Category: Blog

by Patrick Chiodo

Every writer out there knows what it is like to have writer’s block or struggle to find enough words to meet the word requirement. Writers who reread their work to proofread might realize that their work might be a bit too boring for some, or some readers might just lose interest halfway into their work. You can’t inform the readers of what you want to inform them if your work is too boring for them to continue. That’s why I have given a few ways to help a troubled writer be able to make their piece a work of art. Using these tips are guaranteed to help enhance your work.

1.Improv on paper.

Sometimes your best ideas or lines can come from the top of your mind. Brainstorming and planning are, of course, essential in writing good works, but using a reaction that you get that just hits you when writing can be a blessing.

2. Consider your target audience.

If the piece is for kids, maybe steer clear of big words. If the work is a formal piece, use a copious amount of diction, but don’t use too much or some might just think that you are showing off your wordplay.

3. Add humor when appropriate.

Everyone loves humor, so if it fits in naturally, use it. I have always found that if you open, say, the next topic in an essay with a joke that relates to the topic, then people will enjoy the work more often than opening with a run-of-the-mill fact.

4. Make sure your grammar and punctuation are correct.

If your work has mistakes in the grammar, the reader will believe that the work that they are reading was not done by a professional.

5. If writing dialogue, repeat it to yourself to make sure it sounds natural.

The way we write isn’t always the way we speak. This goes both ways. If you are writing a character’s dialogue, but you don’t want them to speak like other’s in your story, then you should establish the character’s backstory. Say the character is from the deep South, then when they are speaking, they should be saying “Ain’t” or Y’all” instead of “Isn’t” or “Everyone”.

The Short Story

Miranda Olsen

Most people have probably read a short story in their lifetime. Whether it was for school, in a book, or possibly even a magazine, the idea of writing a short story, which some see as a “mini-novel”, can appear daunting and difficult, the reality is-it’s easy as pie. Here are five easy tips to help you get started.

#1 Start With A Bang. Have your story start in the middle of a chase, during a storm, during a verbal or physical fight. This is called a “hook.” Having such a scene will literally hook your reader in. If you start with a hook, it will draw your reader in and make them more inclined to read more and find out what happens. Use good imagery and detail to make it feel real. Example: “Jack kept restarting his boat engine, occasionally looking up at the storm clouds above him. Lightning and thunder were inching closer to him. The waves began to grow. Jack was with his sister Sarah, who looked just as afraid as he did. They were only sixteen years old, and immediately regretted stealing the boat. What was supposed to be a nice day on the water had suddenly turned into a nightmare. Lightning began to strike closer now. The oars in the boat were old and rotten, yet Jack tried his best to use them. He used all his might to propel the boat forward but the growing waves would not allow it. The seas were angry. Jack did not know why. Worst of all, he did not know how to soothe them. The boat was beginning to tip and the two children looked to each other for guidance, but found only fear and confusion. A large swell washed over the boat, soaking them both to the bone.”

#2 Don’t Forget Dialogue. For a short story to be fast paced, exciting, and well flushed out, it needs dialogue. What is dialogue? It’s speech between characters. Dialogue can easily become too fake sounding or too boring. To better help write dialogue that mimics real speech, eavesdrop on some conversations. What do the people say? Do they use slang? Here’s an example of simple dialogue:

Jack looked at Sarah and sighed.

“The engine isn’t working,” Jack said.

“Well. fix it!” She replied.

“I can’t! It’s broken!”

“I don’t want to die out here,” Sarah said, sobbing.

#3 Keep It Short. The shorter your story, the more punch it will pack. Keep your writing under 5,000. Anything more than that is sort of rambling on. Keep your story fast paced and exciting, and you can’t really do that if your story is going over 5,000 words. Despite it’s short length, it needs to have certain elements that make it work. Have a hook to draw your reader in, have rising action to build to a climax, have falling action to lead to a resolution, and have a good ending. Try not to kill off your characters if you can help it, but feel free to end with a plot twist or some sort of mystery.

#4 Give Your Characters Some Backstory. What do your characters look like? Does Jack have a small build, or a big build? Hair and eye color? Is Sarah beautiful or plain? Do your characters have any distinguishable features like scars or moles? Flush out your characters and give them a good backstory. What is their home life like? Why are they the way that they are? Keep your cast of characters small, two to three should keep the story on track. Jack and Sarah are stuck out at sea, which makes a great scenario. A man and a woman. “Adam and Eve.” It’s a great scenario for you, as an author, to flush out those two characters. Use dialogue to increase or decrease tension, maybe throw in some romance? Two people, especially a man and a woman make for a great short story.

#5 Practice, Practice, Practice. Your first draft is not going to be perfect. It will have flaws-but that’s okay. Go back and read it out loud. Does the dialogue sound natural? Is the story fast paced enough? Is the story too plain, or too complicated? Does it sound like a real situation or is it meant to be far fetched? Your story won’t be final until your second or third draft. And if you don’t like it after all that work-write a new one! Write different stories about different topics. Have fun and be bold. The possibilities with writing are endless, that’s the magic of it. With pen and paper or a laptop or tablet, you can create new worlds, new characters, and new legends. But if you want to write a story that really moves someone, that’s interesting and fresh, that’s easy to understand yet complex , you need to practice, practice, practice!

 

By Olivia Murphy

Are you the kind of person that picks  apart your writing so much that it  lowers your self-esteem?  Do you have a hard time believing in yourself? Well instead of picking apart all of what you think you’re doing wrong, focus on what your strengths are.  Go line by line and pick out the strongest points of your paper then think of ways to expand. When you are trying to prove a thesis the more examples the better. One of the most common errors a writer can make this having too many spaces and having  run on sentences. In Addition to these setbacks people often write more  just to get to word  count try not to just keep writing in adding unnecessary sentences just to get to word count.

iI is important to focus on what the point of your paper is  rather  than  focusing on the fact that you haven’t   gotten  to word count. The words will come to you if you take a break.  If you have more than one person read over your paper before turning it in it can be very  beneficial. Sometimes other people notice small errors that we wouldn’t notice ourselves, having an extra pair of eyes helps. I suggest going the writing center after you’ve proofread it yourself.  They can be extremely helpful in any stage your writing.  I also would recommend using Grammarly it is a program that helps you edit your paper.

Additionally, if you have a friend in your class you can also proofread and edit each other’s papers.  when you are proofreading your own paper try to  keep  the negative thoughts out of your head such as “I’m going to get a bad grade on this and “there is no way I’m going to finish this. In the long run, the hard work pays off  and if you  put your mind to it you can  write an “A” paper.

By: Matthew Wheeler

Through the early years of smartphones and thanks to Apple, auto correct has been either a life saver or a relationship killer depending on what situation you’re in. Throughout the past decades of heart break, hook ups, friendships and quick hello’s, something is bound to happen. Your text conversations go VIRAL. Volunteering for a cat shelter can auto-correct to say that you’ve “punched” instead of “touched” a cat, a cookout can go from frying up the patties to frying up the panties. It really does cause the embarrassment of one another and just wish it never did happen in the first place. Sometimes depending on the type of friend you have, websites like “Damn You Auto correct” can make a big “you-know-what” out of you.

But it’s all not bad with auto correct. You always need auto correct in times of love and admiration, whether your using up all the data to send your girlfriend that very, deep and sensational text message that you’d rather give to her right then and there and not in real life. It keeps you and her happy, and makes you think of her in rough times when you aren’t side by side. Auto correct also helps when you just have that one perfect story right on the tip of your tongue, and needs to get jotted down as soon as possible. Auto correct easily fixes up your mistakes and with just a quick rundown of your story, your good to go for future reference.

Autocorrect has since gone though updates and completely new words, like YOLO to yo-yo, or swag to bag. It also has spread to every single smartphone known to man, and no matter what smartphone you do use, you can always force your auto correct to shut it self of completely, or just change one word to a random, completely out of the ordinary word, just so you can get a laugh making your parents wonder “Why is this one word coming up with this other word”?! Don’t worry, something will confuse us millennials son. See?!

The Greatest Showman

Miranda Olsen

“The Greatest Showman” is a 2017 musical film based on the life of P.T Barnum, directed by Michael Gracey, starring Hugh Jackman, Zac Efron, Michelle Williams, Rebecca Ferguson, Zendaya, and more. Original musicals are notoriously difficult to green light, and the project was announced years ago in 2009. The Award winning songwriting duo Pasek and Paul were chosen for the film (having previously worked on La La Land). The film features the story of P.T Barnum, the son of a tailor, who has big dreams. He meets a young socialite named Charity, and falls in love. Their class differences get in the way, however, they keep in touch through letters. Phineas, P.T, refuses to give up on their relationship. Years pass, and he ends up marrying Charity, despite her father’s disapproval, and they move to New York City.

 

Life is no cherry pie, though. Phineas loses his job, and is forced to find a new one. He cheats the bank out of real collateral, and gets a loan to open a Museum of oddities. Even in Victorian times, however, morbid curiosities are still only appealing to a niche audience. Barnum’s children suggest he sell tickets to see something alive. Barnum realizes he still wants to show oddities-just living oddities. He gathers giants, dwarfs, tattooed men, albino’s, and more. He renames his museum Barnum’s Circus. Despite bad reviews and violent protestors, Barnum and his performers triumph, and even though their Circus building burns down, they switch to tents, and continue to perform for the masses. The film is visually stunning, with an extremely talented cast who had backgrounds in music, such as Jackman, Efron, Williams, and Zendaya. With a mere budget of $84 million, the film has now grossed over $400 million, and is officially the highest grossing live-action musical of all time. As someone who writes screenplays, I noticed the clever dialogue and the smooth transitions into song. Transitioning from speaking to singing is notoriously difficult to blend in a way that’s not awkward or cheesy. The Greatest Showman does a fantastic job. The writers for the film were Jenny Bicks and Bill Condon. Bicks wrote much of the hit show Sex In The City, but Condon worked on The Twilight series and the live action Beauty And The Beast. It is his work with Disney that allowed such magic on the screen of The Greatest Showman. This film is magical, musical, and without a doubt-worth a watch.

By: Aleksandra Yefremova

Writing is not easy, even for professional writers. Describing events and expressing dialogue can be a challenge for anybody. A common problem most people experience while writing is overthinking. Luckily, this obstacle can be easily overcome with a few simple-to-follow tips.

To start, a good first tip in writing proficiently is to write daily. It is important to remind yourself to write every day. It does not have to be anything specific or even interesting, it can be anything in general. Writing does not mean creating an essay consisting of over one thousand words, it can be something simple and painless such as a short poem or a lyric. Write what comes to mind.

In addition, a second tip is to not overthink your sentence phrasing, sentence structure, and terminology until you revise your writing. Create a simple straight to the point sentence that can be easily understood. Furthermore, it is also important to let words flow naturally onto the page and not stress yourself over constructing the ideal or perfect line. This is important because letting your own words fly on to the page is the base of your writing. Once you have the base it becomes so much easier to revise and reconstruct what you have written.

Equally as important, a third step is to re-read what you have written out loud. It is a good idea to re-read your writing and remove some of the boring or dull phrases and spice them up with a more impressive synonym. This might sound strange. However, it is efficient in composing an acceptable or even an exceptional story, essay, or poem. To add, another good way to expand your wring is to let other people read what you have written and ask them for criticism. Strangely enough, criticism is a good way to view what strengths your writing holds and what weaknesses.

Given these points, writing is difficult and stressing. Yet with these few simple tips writing can be fun, easy, and most importantly effortless in constructing.

by: Mikala Dawson

Many writers and artists struggle with confidence. It is intimidating to publish your work for others to see. The internet and social media allow anyone and everyone to see what you’ve created and either “fan girl” over it or subject it to the harshest of criticisms. The aim of this editorial is to share some confidence boosting tips I’ve gathered over the years and hopefully encourage you to submit to our magazine.

Developing the confidence to publish or submit your writing can be a challenge, but if you’re willing to put in the time you will see results. There are two BIG ways you can boost your confidence in your writing. The first solution is edit and re-write. The more time you spend writing something, the more ideas you develop on the subject. Always go back and re-read what you’ve written and look for improvement in your writing. The second solution, get a second opinion. I know sharing your work with others may seem daunting, but a fresh pair of eyes will see mistakes your eyes have been missing. If you don’t feel comfortable with that, a popular alternative is copying and pasting your writing into Google Translate and pressing play. Google will read out your writing and you can hear the more obvious mistakes you made out loud. One of the best ways I’ve found to help my confidence is editing and re-writing over and over again. I’m so insecure with my writing I often don’t want to share it with anyone for a second opinion.

Building confidence in your art work can be a bit tricky. It’s important to understand that no one will understand your art the same way you do. Criticism form others should be taken with a grain of salt. A solution to dwindling confidence in your art is to always practice new art styles. Getting out of your comfort zone and working with new styles and materials helps you build as an artist. This expansion in your abilities will naturally lead to more confidence in your art. I feel the best solution is remembering to always compare yourself to yourself. This way, you always win.

Confidence is important in everyday life. Without it, you cannot hope to achieve your goals. Magazines like Elektraphrog rely on submissions from writers and artist to create a catalog of new ideas that help inspire others. Without you there isn’t a magazine. So, take a chance and submit something, you may surprise yourself.