Welcome

[Sharpshooter]

Welcome to the Writer's Guild...

A Guild is defined as:

An association of people belonging to the same class, or engaged in kindred pursuits, formed for mutual aid and protection.

I'm looking to the kindred pursuits portion. 

Forest and Stream Magazine and Outdoor Survival Magazine can only thrive with a consistent flow of articles from authors providing good quality work.

Like the Marines, you can't generally recruit good authors so you have to make them.

That's what we're doing here.

I am by no means a great literary talent, I do a workmanlike job on reviews, but I've done a lot of them so it often looks like I know what I'm doing.  Of course that's probably the first step toward doing this type of writing....

"Fake it 'till you make it."

Pretend you know how to write and you'll suddenly be able to write.

I do know some of how I do it and we have some others who do a great job that I hope will participate in this Guild.

I run this forum in a very relaxed manner with very few rules.  This board is going to be a bit different with a couple of appropriate rules.

Proofread your posts on this board.

If you have something to say, it needs to be in a complete sentence if at all possible.

The reason for these rules is that we're here to polish our writing skills, so working on them here is a great place to start.

SO who wants to join the Guild?

[smcclown]

Count me in!  It will take some effort to get my sea legs back when it comes to writing.  I have not written anything substantial since college, and nothing creative since high school (nine years already?).  I am, however, ready and willing to learn and practice!

[kgd]

This could be an interesting area Reid.  Most of my writing is technical writing in my profession as a scientist.  Sometimes that gets a bit dry and one thing that peer review tends to beat out of you is any speculation or opinions of any kind.  Why I like to write here and on the forums is that it gives me a little more freedom in literary pursuits.  Yet, I'm the first to admit that even the way I write tends to be more technical with an objective voice and past tense.  You probably couldn't ever really get me to pursue poetry or anything really creative like that.  One of the nice things about writing articles rather than a post is that it provides an opportunity to generate a more considered work and polished product.

The kinds of things I would like to see in this area are tips and tricks for splashing up written articles.  I can write tomes of boring paragraphs filled with details but sometimes the words just lack the attention grabbers and hooks that keep the audience in.  I have thus far relied on the more rudimentary technique of diverting them with a picture.  How else do you grab your readers mid-way through your descriptive article? 

[AlexN]

Hi, I followed Big Mike's link to this site,and it looks like a really good place to spend some time. I minored in creative writing in college many years ago,and this will be a very interesting personal challange to recreate that spark of excitement and interest in writing.
KGD,a thought about what you said about attention getters,or hooks as they are called,just pick up magazines or newspapers at random and read the first two or three sentences of whatever the article is. Good short stories also.
LOL,one editor at a well known publishing house used to always start reading new authors by throwing the first page or so away.

[Sharpshooter]

Sorry about not getting back to this right away....  Business is booming and attacking my leisure time with a vengeance.  I've scored a bit of time for this so we can get started.

I'm NOT an authority on what's right or how to do it; what I am is capable of writing a good review that seems to interest a wide variety of readers.

Let's see if we can share enough to come up with the answers.

I'm certified to train in the Guided Discovery Format.  That and a quarter will get you a cup of bad coffee from a vending machine but it does provide a great basis for sharing knowledge with adults.

The principle is simply that all of the knowledge we need is already in the group, we just need to be Guided to Discovering how it applies. In other words, we're going to teach each other.

Other people joining us can just jump right in with one provision, if you are going to present a critique of anyone's work here, you must have presented work of your own for the same purpose.  The old "man in the arena" thing holds true here and will be enforced.

I'll start a thread with step one and follow with more as we go along.  This should be fun, if it becomes "Work" we're doing something wrong.

[hangtime]

well, since I'm getting old and opinionated. . .
 
     I thought I might drop in here for my first post on this forum.  There's nothing quite as satisfying as being able to pass along some free advice.  ( grin )  I'll try to maintain the high standards I have thus far encountered here and remember that my advice is worth every bit that was paid for it.