La Pregunta Existencial

Coca Cola has been very successful  at transmitting the same message over and over again to create a brand of its own. A brand that tells a story: There is always happiness, there are dreams, there is love, there is hope, peace, kindness, laughter, generosity, and magic scenes. A positive message is inside all the stories. 

3 Tips for Fast Drafting Your Novel In Record Time

Every year, we’re lucky to have great sponsors for our nonprofit events. Writing Mastery Academy, a 2021 NaNo sponsor, was founded by Jessica Brody, author of the bestselling plotting guide Save the Cat! Writes a Novel. In this post, Jessica shares her tips for getting words down on the page quickly, aka Fast Drafting:

As an author who writes on more than 350,000 words per year, I like to joke that every month is a NaNoWriMo for me. So with the real NaNoWriMo approaching, I thought I’d share my top 3 tips for writing quickly and efficiently, which you can use to easily smash through that 50k mark this November! 

1. You Don’t Need an Outline. You Only Need 5 Things.

As the author of Save the Cat! Writes a Novel, I’m used to talking about plot. But as any happy “pantser” will tell you, you don’t have to start a novel with a full plot outline (although you certainly can!). 

No matter if you’re a die hard plotter, pantser or somewhere in between, I urge you to, at the very least, sit down and brainstorm 5 things about your main character, your plot, and your world before you begin writing. 

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This is a logo designed for  What' Up San Antonio. A radio news program that will be reaching the youth in San Antonio, Texas. The tagline has been changed to "News from a Young Perspective". The people in that background represent young people gathering in a certain place to have fun and "do their own stuff", even though they are quite different, and involved in contrasting activities. Everything in that picture denotes life and movement as a youth icon.

The word "What's Up" is a young slang that represents  "Hello, how you are doing",  and San Antonio is the place where the news for youth are being delivered. According to Laura Ries to brand a product we need an image and a few words, and that image should have emotional power and should be your visual hammer. Our image includes youth playing in a background, and the words are "What's Up San Antonio", which is the name of the radio program.

Another aspect about branding is the Name of the product, and the Logo that identifies the brand as "unique". Name and Logo ideally should answer three questions: What exactly you do, who your customers are, and how you are going to be unique. When branding, all of the elements should be coherent, and gladly all of these three questions are accomplished in our product by the name of the radio program, the logo, and its tagline: What's Up San Antonio is a radio program (who are you?) reaching the youth (who are your customers?) and we are delivering "News from a Young Perspective" (How are you going to be unique?).

According to the Law of Color, red is the color of energy and excitement, and blue is peaceful and tranquil. We included those colors into our logo to denote that passion and that peacefulness in that specific background. (The 22 immutable laws of branding. Al Ries and Laura Ries).

Five Mystery and Suspense Tools to Drive Your NaNoWriMo Novel Forward

Every year, we’re lucky to have great sponsors for our nonprofit events. Today, Sisters in Crime—a community platform for mystery, thriller, and crime writers—shares some tips for writing suspenseful storylines (even for non-mystery novels!). Sisters in Crime is a NaNoWriMo 2020 sponsor.

In the crime fiction genre—including suspense novels, mysteries, and thrillers—there’s nothing better than the reader review that says “I stayed up all night to get to the end.” The propellant writers construct to push readers through to the final page is known as “narrative drive,” something our genre relies on to get readers hooked and turning pages. But it’s not only genre fiction that needs to suspend readers’ attention for the length of a story. Any story needs to catch fire in the reader’s mind to be successful.

And anyone writing 50K in 30 days needs a few ideas for generating tension in their story—without slowing down. As you #NaNoPrep this year, consider these five tools from Sisters in Crime, the international, inclusive organization for writers and readers of crime fiction, mysteries, thrillers, and suspense.

What’s in the mystery and suspense writer’s tool box for you?

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Remembering the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. today.

“Jot, Bin, Pants”: An Outline Method to Get Your Writing Back on Track

One of the biggest struggles of being a writer is often feeling like you’re not good enough, no matter how much you’re writing. Today, writer Cassandra Lee Yieng shares an outlining method that’s helped her move past feelings of doubt and create the stories that she wants to write:

Much has been said about conquering the blank page, be it called writer’s block or imposter syndrome. We’re often inundated with brusque advice like “write an outline”, “fake it till you make it”, and “just write” (Reminds me of that Pirates of the Caribbean scene). It’s easy to presume that the people offering that advice have a tough exterior, and nobody likes being intimidated. To counter that, I’d like to shed light on my writing journey, and how I helped get myself out of a writing funk.

My university major was math, but one of my most devastating writing experiences was a Huffington Post piece on the math of snooker. A simple error—an oversight of a miscalculation—stopped my other submitted posts from being published. I could no longer reach the broad readership I once enjoyed, and I stopped blogging for at least a year.

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Imagination is more important than knowledge.

Albert Einstein, a German-born theoretical physicist, on the essence of genius (via oupacademic)