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Genres Defined, Part I Writing Prompt—Dreaming Big

How To Get Your Work Noticed: Writing That Screams “Amateur!”

By Writers Relief Staff on April 13, 2008 · 3 Comments ·

Writer’s Relief helps writers get their poetry, short stories, essays, and books published by targeting the right literary agents and editors for their work. BUT the work itself must stand out, so here are a few tips to help creative writers get noticed:

Get creative in your use of punctuation. Use it willy-nilly and at random, in places the reader would never expect to see it. Have fun with multiple exclamation points!!! Don’t worry about the proper use of "quotation" marks or hyphen-ated words. And don’t fret about not using punctuation to break up run-on sentences the reader will love to unravel the mysteries of your thoughts it makes it more fun this way.

You may feel it necessary to impress your readers with pedantic language, forcing them to make a dash for the dictionary to get through your first few paragraphs. Good plan! Every reader longs to learn ten new words per page. Erudite expositions will create admiration in your exalted readers, and all will be inspired by your flowery vocabulary…if they manage to hang on long enough.

In the same vein, you may score points by creating long, convoluted sentences with multiple clauses and wandering phrases that continue to entrance the reader with their convoluted paths taken along the strange and uncharted path that is the language of our modern world, which is far more exciting than plain, simple, and concise language, which is purely boring and doesn’t give the writer an opportunity to show off his or her mastery of the English language, therefore ignoring the admonition to avoid using too many unnecessary and inessential words, irregardless.

Use your dictionery to avoid mispellings, because its a good idea to check they’re version against your own. However, it can be fun to come up with knew and creative spellings for words, just as it can be fun to change the tents of certain verbs that have creeped into your work.

Some people will tell you that verbs should agree with its subject, and a pronoun should agree with their antecedent. This is entirely up to you, and they should be able to make sense of it.

Metaphors and similes can be very fun to use, especially if they’re a little off—or mixed up like a salad with too many veggies. So take the bull by the hand and get cracking! Cloud your ideas in a sea of imagination, and create conflicting images for your valued readers. They’ll thank you for it.

REMEMBER TO CHECK OUT OUR LIST OF WRITING CONTESTS and ANTHOLOGIES! You won’t find a better list anywhere (AND IT’S FREE!) of upcoming anthologies, special-themed journals, and contests.

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Tagged with: editors • literary agents • metaphors • punctuation • run-on sentences • sentence structure • similes • spelling 
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3 Responses to How To Get Your Work Noticed: Writing That Screams “Amateur!”

  1. Rissa says:
    October 17, 2009 at 6:03 pm

    LMAO Take the bull by the hand.

  2. Elizabeth says:
    October 18, 2009 at 8:48 pm

    Glad I happened back on this blog. Great for writers. I must get writing. Thanks.

  3. Writer's Relief Staff says:
    March 15, 2010 at 10:18 am

    I laughed repeatedly as I read your article about ‘screaming amateur’. You do realize some doofus is going to miss that it’s sarcasm and totally mess up their manuscript, right? I’m still chuckling.

    Thanks for the fun.

    Posted on behalf of LinnAnn by the Writer’s Relief staff

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