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Merce Cardus

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MONDAY LINKS ~ Reads on Writing, Self-publishing, and Better Living: The Running Revolution

in Reads on Writing & Self-Publishing on 22/06/15

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Photo Credit: Daniel Ladenhauf via Compfight cc

Quote of the day

I realized that training in ballet, martial arts and wrestling is done as a series of precise poses. Through these poses and drills, the perfection of movement is achieved and integrated into a flow. Everything fell into place for me immediately, like the pieces of a puzzle.

What is the precise pose and drills that apply to running? The running pose, falling-forward, and pulling the support foot off the ground.

~NICHOLAS ROMANOV, author of The Running Revolution: How to Run Faster, Farther, and Injury-Free–for Life

WRITING & SCREENWRITING

  • How to blurb someone’s book, Writer Unboxed | Tweet

This is a big opportunity. Blurbing a book lets you seize a chunk of someone else’s life’s work and make it all about you. Furthermore, if people are asking you for an endorsement, you’re now a tastemaker, subtly steering the zeitgeist toward works of true literary quality.

→Writing Awesome Book Blurbs (A Modern Indie Author’s Guide)

  • Why you should write what you don’t know, The Write Practice | Tweet

“Write what you know.” We hear it all the time as writers, just as often as we hear “kill the adverbs,” “don’t disregard the first draft,” and all of the other common tips about writing. But while writing what you know is definitely useful in one sense, writing what you don’t know can be just as rewarding. Here’s why.

→Write What You Don’t Know: An Accessible Manual for Screenwriters

  • Writing a scene with good dialogue and narration, Writers Digest | Tweet

The way people speak and interact in a conversation says a whole lot about them. The words a character chooses can and should expose the character’s background, personality, and emotional status. The CEO of a multibillion-dollar company would choose different words than a military general, a stay-at-home mom, or a teenage girl. No need for lengthy character descriptions, if you choose the right words to put in your characters’ mouths.

→How to Write Dazzling Dialogue: The Fastest Way to Improve Any Manuscript

  • Truth, truth, truth, Fiction, Steven Pressfield | Tweet

Almost any story, if it’s gonna have real power in the climax, needs a blockbuster bang or invention—something that nobody’s seen before or, if they have seen it, something they’ve never seen done in this unique way. Often this bang is contrived and pushes the bounds of believability.

→Story Climax: How to Avoid Disappointed Audiences and Craft a Screenplay or Novel Climax Which Thrills and Delights (Story Structure Essentials)

  • The problem with flashbacks, flying wrestler | Tweet

Jumping around in time with flashbacks can be confusing in a script, and can make it hard for a reader to get oriented and settle into one particular story, in a specific time frame.  And this is what tends to really grab readers — a discrete challenge for a main character they care about, which that character will grapple with over time.  Whenever you change the time frame, you’re obviously leaving that situation for something else.

→Exposition in Novels, Flashbacks, Backstory, and All The Good Ole Stuff: How to Write Exposition (Fiction Writers United Book 4)

  • Script Angel: Networking tips for screenwriters, Script mag | Tweet

Like any freelance work, carving out a screenwriting career requires a degree of hustling. Even with an agent / manager, most of your work will likely still come via the connections and relationships that you make yourself. So networking, in some form, is an essential tool for screenwriters, which is tricky since for most of us the thought of introducing ourselves to perfect strangers is horrifying.

→The 101 Habits of Highly Successful Screenwriters, 10th Anniversary Edition: Insider Secrets from Hollywood’s Top Writers


SELF-PUBLISHING

  • New: The Book launch toolkit, a boon for self-published authors, The Book Designer | Tweet

Your chances of being successful are enormously improved if you have a good author platform, and a solid plan on how to launch your book.

  • Got to improve your facebook marketing? Read these facts and tips, Social Media just for Writers | Tweet

I often hear authors complain about Facebook. I’ve heard it called Faceburger and other names I won’t mention. People want to avoid it probably because it’s the Titanic of social media sites – except that I doubt it will ever sink. Facebook is here to stay, like it or not.

→97 Facebook Marketing Tips for Authors

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

CREATIVITY

  • Why paper books are best for creativity?, Creative Something | Tweet

Using physical books over digital ones has one benefit for the creative mind that ebooks can never fully match.

→Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative


EDUCATION

  • 12 Good and Bad parts of online education, The Fiscal Times | Tweet

Is online education the solution to widening inequality, rapidly rising costs, and lack of access to high quality courses? Will it lead to the demise of traditional “brick and mortar” institutions? 

→Higher Education in the Digital Age


RUNNING

  • How many calories are you really burning?, Runner’s World | Tweet

If you think running and walking both torch the same number of calories per mile, you better put down that cookie.

→The Running Revolution: How to Run Faster, Farther, and Injury-Free–for Life


HEALTH

  • Why is America obsessed with perfect teeth?, Science of us | Tweet

“Start check!” a technician called, and Dr. Ben Burris stood up from his MacBook in an anteroom of one of his 22 offices, a recent acquisition in the unlikely empire he’s building around the State of Arkansas: as of last year, the world’s largest privately owned orthodontics practice.


ENTREPRENEURSHIP

  • 8 Lessons improv comedy class taught me about entrepreneurship, Entrepreneur | Tweet

Picture yourself in a group setting, maybe at a party or business function. You chime-in to the conversation with a line so funny, so perfect, so well-timed that the group erupts with laughter; maybe someone even slaps your arm in approval or sheds a tear laughing (when you’re really lucky). And you stand there and soak in your verbal victory. Then you replay it in your head a few times before you go to bed, and relish your moment of brilliant comedy.

→The Entrepreneur Mind: 100 Essential Beliefs, Characteristics, and Habits of Elite Entrepreneurs

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