The Seven Ps

I was actually tagged a couple of days ago by Rolando over at RPlayground for this meme. Unfortunately my procrastinitis has been acting up and I’m just now getting around to it.

I like memes that make you think about yourself and who you really are. I don’t think people do enough introspection in life. We get hammered everyday and from every angle with what other people think we should be like that we forget to make sure that that is what we really want. Even worse, more and more people are putting aside their real self in order to conform to the “norm”.

So now with the public service announcement out of the way, here are my answers to the seven P’s.

Article Marketing: Is It Worth the Effort?

Article marketing is the act of writing short, between 500 to a 1000 word, articles and distributing them to other website owners to republish on their site for free. This form of advertisement is not new. In the offline world, business owners would write articles regarding an aspect of their industry and submit them to newspapers for free in exchange for having their business contact information printed with the article.

Internet marketers were quick to port this marketing tactic to the virtual world, spawning an entire industry complete with specialized software and tutorials. Every five minutes, it seems, an article directory is popping up touting the same benefits of submitting your work to them.

How To Write A Book Review

Book reviews have been around since the first caveman painted a picture of the big hunt on the cave walls. I guarantee that there was someone just a little further down painting a review describing how they thought the plot was too thin and the characters a little stale.

As an invaluable asset for the literary community, book reviews provide today’s bibliophile an easy way to find great books in an era where both time and money are scarce. Book reviews also supply writers the feedback they need to help them improve their craft which makes them a simultaneous bane and blessing for wordsmiths everywhere.

Will This Prevent Drunk Driving?

In the interest of transparency, I want to say first off that I am experimenting with a pay for posting service called TheNewsRoom. TheNewsRoom is a website that pays bloggers to post news stories on their blogs. Supposedly each time a person views the video, news story or image, you (the blogger) gets a cut of the profits.

Now I’m not going to go insane and start spamming my own website with crap. If I wanted to do that, I would have joined Payperpost or Review Me or another service that pays bloggers to stuff their websites with craptastic spam. The difference with TheNewsRoom is that it is news and stuff that I would post and comment on anyway so why not make a dollar or two to help with hosting fees.

Anyway, on with the post…

Writing Prompts: Settings

Where your story takes place is just an important component as the story’s plot or the characters themselves. The story’s setting is apart of its architecture. It frames the plot in meaning and frees some of your characters strengths, brings out some of their weaknesses and draws the reader further into your story world.

A setting can encompass anything from a time period to a physical place to an event. This week’s writing prompts will provide you with a series of backgrounds into which you can set an existing story against or draw new characters out of.

1. The cabin of a high speed rail.

2. Paleolithic Japan

3. A high school classroom

4. The comment section of a popular and controversial blog

5. The front desk of a four star resort

6. A political rally

7. The backseat of a hover car that is in flight

8. The Rugby World Cup

9. Canada before the British and French arrived

10. An underwater research facility

11. Middle Age Sweden

12. A backyard BBQ

13. The United States in 2215