ and teachers’ storytelling, assuming that they were skilled storytellers.

Although imitating skilled storytellers is a good way to learn, it’s also possible to apply a few basic principles.

Follow these simple tips, and you’ll be well on your way to becoming a great storyteller.

1. Modulate your voice

Obviously, droning on in a monotone is never exciting. Try changing the tone and timbre of your voice (e.g. high and squeaky, low drawl, etc.), the rhythm, the accent and the intensity.

2. Act out different roles

This really is an extension of #1. If you’re going to go as far as modulating your voice, you may as well go all the way and act out different characters, changing your voice accordingly.

3. The pregnant pause

A carefully timed pause can really build the tension. You probably want to pause right before a major transition in the story so that your child literally begs you to tell what happens next.

4. Use your face

Smile, grimace, contort your face or make a sad face. You can use facial expressions to embellish and convey the words that you are reading. Research has shown that human beings exhibit a repertoire of approximately 3,000 facial expressions, irrespective of culture.

5. Dress the part

If you’re telling a story about Santa, why not dress up as Santa or at least wear a Santa hat? Better yet, have your kids dress up as some of the characters.

6. Use props

If you’re telling a story about the sea, you could let your child hold a seashell up to their ear to “hear” the sea. These “psychological triggers” will make the setting come alive. Also, get your children to touch and feel the props.

7. Set the mood

Ever notice how the music in a movie makes it ten times more suspenseful, sad or scary? Actually, usually we don’t notice the music, but it has a huge impression on us nonetheless. You can set the mood for a scary story simply by dimming or turning off the lights. Or you could softly play African music if you’re telling a story set in Africa. To create the atmosphere of an ancient temple, burn some incense.

Conclusion

In olden times, stories were more than just words on a page. You can recapture some of that magic with your storytelling. When you stimulate all five senses and create memorable moments, you’ll notice that your kids really remember the child stories you tell them…and clamor for more.

Copyright 2006 Paul Arinaga

Article source: http://www.superfeature.com

Paul Arinaga is founder of the Child Stories Bank. http://www.child-stories-bank.com The Child Stories Bank provides FREE original children's stories as well as resources to help writers create and get their stories published, and a directory of child storybook illustrators.

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Now Appearing: 9 Tips for a Well-Attended Event

When I made the decision to do free workshops and book signings for my latest book, Make a Real Living as a Freelance Writer, I thought it would be easy to draw an audience.  I had, after all, done all the right things to prepare for this big event: I had a successful e-zine, AbsoluteWrite.com, sent weekly directly to my target market; I was a contributing editor at the most popular magazine for writers; had been interviewed all over writers’ e-zines; and had submitted articles to sites and magazines related to my primary audience (writers) and my secondary audience (those interested in working from home).

But the problem was that my audience was international.  I had a workshop set up on Long Island, and more than 99% of my regular audience wouldn’t be able to get there.  So I had to get local attention.  Through trial and error, I’ve come up with a system that works.  I haven’t had fewer than 30 people at any of my signings, and I’ve always sold books.  I hope my tips will inspire you next time you’re promoting an event.

1. Focus on the benefit to the attendee.

The first thing a reader should see on your promotional material is what’s in it for them.  A signed book is all well and good, but it’ll require them to spend money.  What are they getting free just for showing up?  In my case, I was offering a free 2-hour seminar about making money writing for magazines.  What will they learn?  What perks will they get?  This is what appeared in big letters on my posters, with the “book signing” in small letters toward the bottom.

2. “Community Events” are not places to do business.

Most local newspapers have a “community events” section where they run short blurbs about local events.  Submit your release at least two weeks prior to your event, with all the “who, what, where, when, why” questions succinctly answered.  But after I did that and failed to place my events in local papers, I asked an ex-newspaper editor for advice.

“While I would have probably run a little blurb about your free writing workshop, I would not have run your free writing workshop combined with your book signing,” she wrote. “I would invite you to pay for an advertisement because, being the jaded cynic I am, I would not give you free publicity for something from which you are profiting.”

So leave your for-profit hat at home when approaching the media.

3. Think small.

National attention is nice, but when promoting a local event, you want to get your message to as many local people as possible.  I mulled this over one day while pushing my grocery cart through a supermarket, then noticed the bulletin board filled with posters.  I ran home and created my own on the computer: Colorful posters that gave all the essential information about my event in large, easy-to-read type, with pull-off tabs on the bottom that simply said “Free Writing Seminar,” along with the location, date, and time.  You can put these in supermarkets, as well as delis, convenience stores, libraries, and other high-traffic businesses.

4. Find local websites, e-mail lists, and message boards.

Many cities, counties, and regions have their own websites where people can announce coming events.  You can also search for your geographic area on Yahoogroups.com to find e-mail discussion lists in your area.  Write to the site owner or group moderator to request that he or she tell members about your event.

5. Co-promote.

When Judith Lazarus promoted her books, The Spa Sourcebook and Stress Relief & Relaxation Techniques, she asked a spa product manufacturer to provide her with samples.  She used these samples to draw people to her book signing table.  You might find a local business that could benefit from being featured at your event, and ask them to hang a sign about the event or include flyers in customers’ bags in return.  Or find someone who’s promoting a complementary product or service, and agree to swap—you’ll distribute postcards about their events at your table if they’ll do the same for you.

6.  Run contests and giveaways.

Similar to Judith’s deal with the spa product manufacturer, see if you can get a business to donate an item for giveaway—or use one of your own products or services.  On your publicity material, you can announce that one lucky attendee (or many) will win a valuable door prize.  Or invite people to enter the contest beforehand, then tell each of them that you’ll announce the winner/s at the event.  Be sure to include the prize’s monetary value on your announcements.

7.  Use lawn signs.

If politicians can promote themselves with signs on our lawns, why can’t we?  Ask friends and associates to put a colorful sign on their lawn with very brief information about your event.

8.  Be photogenic.

If this is an event you’ve done before, or if you have an interesting photo related to your event, send it to local newspapers with your release.  You have a better shot at seeing print if you can provide a photo, and readers will be more drawn to your announcement if it’s accompanied by a picture.  Pick an interesting prop or a fun candid shot, not a typical headshot.

9.  Business cards, revisited.

Although many local business don’t have enough counter space to display a stack of your flyers, they may be happy to let you deposit a stack of business-card-size announcements about your event.  These are easy to make on your computer, and again, should just contain an eye-catching headline and essential information about the event.

Jenna Glatzer is the author of Make a Real Living as a Freelance Writer and nine other books. She’s teaching a workshop based on her book Outwitting Writer’s Block at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY this October. For more details, and to pick up a free editors’ e-mail cheat sheet, visit www.jennaglatzer.com.

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Nine Success Indicators for Tracking Your Book Marketing Results At the foundation of any successful marketing campaign are tracking systems—it’s helpful to know how your marketing program is doing. This is an area where I believe most authors (and possibly most business owners) drop the ball. It’s foolish to spend endless hours developing marketing strategies for selling your products without creating a measuring system to track the success of your plan. Here’s a list of some of the tools you have available to help you track your marketing efforts:

1. Book Sales: Okay, we’re starting off with the basics. This is the baseline, end-result statistic you’re going to look at; unfortunately, the sales numbers for your books can be difficult to get in a timely fashion unless you have access to Neilsen BookScan. BookScan is a relatively new service (started in 2001), and although it’s not as precise as the music industry’s SoundScan, it does provide monthly sales numbers through various retailers, outlets, and cities. The caveat: BookScan is expensive (starting at $10,000), and although your publisher probably is a subscriber, they are not permitted to share this information with their authors. Ultimately, your book marketing efforts all come down to these final unit sales numbers.
2. Other Product Sales: Do you have an audio program with Nightingale-Conant? Have you produced your own audio program? Are you selling it online? In the BOTR (back-of-the-room) at speaking engagements? What are you doing to increase these sales on a monthly basis? Because you have easier access to personally-developed products, you can track your in-house efforts with greater ease.
3. Speaking Fee: Another obvious indicator that you’re moving in the right direction is that your speaking fee is growing. The fee you’re able to command is based on market demand and your perceived value. Do you think becoming a best-selling author can help increase your speaking fee? You bet it can!
4. Amazon.com Sales Ranking: Perhaps one of the best on-time indicators of book sales is Amazon.com’s Sales Ranking, which is found on every book page and updated hourly. If you’re doing an engaging and entertaining radio interview on a major station, you can probably watch your sales ranking on Amazon climb after the interview. (Big media events can really impact this ranking, too.)
5. JungleScan: JungleScan is a free service that enables you to track numerous Amazon.com sales rankings over an extended period of time. Seeing a visual graph of how your sales ranking has moved over the course of a month can be very insightful. Click here to begin tracking your book(s): www.junglescan.com.
6. Alexa: Alexa was a web navigation project that started back in 1996 and was later purchased by Amazon.com. Alexa’s website ranking enables you to see where your website ranks in your particular genre or area of expertise. Visit: www.alexa.com.
7. Web Logs: Every website should have access to basic web statistics. The amount of information in these statistics varies, but at the very least, you should be able to determine how many “unique visitors” find your site each month. Another important statistic is called “single page access” which lets you know how many people are visiting a particular page and then leaving your site. If you wish to enhance your website’s conversion rates, your job is to minimize this number.
8. Web Metrics: For those who are interested in becoming more involved in web marketing and conversion rate enhancement, you’ll need a more sophisticated type of web metrics software, like WebTrends (www.webtrends.com) or Urchin (www.urchin.com). To really make use of web statistics, I highly recommend going to www.futurenowinc.com(click on “Resources”) and using their free guide-book and spreadsheets on website conversion enhancement.
9. E-newsletter Metrics: If you are sending out email and e-newsletter messages, you definitely should be tracking at least two important statistics: the open rate and the click-throughs. Your open rate on an e-blast is the number of people who actually “open” the email out of the total number to whom you sent it—this is really how many people are on your mailing list. Because of spam-blockers and the fact that people change email addresses often, the open rates on messages can be disturbingly low. Click-through rates tell you how many people click on a link in the email (your “call to action”) out of the number of people who opened the email. Obviously, the higher the click-through rate, the more active and responsive your subscribers are to your offers.

The above article is an excerpt from 60 Strategies for Selling More Books exclusively available through Everything You Need to Know to Become a Best-Selling Author.

About Scott Jeffrey With an impressive client list including New York Times best-selling authors, speakers, and consultants, Scott Jeffrey is renowned for his ability to guide each client's journey to the impossible—crafting their own adventure, zealously following their bliss and discovering their unique, meaningful contribution to the world. Scott is the master strategist behind Creative Crayon, LLC, a world-class strategic coaching enterprise and consultancy. Scott is the author of Journey to the Impossible: Designing an Extraordinary Life, a Benjamin Franklin Award finalist, as well as the interviewer in the 10-CD audio program, Everything you Need to Know to Become a Best-Selling Author. He was the editor of Impossible Journeys. Scott and his four-legged hiking companion, Yoda, reside in the mountains of upstate New York. Find out more at http://www.bestsellingauthor.com

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