Howler Monkey Productions

How to Write Well (Part II)

James Daniels — Tue, 08 May 2012 02:33:38 +0000

If you want to be able to sing well, you spend a lot of time singing. If you want to dance well, you spend a lot of time dancing. The same goes for writing. If you want to do it well, spend a lot of time writing. A journal, even if you don’t write in it everyday, is a great tool for practicing your writing skills.

PowerPoint Presentations

James Daniels — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 23:07:31 +0000

Should you use PowerPoint in your presentations? Not if you can avoid it. Any type of slides or other visual aids distract from the speaker (you). There are times when visual aids are absolutely necessary, for example when you have to support your presentation with pictures, spreadsheets and graphs. Also, it has become standard practice in many organizations for leaders to demand “read ahead packets” containing the slides to be shown at the presentation. If this is the case, use PowerPoint, but keep it to a minimum and avoid distracting special effects. You want your audience focused on you, not your slides.

File Copies

James Daniels — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 23:05:50 +0000

Priorities come and go; electronic files get corrupted; shredding is forever. Always keep a file copy.

Email

James Daniels — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 23:05:06 +0000

The great thing about email is that it gives you a permanent record of what you said. The bad thing about email is that it gives the person to whom you sent it a permanent record of what you said. Lawyers love emails.

On Imagination

James Daniels — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 20:01:37 +0000

When writing fiction or for emotional effect, never underestimate the power of your reader’s imagination.

Someone once challenged Ernest Hemmingway to tell an entire story with no more than six words. His reply: For sale: baby shoes, never used

Get Your Message Across Quickly

James Daniels — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 20:00:52 +0000

I once had a boss who told us that when he received emails he read the subject line and the first line of the body. If he wasn’t convinced the message was important by that point, he hit delete. He meant it too. I was once standing next to him while he was cleaning out his email In Box. He highlighted every message in the box , most of which were marked as unread, and then hit the delete button. Convince people that your email is worth reading at the very beginning. Otherwise you may never convince them.

Hemingway’s Rules for Writing

James Daniels — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 19:54:05 +0000

Ernest Hemingway’s Rules for Good Writing:
1. Use short sentences.
2. Use short first paragraphs.
3. Use vigorous English.
4. Be positive, not negative.
5. Never have only 4 rules.

A few things to note:

First of all Hemingway had a sense of humor about his writing. (See rule 5.)
Secondly, Hemingway didn’t take his rules too seriously. Although he is famous for his short sentences, if you go through his writing you can find some extremely long sentences mixed in with his more famous short ones. Never lets rules become handcuffs.

George Orwell’s rules for writing

James Daniels — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 19:53:02 +0000

George Orwell’s Rules for Good Writing:
1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than saying anything outright barbarous.

How to write well

James Daniels — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 03:44:49 +0000

If you want to write well, read a lot. Whether your goal is fiction writing, personal writing or business writing, absorbing large amounts of good writing will eventually be reflected in your own writing. Hemingway may be famous for short sentences and Faulkner for the long ones, but they didn’t invent them. Reading what others had written gave them the tools they needed to write great literature. If you want to write well, read well.

Did they hear you?

James Daniels — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 14:36:16 +0000

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.
- George Bernard Shaw

You know what you meant to say. You heard what you think you said, but did the person to whom you were communicating understand what you meant? Whenever possible, get the person to whom you are speaking to repeat back to you what he or she thinks you said. If your communicating by email, end your message with a question or request such as, “let me know how you plan to handle this.” That will give you the opportunity to gauge how much of what you said was understood.