Your Platform At A Glance (link)

Sage Cohen's Your Platform At A Glance is a quick, and extremely useful worksheet that an artist, writer, or filmmaker's can use to quickly define his or her platform. You can get a free PDF here. (Scroll down to the bottom of the page where you will find several useful downloads.)

The worksheet is explained in Cohen's book The Productive Writer.

UPDATE:
This worksheet needs an example, like the one found in Cohen's book.
The worksheet alone is not enough without seeing a finished version. If I get around to it, I will complete a worksheet and post it as a PDF.

Secrets of Ebook Publishing Success

The Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success by Smashwords founder Mark Coker reveals the best practices of the most commercially successful self-published ebook authors.

25 best-practices you can implement at no cost to become a more professional, more successful writer and publisher.

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/145431

Superb. And free!

UPDATE:
Oops. Looks like I posted this twice. Oh well.

The Greatest Job Application. Ever.

Copywriter Robert Pirosh arrived in Hollywood in 1934. He sent the following letter to everyone he could think of in the movie business. He was hired as a junior writer for MGM, and eventually won an Academy award for best screenplay.

(Source: Letters Of Note)

Dear Sir:

I like words. I like fat buttery words, such as ooze, turpitude, glutinous, toady. I like solemn, angular, creaky words, such as straitlaced, cantankerous, pecunious, valedictory. I like spurious, black-is-white words, such as mortician, liquidate, tonsorial, demi-monde. I like suave "V" words, such as Svengali, svelte, bravura, verve. I like crunchy, brittle, crackly words, such as splinter, grapple, jostle, crusty. I like sullen, crabbed, scowling words, such as skulk, glower, scabby, churl. I like Oh-Heavens, my-gracious, land's-sake words, such as tricksy, tucker, genteel, horrid. I like elegant, flowery words, such as estivate, peregrinate, elysium, halcyon. I like wormy, squirmy, mealy words, such as crawl, blubber, squeal, drip. I like sniggly, chuckling words, such as cowlick, gurgle, bubble and burp.

I like the word screenwriter better than copywriter, so I decided to quit my job in a New York advertising agency and try my luck in Hollywood, but before taking the plunge I went to Europe for a year of study, contemplation and horsing around.

I have just returned and I still like words.

May I have a few with you?

Robert Pirosh
385 Madison Avenue
Room 610
New York
Eldorado 5-6024

Daniel Ariely interviews Malcolm Gladwell about ways to reorganize thinking

A snippet from a Daniel Ariely interview of Malcolm Gladwell on JournalistsResource.org.

Ariely: In the process of trying to write things that influence peoples’ minds, what have you learned about people? What have you learned about the psychology of people?

Gladwell: I’ve learned that if you tell your story properly, people are very, very open-minded — far more open-minded than I would’ve thought. Or to put it in a more sophisticated way: People are information-rich and theory-poor. If you can give them a way of organizing their experience, then their minds are wide open. Which I would not have not have necessarily thought. And if you can frame questions appropriately you can overcome all kinds of ideological — what you would have thought of — as ideological constraints. So I’ve been continuously surprised. I always thought my book, because I am a political liberal, that my books would have heavily liberal audiences. But in fact they don’t….

Ariely: But they are also not very liberal books. Do you read them as being liberal?

Gladwell: I read them as liberal. But this is another case of: How I read my books is irrelevant to how they are read.

Ariely: But it’s interesting that you think it’s the theory, not the data. That I think is fascinating. That it’s about the organizing principles.

Gladwell: It’s about the principles. The books always give people these kind of broader theories, because that’s what they go to first. Then they’ll fill in the gap with the data. But they want some way of reorganizing their view of things. That’s what potent.

How Malcolm Gladwell finds ideas

People ask writers how they find ideas all the time. I always thought it was a reasonable question, so I was pleased to learn that these pros apparently think so too.



Malcolm Gladwell being interviewed by Daniel Ariely on JournalistsResource.org.

Ariely: So the first thing I want to ask you is: How do you pick your topics?

Gladwell: I don’t really know — I mean, desperation? … I see things and I collect them, and I think they might be interesting. But there’s no theory or system. I go to the library sometimes, and I just sort of roam around; or I go on the databases and I just type in things at random, or I get articles and read through the bibliography…. But there’s no rhyme or reason. Someone will say something to me interesting, and I’ll follow up on it or something. To be a writer I think you’re kind of constitutionally disposed toward optimism.

Storycraft: Nonfiction genres

Storycraft is a superb writing book and I recommend it very highly. Two thumbs up!

Jack Hart, the former writing coach for the Oregonian, is widely regarded as one of the best nonfiction editors ever. In his book Storycraft he describes several nonfiction genres.

They include: story narrative, exploratory narrative, narrative profile, tick-tock, vignette, bookend, personal essay, columns, first person narrative issue, travel and straight informational. For my own reference I've added cookbook, how-to and technical manual. (I need an acronym to remember these formats.)

Each of these genres has specific needs and requirements when it comes to research and preparation. The narrative nonfiction (story narrative) piece needs close observation in the field, lots of details, lots of anecdotes, a sympathetic protagonist, a story, and a narrative arc with a beginning a middle and an end.

Story narrative

Also known as creative nonfiction, narrative nonfiction, and telling true stories. Protagonist with a story. Dramatic tension. Unfolds in three acts. Has a resolution. Lots of color, emotion, and drama. Lots of specific details. Lots of anecdotes and quotes. Strong narrative arc.

Exploratory Narrative

A description that follows a series of actions. It’s based on careful observation. Close to the ground. Lots of specific detail and movement. Strong digressions. No narrative arc.

Narrative profile

Portrait an individual. See subject in action. A picture of his or her world. Strong digressions. No narrative arc.

Tick Tock

Follow event from beginning to end, often from several different perspectives. No narrative arc.

Vignette

Also known as “Journalistic Haiku” or “tone poems” Hart says, “A vignette is a single scene, standing alone. (The techniques of scenic construction described in Storycraft) offer guidelines that also apply to writing vignettes. Like all scenes, a vignette includes an action line running through a geographical place.” Often around 1000 words in length.

Bookend narrative

Hart opens with the image of two marble elephants holding up a row of books to represent the “structure of a bookend narrative. . . . To write one, you bracket a stretch of expository material with two pieces of more engaging scenic action, opening and closing with narrative that has the power to hold the longer, duller content in the center.” Jack Hart, Storycraft page 207. The opening may be followed by a ‘turn,’ or a step up in abstraction.

Personal essay

The personal essay, with “experiences offered lessons for the rest of humanity. To teach those lessons, of course, you must first re-create your own experience so that others can share in it.” Hart, Jack. Storycraft (p. 208). Usually around 1000 words.

Hart calls this “One of the most useful and adaptive varieties of modern narrative forms.” It includes “a narrative, a turn, and a conclusion. They’re inductive, in other words, moving from the particular (a deformed child), then rising on the ladder of abstraction.” Hart, Jack. Storycraft (P 210).

Useful when something affects you emotionally and you don’t know why.

He recommends this structure for a personal essay of 1000 words:

“Part 1, The Narrative. Quite detailed, 650 words.

Part 2, The Turn 150 words specific to general.

Part 3, 200 words, quite abstract.”

When the reader follows the writer from detailed to abstract, it’s called a “crossover.” Hart, Jack. Storycraft (p. 213).

Columns

“Newspaper, magazine, and online columns usually run about eight hundred words. Most are think pieces, commenting on some recent event and including standard report-writing devices such as statistics and direct quotations. But eight hundred words provide plenty of room for a little narrative. And, in fact, some of the most successful columns attract loyal readers with storytelling skills, rather than table-pounding opinion. Mike Royko, a syndicated Chicago Tribune columnist who for years was one of the country’s most popular, often took a storytelling tack, frequently featuring his mythical alter ego, Slats Grobnik.” Hart, Jack (2011-06-15). Storycraft (p. 214).

First Person Narrative Issue Essays

“An essay, it’s been said, is a way of “taking an idea for a walk.” In the case of narrative issue essays, the metaphor’s literally true. The essay writer’s legwork carries her from source to source, exploring issues, poking and probing, looking for information that will help expand the idea. Such quests are a magazine mainstay, and serious publications such as Harper’s and the New Yorker feature first-person essays that explore issues in narrative form. " Hart, Jack (2011-06-15). Storycraft

Straight Informational

Standard telegraphic newspaper article. Starts with the most important information first. And covers the 5 W’s. Who, what, where, when, why.

Travel

Narrative chunks are useful to give character to otherwise bland informational writing.

And two more...

Two more structures, from my own experience.

Cookbook and How To

My book, Digital Video Secrets is in this genre. I used narrative snippets to spice up a series of How-To procedures. No narrative arc.

Technical manual

A reference book, a compendium of useful and accurate information written for a specific audience in a specific situation.

A technical manual is close to a phone book in tone: it has no narrative arc, no personality, no humor, no anecdotes, and no details.

The voice is declarative and flat with no ambiguity. “Turn the power on.” The technical manual is unreadable as literature.

Good technical manuals have hidden qualities that are invisible to outsiders. The technical writer must: define the audience accurately, understand the device or program exhaustively, review customer service calls, do a task analysis, write clearly and simply, write for an international audience, test various drafts and revise them accordingly, and use illustrations and photographs to explain things.

Launching a new idea in a post-paper world

I am working on a new nonfiction book. My options for publishing it are:

1. Distribute it for free as a manifesto.
2. Sell it as an ebook.
3. Sell it to a traditional publisher.

Seth Godin shows how to do option 1 in a brilliant post: Launching a new idea in a post-paper world.

Godin's free manifesto is Stop Stealing Dreams.