Wow! Can you believe it? March is almost over. I’m not sure where the time went!

I ‘ve been busy with niche writing for my client’s sites, designing sites, blog walking, and critiquing. I’ve been working diligently on my own novel, although it always seems to take a back seat. However, my clients over at CreativeAce are quite happy and I have a couple of new ones ready to go.

The great thing about blogging, creating sites for others, or creating niche articles for other sites is that I learn a lot and can take that knowledge and build better and more creative sites for my new clients. It’s much like critiquing another story. Some writers only want their story or poem critiqued, but have no interest in helping other writers. I find that this is a big flaw. Not only is it selfish, but they pass up a great learning opportunity.

My writing becomes stronger with every post, article, or critique that I do. The flaws I see in other writings are often things I do myself or have done. The great thing about niche writing or content writing is that your words need to flow, be precise, and get to the point quickly, then resolve the issue.

ABCs of Writing

Niche Writing should be Accurate, Brief, and Clear. This means that extra words should be cut whenever possible. Why say “The man from the Geek Squad came to the house and helped us set up our Internet connection” when you could say “The Geek Squad helped set up our home Internet connection”.

The change makes for a tighter article. Prose writing is much the same thing. You may have 300 pages to enthrall your reader, however, if you use unneeded adverbs or 3 words when 1 or 2 will do then you will have a harder time convincing your reader that what they are reading is believable or lose them as they drift off.

Novel Writing

When writing a novel you have time to develop the plot. The author may not think that every word counts so she gets lazy and throws in more words than are needed to get to the point or setup the conflict. This is fine during a first draft, after all I find it easier to delete words or ideas than it is to create a new one and push it into the plot.

As we sat around the table last night for our biweekly writer’s meeting, it was obvious to some of us that the end a chapter we were critiquing  had 2 paragraphs too much. So I asked, what’s the point? Did it help setup the conflict, shed light on a resolution, or aid in defining the character’s inner turmoil?

The short answer was no. It didn’t lend to any of that, it over explained and took away the tension that the author had built. So in the end, 2 paragraphs of words were axed and the chapter was much tighter and didn’t break the tension.

I’ve heard that some authors go through their novels with a fine tooth comb and ruthlessly rip out every word that is unnecessary. I’m not a big believer in that, in fact, I wonder how long it takes to finish a novel if you’re pondering over every little word. I do believe in looking for places that you have stumbled. Is there a sentence or paragraph that you read and your mind drifts somewhere else or conjures an idea that is not part of the story? If so, then that is the section  you need to examine and improve. Is it too many words? Is it an unnecessary adverb? Or is it just simply a wrong word choice?

By critiquing other writers works or writing in a different genre you can learn how to improve your creative writing and how to streamline your words to give the most informative and creative experience for your reader.

Do you write in more than one genre? If so, do you find it helpful to write in more than one style or does it make it harder for you?

Good luck in your writing, in whatever genre that you choose