Publishing Child Book? Top Ten Tips for Writing Book Pitches That Get Your Manuscript Read Publishing child book? No matter how well-written your child story is, if you want to get published, you need to grab and hold the attention of publishers. #1 Grab their attention in 10 seconds or less 10 seconds. That’s how much time many editors say they spend per submission when they’re screening. The...

Proofreading Your Own Document You’ve just written an important paper, business communique, or other document that will be read by others and perhaps will be the basis for a classroom grade, a prospective business arrangement, or provide necessary information for a specific situation. Regardless of the end use of this document, it is important to you that it not contain any errors or embarrassing...

Presentation Skills – The 7 Rules of Visual Design The following comprise the rules of presentation visual design that, if heeded, will almost always assure that your audiences will be able to follow your ideas every step of the way. Of course, you must keep in mind that visual design is only one-third of the package required for a successful presentation, the other two being content and delivery...

Presentation Skills – Proper Slide Delivery The only way to assure your presentation audience will stay with you every step of the way is to maintain proper eye contact throughout your presentation. Proper eye contact involves delivering your presentation as a series of one-on-one conversations with each member of the audience, and holding eye-contact with members through to the end of a thought ...

Presentation Design – The Good, The Bad, & The Mediocre Your job as a presentation designer is to make ideas into visual images. For your presentations to work, the visual images must convey exactly what you want to say and require the least possible effort on the part of your audience to “get it”. The difference between a visual that works and one that fails is good design. To appreciate of...

Press Release Writing Tips A press release is an announcement of a newsworthy item that is issued to journalists and other media representatives. And it is a document that is generally formatted in a basic manner across the publishing industry for quick, efficient handing across the board of your news by media professionals. With regards to the basics of press release writing, here are seven bas...

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....

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 de...

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 ...