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Writers’ Questions and Answers

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practical self-help manual and resources guide for writers

Writers who wish to publish their work are often baffled by some of the mysteries of the publishing process itself. How can you get the attention of a publisher? Do you need an agent? How much can you expect to get paid? Should you submit an outline – or the complete work? Gordon Wells’ book Writers’ Questions and Answers provides responses to these queries, and raises lots more questions lots more which are frequently asked by people trying to get a foothold in the world of published writing.

Writers' Questions and AnswersThe press always seems to have stories of first-time authors who have been paid a five or six-figure advance for their first novel. But those who have tried to do the same thing know that it’s a far more common experience to be dealing with rejection slips. How do you break into this seemingly charmed world?

Well, these guidance notes certainly tell you how to learn from rejection – and what to do about it. The advice is all practical, realistic, and based on the clear-eyed realisation that if you wish to succeed in this extremely competitive world – you need to know how it works.

Wells tackles all the most frequently asked questions – Who is the best person to approach with your masterpiece? Does vanity publishing work? What makes a best-seller? What if somebody poaches your ideas? Which publishers pay best?

If you want to move beyond the comforts of your local writers’ circle into the world of commercial publishing, you should read what he has to say. Keep dreams of success in mind by all means, but take the trouble to learn how professional writers actually work.

© Roy Johnson 2002

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Gordon Wells, Writers’ Questions and Answers, London: Allison & Busby, 2001, pp.143, ISBN: 0749005319

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Writing a CV that Works

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develop your key self-promotion and marketing tool

This is a cheap and cheerful guide to producing an effective CV (curriculum vitae). Writing a CV that Works is suitable for complete beginners who may not have written one before, or for intermediate users who might want to develop their existing CV beyond merely a list of their previous jobs. It starts off with the reasons why you need a CV and why you should view it as a marketing tool rather than just a life synopsis. This is followed by advice on how to identify your own skills and achievements. Paul McGee introduces four case studies of typical adults wishing to seek, change, or improve a job. Then comes the meat of the matter – how to write the most persuasive account of yourself without fibbing or distortion.

Writing a CV that WorksThe secret is to spell out all your skills and your achievements in a positive manner. He offers templates which you can use, as well as some good tips for presenting any qualifications or training in the best possible light. Moreover, he doesn’t shy away from the problem of what to do if you haven’t got any qualifications.

He discusses the three main types of CV – chronological, functional, and targetted – and how to organise the information it contains. If you’ve never created a CV before, you’ll be glad to see that he analyses several practical examples, showing their strengths and weaknesses. He also offers suggestions for how they could be improved.

He includes valuable advice on how to analyse job advertisements, and how to compose the covering letter which will accompany your CV. Then comes the part most people find very difficult indeed – Cold Calling, or applying for jobs which haven’t been advertised.

Then finally the picture is rounded off with advice about preparing for and succeeding in an interview. You’ll still need to do a lot of preparation before you get to this stage – but this short guide will help you through each part of the process.

© Roy Johnson 2000

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Paul McGee, Writing a CV that Works, Plymouth: How to Books, 1997, pp.128, ISBN 1857033655

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Writing at University

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gentle advice to students on academic writing skills

“We believe that writing for your studies and learning for your studies are so integrally related that they cannot be separated from each other. Writing essays is fundamentally about learning.” That’s the credo here, and this book sets out to help students develop academic writing skills at university level. Creme and Lea start out by exploring the problems associated with getting started. That is, how to remove writer’s block by the techniques of practice writing, brainstorming, and generating your own questions.

Academic writing skills They explain why writing is difficult, then they discuss the early approaches to producing an assignment. This involves becoming aware of the protocols of the subject, and the type of assignment. The next step should be a close analysis of the question title, its key terms and any instructions. They offer some excellent worked examples of analysing assignments and showing what’s required, and they also discuss the note-taking, mind-mapping, and various types of reading which should go into any preparation.

The central strategic issue in academic writing skills is matching your own writing techniques to the requirements of the task in hand. You may be a ‘patchwork’ or a ‘grand plan’ type of writer – but how is this strategy to be matched with a project which might require what they call chronological, descriptive, analytic, or evaluative writing? They explore what might be involved in each of these approaches. There are more good examples – along with neat tips, such as the idea that you should develop your skills by assembling a glossary of terms for your subject as you go along.

They also explore one of the issues which many students find difficult – making the transition from everyday personal or subjective writing to developing a more objective mode which adopts the appropriate ‘language of discourse’. They end with tips for editing your work – including the details of grammar and punctuation – which are wisely left to the last.

The newly expanded second edition includes sections on report writing, electronic writing, learning journals, and using the Internet. This is a writing guide for someone who is prepared to sit down and read about the process of writing and who prefers the support of a sympathetic tutor rather than a source of reference or a compendium of rules. It’s the sort of book which holds you by the hand and talks you gently through the issues.

© Roy Johnson 2008

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Phyllis Creme and Mary R. Lea, Writing at University, 3rd edition, Buckingham: Open University Press, 2008, pp.208, ISBN: 0335213251

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Writing at Work

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the basics of business communications

Robert Barrass is the author of Students Must Write. Writing at Work is his latest book, which is aimed at helping people with business communication skills. What he offers is a set of strategies for people who need to write at work – whether they are in administration, commerce, or management. The approach he takes is very practical and straightforward. He emphasises the fact that the act of writing helps you to digest and remember information. In communicating with other people, you should aim for directness, clarity, precision, and simplicity – and the best part of his method is that he shows you how to achieve it.

Writing at WorkOne of the many good features of the book is that he gives real-life examples of poor writing and shows how they might be improved. There’s also a chapter on writing a business letter, with detailed explanations of how to deal with each part – from your address at the top to your signature at the bottom.

There are some excellent checklists which offer detailed steps in preparing, planning, drafting, writing, and editing a piece of work. There’s also a section on language which deals with words which are commonly misused and misunderstood.

He includes a useful chapter on using measurements, diagrams, graphs, and pie charts. This is followed by an account of how to write a report – often a daunting prospect for even the most experienced writer. The same is true of the minutes of meetings, which he also covers.

He ends with a chapter called ‘Talking at Work’. This covers spoken communication on the phone, in meetings, in interviews, and making presentations.

If you work in an admin office, a school or university, the town hall, or especially a government information office – then this book will help you to express yourself more effectively.

© Roy Johnson 2003

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Robert Barrass, Writing at Work: A guide to better writing in administration, business and management, London: Routledge, 2002, pp.201, ISBN 0415267536

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Writing Bids and Funding Applications

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applying for sponsorship and financial support

Many people now work in jobs which rely on funding – from either government or the private sector. Some of them spend a lot of time re-applying for money each year, just to keep themselves in work. This book will be a godsend to those who need help on how to do it effectively. It will also be useful to people seeking sponsorship for their schemes and projects. Writing bids and funding applications is now one way of staying in employment.

Writing Bids and Funding ApplicationsJane Dorner is an experienced writer and researcher who knows her way around information and resources. She’s good at explaining how to do the paperwork, and she’s very good at uncovering resources that are available. She starts off here with what will be the crucial items of advice to most people – how to locate sources of funding to float your new scheme or keep your existing project alive.

Next comes ‘preparing the pitch’ – the important stage of presenting your case on paper. She explains how to make your bid attractive, persuasive, professional, and most of all convincing.

This is followed by a strategy for making bids which can be applied to any circumstance. It tackles thorny issues such as how much money to ask for and how to cost your own time. If you are a freelance worker, you’ll find this section very instructive.

Next she deals with the separate parts of a submission document in great detail – the executive summary, financial statement, references, covering letter, and even how to package the application.

Then there’s advice on how to express and style your bid – with excellent tips on avoiding jargon and vogue terms. Many such bids will be made in partnerships – so she covers that as well.

The book ends with a series of checklists, step procedures, lists of funding bodies, online resources, and agency addresses.

If you are thinking of applying for funding to anybody – from a charity to the European Union – do yourself a favour and buy a copy of this book. It could make the difference between getting the grant or not. Certainly if you follow the advice given here, you will maximise your chances.

© Roy Johnson 2005

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Jane Dorner, Writing Bids and Funding Applications, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, pp.138, ISBN: 0198606753

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Writing Essays

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guide for students in English and the humanities

This is a lively and comprehensive essay-writing manual which is obviously based on solid experience of helping students to improve their skills. Having written a book on the same subject myself [and with the same title!] I was keen to see what he had to say. Richard Turley talks you through the composition of an essay – from introduction to conclusion. This is done by a close examination of real examples, and he shows how writing can be improved by careful editing and re-drafting.

Essay Writing SkillsAll points of his advice are well illustrated, and he clearly knows where students need most help – though I wasn’t so sure about his discussing logic of argument, punctuation, and arrangement of evidence all at the same time. Several issues at once might be difficult for some students to grasp. However, one advantage of this approach is that the reader is brought close to the real process of composition – where several things do have to be considered at once.

He explains how to generate the structure of an essay – by exploring its question – and how to incorporate and use quotations from critics to strengthen your own arguments.

Then he tackles the thorny issues of making links between topics and guiding readers through an argument. I often suggest to students that their intentions should be made obvious without clunky ‘signposting’ of the ‘First I will discuss…’ variety. But the examples he provides are persuasive.

On conclusions, he goes through a series of edits, showing how the expression of ideas can be clarified and improved. He also covers quotations and the conventions of scholarly referencing (which many students find difficult) plus spelling, good style, and presentation.

He finishes with libraries and the use of computers, plus writing essays under exam conditions. Most of his illustrative material is drawn from literature and the humanities – but the advice he gives will be useful for students in most disciplines.

I enjoyed reading this book. The style is lively and often quite amusing. It’s a shame he doesn’t provide a bibliography; but this is one of the few books on study skills which will actually make you laugh.

© Roy Johnson 2002

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Richard Marggraf Turley, Writing Essays: A guide for students in English and the humanities, London: Routledge, 2000, pp.145, ISBN: 0415230136

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Writing for Academic Journals

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getting into print with academic writing

Anyone who wants to get ahead in academic or professional life today knows that it’s a question of publish or perish. This applies to colleges, universities, and even hospital Trusts. Yet writing for publication is one of the many skills which isn’t formally taught. Once beyond undergraduate level, it’s normally assumed that you will pick up the necessary skills as you go along. Writing for Academic Journals seeks to rectify this omission. Rowena Murray is an experienced writer on the subject (author of How to Write a Thesis and How to Survive Your Viva) and she is well aware of the time pressures people are under in their professional lives. What she has to say should be encouraging for those people in ‘new’ universities, people working in disciplines which have only recently been considered academic, and those in professions such as the health service which are under pressure to become more academic.

Writing for Academic Journals She starts out by looking at the psychology of academic writing – questions of confidence, motivation, and skill. She is well aware that there is an enormous amount of competitiveness, envy, and open criticism between departments and disciplines on the subject of who has published and who hasn’t. Next she deals with the important issue of getting to know your target publications. There’s really no way round this: you need to know what they’re looking for, and how they want it presented.

For those who might not have written a scholarly paper before, she shows you how to analyse one and uncover its basic structure and arguments – with a view of course to constructing your own.

Do you want to publish your own articles or research? She likens the process to joining a conversation which has been going on for some time. You must first watch and listen, learn its rules and conventions, then when you have adopted them you might be accepted.

The next part of the book deals with how to find a topic and develop an argument. You can do this by mining your reading notes, expanding a brief presentation, or maybe adapting a chapter from your dissertation or thesis.

She explains several useful strategies to help getting started with writing and overcoming writer’s block. There’s also lots of sound advice on planning, outlining, and the art of writing abstracts.

She shows you how to draft your text and create the appropriate style. This is followed by the process of revision and editing,

There is further encouragement and some practical strategies for finding time in which to write. But by far the most useful is a chapter in which she shows you how to learn from letters of rejection – how to turn the disappointment of facing negative criticism into a positive learning experience.

Although it is aimed at those writing for publication, this book will in fact be useful for anyone who wishes to sharpen their academic writing skills and understand something about the process of preparing a text for its public launching.

© Roy Johnson 2009

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Rowena Murray, Writing for Academic Journals, Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2nd edition 2009, pp.288, ISBN: 0335234585

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Writing for Broadcast Journalists

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writing skills and professional advice

Writing for Broadcast Journalists comes from a series on writing and new media which includes Writing for Journalists, Subediting for Journalists, and Web Production for Writers and Journalists. Those people writing for broadcasting (radio and television – and I suppose new media Internet podcasts) have special problems. They must make their style seem like someone talking (not writing) to their audience. They only have one chance to get their message across. And they have to be very careful for legal reasons (‘a bus hit a car’ could be contentious, but ‘a bus and a car collided’ is safer).

Writing for Broadcast JournalistsRick Thompson’s guidance manual is packed with advice to would-be writers for this medium. Much of his attention is devoted to the pursuit of cliché, journalese, tabloidese, official doublespeak, and gobbledygook. But he also deals with subtler issues – all based on his long experience in broadcasting – such as the choice of words which sound right, or the avoidance of ambiguity. I was struck by the fact that much of the advice he offers is exactly the same as that offered in academic writing.

And for the same reasons – the search for clarity and accuracy. He advises that you should use short sentences; start with the most important statement; use the active voice; and minimise subordinate clauses. So in fact, although his guidance is targeted at broadcast journalists, it could be profitably followed by writers in most other genres as well.

He’s someone with years of experience at the top level of the national and international profession, and he’s smack up to date with his references – such as the Labour government’s sexed-up dossiers on non-existent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

That’s one of the things I really enjoyed about this book. Its primary purpose is to be a style guide for would-be journalists – but en passant he provides a great deal of insight into political communication skills and public relations strategies.

He has a long list of topics about which extra care should be taken: the titles of important people; geographic place names; the political divisions of the British Isles; numbers and measurement; sex, gender, and race. A slip on any one of these issues can easily lead to a court case.

There’s a clear explanation of the different techniques required for radio, television, and online news reporting; how to write headlines, how to use graphics, and even how to write for live broadcast on location.

He finishes with an interesting list of what he calls ‘dangerous words’ – terms which are commonly misused or misunderstood, such as anticipate and chronic, plus interesting cases such as inflammable and incombustible, which mean the opposite of what you would imagine. This is an amusing way of exposing cliches such as a safe haven. A haven is by definition a safe place of shelter – so this expression is tautologous.

The book is aimed at journalists, but anyone with a serious interest in developing their literacy will learn a lot about professional writing skills from what he has to say.

© Roy Johnson 2010

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Rick Thompson, Writing for Broadcast Journalists, Abingdon: Routledge, 2nd edition 2010, pp.192, ISBN: 0415581680

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Writing for Journalists

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how to write for popular print publications

You don’t have to be a journalist to read this book. Anyone with an interest in improving their writing skills and developing a sense of good style will find it useful. Wynford Hicks takes a no-nonsense, sleeves rolled up approach to writing for journalists which has no time for preciousness. It’s based on the supposition that you simply have to get down to the task, start writing, and you must be prepared to hack around and edit what you produce. He starts logically enough with how to introduce stories – how to grab a reader’s attention. There’s lots of advice on the structure of news reporting, plus tips on clarity, consistency, and avoiding cliché.

Writing for Journalists This is followed by a chapter on writing feature articles which shows you how to keep readers interested – how to stay bright and fresh in print. He also emphasises the importance of adapting your style to suit the publication. Almost every point is illustrated with an example drawn from newspapers or popular magazines. This brings the instructions to life, but you have to put up with a lot of the ‘celebrity profile’ writing that clogs Sunday supplements.

His main focus is on how to write a news story which is informative and interesting for readers. But he also includes tips on feature writing – from agony columns to profiles and product round-ups to obituaries. There’s also a chapter on how to research, structure and write reviews. He ends with a cluster of advice tips related to good style – and how to cultivate it. There’s also a useful glossary of the jargon of journalism.

This book will be useful to anybody who wants to develop a feel for what is required in popular journalism. It can hold its own alongside Harold Evans’ Essential English for Journalists or Keith Waterhouse’s Waterhouse on Newspaper Style in this respect. General readers meanwhile can pick up useful tips from the professionals.

© Roy Johnson 2008

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Wynford Hicks, Writing for Journalists, London: Routledge, 2nd edition 2008, pp.208, ISBN: 0415460212

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Writing for magazines

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a selection of resources reviewed

Writing for magazines can be both more profitable and less time-consuming than other forms of journalism. But you need to identify your topic of interest and match it to the most suitable publication. These guides will help you to get an idea of the marketplace.

How to Write Articles for Newspapers and Magazines
This guide contains ten chapters dealing with getting started (generating ideas and focusing on the subject), gathering information (fact versus opinion, observation, interview), writing the effective article lead, and a sample query letter when suggesting an article to a publisher. It explains how to write newsworthy and interesting articles, how to do research, journalistic techniques, interviewing strategies, and common grammar, usage, and spelling errors.
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Writers & Artists Yearbook The Writers’ and Artists’ Year Book
It doesn’t matter which branch of journalism, creative writing, or media publishing you wish to pursue, before you have gone very far you will need this book. It’s a compendium of contact details for agents, agencies, editiorial offices, and publishers in all fields. Book and magazine publishers, newspapers, theatrical agents, picture agencies, and publicists. Plus there are essays written by professional writers on everything from selling your manuscripts to dealing with tax problems when you win the Booker Prize. Updated every year.
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The Freelance Writer’s Handbook
The subtitle to this guide probably explains its popularity – How to Make Money and Enjoy your Life. Now in a fully updated third edition, this is the essential book for everyone who dreams of making money from their writing. It will appeal to all aspiring writers, whether they want to write as a full time profession, or simply to supplement their existing income through writing. This inspiring guide will also benefit professional writers and journalists who want ideas on how to find new markets for their work.
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The Successful Writer’s Guide to Publishing Magazine Articles
This guide gives you the latest trends, how-to instruction, and marketing essentials to write for magazines. If you want to make your dream of extra income, having your own business, seeing your name in print and/or becoming a writer, writing for magazines will do it for you. All you have to do is write and follow some simple recommendations – and of course practise your writing skills.
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The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Publishing Magazine Articles
The title sounds slightly offensive, but in fact the advice on offer here is very sensible. It provides advice to aspiring journalists on how to write effective feature articles, and explains how to sell the articles to newspapers, magazines, and trade publications. Suitable for beginners, it explains how to survive as a freelance writer.
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Writing Feature Articles: A Practical Guide to Methods and Markets
This shows you how to write articles for a wide variety of newspapers and magazines. It analyses a variety of published articles to show what makes them succeed for their audiences. The book provides information on: formulating and developing ideas; studying the markets and shaping ideas to fit them; researching and organizing material; and matching language and style to the subject matter.
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You Can Write for Magazines
From local publications to national magazines, Greg Daugherty takes the mystery out of magazine article writing. Starting with an introduction on how magazines work, the book shows how to land assignments and avoid common mistakes. He also covers technical details such as how manuscripts should be formatted. Concise and readable.
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Writing for Magazines
This guide discusses surveying the field, ideas, research, style and structure, selling work, interviewing, supplying pictures and problem solving. It includes a section on electronic aids for the magazine writer. Written mainly for the novice writer. Jill Dick gives hints and tips on how to generate ideas for articles, which markets to aim for, how to start your research, and much more.
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The Magazine Writer’s Handbook
For all writers of magazine articles and short stories, this guide provides detailed information about 70 British magazines and comments on many more. The author examines typical issues and offers clear and concise information on many aspects, including subject, readership and payment. There’s also a pre-submission checklist and an expanded chapter listing the ‘small press’ magazines.
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© Roy Johnson 2009

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