Author: Patricia J. Parsons

Reading, writing & publishing. Doing things differently.
Posted in Nonfiction Writing, Writing craft

5 tips to improve your nonfiction writing

Posted on by Patricia J. Parsons

When I was a teenager, I had dreams of being a novelist. When I was in Grade Eleven, my high school offered us the chance to do an extra project in a subject of our choice. If completed adequately, this project would provide for the notation of “with distinction” to be added to our grade transcripts. That seemed like a good idea to me since I’d be applying to university the following year. Having an area of “distinction” couldn’t hurt.

The problem was that I chose to do this project in English rather than math or science because I fancied myself a writer. What’s the problem, you might well ask? It’s this: my highest marks were in math and science, and I planned to study science in university. Go figure. Anyway, I did the project, part of which required me to write five short stories. Fast forward past my Master’s degree (in science), and you find me a bona fide nonfiction writer.

Thirty years later, I find myself writing both fiction and nonfiction. What this cross-genre writing does for me is to provide me with a breadth of techniques and ideas, each genre benefiting from the other. So, last week I was thinking about nonfiction writing and how often every writer, regardless of genre, needs to know nonfiction techniques.

Everyone writes nonfiction every once in a while. Even novelists have to write their author bios and the occasional book cover copy. Publishers expect it (so do readers, by the way).

This week’s 5 tips are all about improving our nonfiction writing.

Posted in Nonfiction Writing, Writing, Writing craft, Writing Nonfiction

5 Tips for Writing Nonfiction Leads

Posted on by Patricia J. Parsons

Thirty years ago, I began my career as a nonfiction writer. The first time I pitched the story to the weekend features editor of a local newspaper, I realized that although I’d done a ton of academic writing at that point, had written lots of unpublished essays and had a passion for writing that went back to my pre-teen years, I didn’t know that much about the fine points of magazine writing.

My background was in health science, so what did I know about writing magazine articles?

What I had was a passion for writing, a knowledge base in the content area I had proposed, a willingness to learn, lots of research experience. The first thing I had to learn was how to write a solid lead. Three decades later and that knowledge has had a chance to be practised over and over, and now I’m sharing my five favourite approaches to a lead―a bit of help for nonfiction authors, magazine writers, bloggers and copywriters.

As I reviewed these tips for leads, it also occurred to me that fiction writers might find inspiration here for opening paragraphs for short stories or even book chapters. I’m a great believer in cross-genre learning.

Here’s today’s episode of WRITE. FIX. REPEAT. with the five approaches to leads.

Posted in Writing

5 TIPS TO HELP ANSWER THE QUESTION: ARE YOU A WRITER OR A CONTENT CREATOR?

Posted on by Patricia J. Parsons

The concept of content creation is a construct of the digital marketing age. I suppose you could say, as Matthew Speiser suggests in his online article, “A (Brief) History of Content Marketing”: “For as long as humans have existed, people have been creating content. One could go so far as to argue that cave paintings were the first attempt at communication through content.”[1] Yes, of course, this is true, but it doesn’t capture the modern definition of content creation or the content creators who produce that content.

Content creation is a buzz-phrase of the social-media-obsessed marketing and public relations people among us. I’m going to suggest that large numbers of people who identify themselves as writers are not―they are content creators. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with being a content creator, but it is disingenuous to suggest you are a writer if you’re not.  Let’s begin with some definitions for argument’s sake.

What then is a writer? A writer writes. But you might reasonably argue, a content creator also writes. Although that may be true, that does not make that person a writer.

This week on WRITE. FIX. REPEAT., I’m talking about how we identify ourselves as writers and why it matters. The question we begin with is: How can you figure out if you’re a writer in the true sense of the word or merely a content creator?

Summary

The telltale signs of content creators:

  1. You spend more time blogging, tweeting (or reading tweets), posting to Facebook, contributing to conversations on writers’ groups on LinkedIn etc., than you do on your private writing.
  2. Every time you post on one of those sites mentioned above, you have a goal in mind: get more ‘likes,’ new followers, new friends, clicks through to the material you’d like them to buy/read.
  3. You spend a lot of time thinking about how to find an idea that will ‘sell.’
  4. You spend more time writing online reviews of other people’s books than you do on your writing in the hopes that they’ll someday review yours.
  5. You don’t own a single reference book on the writing process (grammar, style, punctuation, syntax, word choice, editing etc.)

Please don’t tell me you’re a writer―or pretend to be one in a writers’ group―if you’re really a content creator. That’s all.

[1] https://prosandcontent.knotch.com/posts/history-of-content-marketing