The Smart Pounder

There are two types of outlines: one you’ll send to a prospective publisher (formal) and one that’s a personal guide for your story (informal).

First we’ll talk about the informal type. No one ever has to see this outline, so adapt it to whatever works best for you. I begin by taking my idea and expanding it into scenes that follow my plot. As it grows and takes shape it can change many times. Remember to always allow plenty of room for notes.

EXAMPLE: I have a story idea, off the top of my head, about an alien crash landing on a NY rooftop.

Closer: They live happily ever after. NOTE: Add epilogue?

Obviously your outline will be more extensive than the example.

Many writers hate the idea of the outline. A few reasons to consider at least trying it would be: many publishers require one sent with your query letter, it can help you maintain focus when using several plot threads, and it can help you later when you find yourself floundering and lost within your plot.

An outline is not meant to constrain creativity. Never be afraid to deviate from your outline. Use it as a guide for focus only. Remember, there are a lot of roads out there and no one way to reach your destination.

Now for Formal Outlines: You’ve just written the great American (Chinese or Russian) novel. However, XYZ Publishing wants an outline of your book with your query letter.

Now What? Whether you wrote your novel using an outline or not, you may be splattering your favorite curse word about the room about now. Let’s face it, starting an outline from scratch may be just as difficult as making sense out of that stack of research, notes and scribbles you’ve used to write your novel.

Take heart, author. Creating an outline for a publisher is as simple as listing your chapters with short (one or two sentence) descriptions.

Example: (We’ll use our fictitious example from above)

Chapter One: The Eagle Has Landed.

Just when you thought it was safe to stroll through your NYC rooftop garden, a beautiful alien has the gall to use it as a landing strip.

The Catch: You knew there had to be one. The hard part is creating descriptions that will drive the publisher to request your manuscript. Best bit of advice I’ve found? Show them what’s in it for them and their potential readers.

© 2003-2006 Holly Bliss. All Rights Reserved. This document may be freely redistributed in its unedited form and on the condition that all copyright references are kept intact along with the hyperlinked URLs.

About the Author: Using her writing as paint on the canvas of her life, Holly Bliss is an eclectic writer, newsletter editor and an author on http://www.Writing.Com/
which is a site for Creative Writers.

Never before in the history of the business of writing have opportunities opened up and presented themselves on such a large scale and in such huge quantities for writers to easily win so much regular business and revenue.

If you know anything about writers of old you will know that they mostly starved, some to death. Yes, they often had to pay such a high price for their love of writing.

Today everything has changed so dramatically and so suddenly. Thanks mainly to the internet and the huge hungry market it continues to build at high every day, the business of writing has been changed forever.

Sadly however, many writers are yet to fully wake up to the new realties of the internet and the fresh and different business and revenue opportunities that are suddenly within such easy reach of any writer. Many offline writers are still stuck saying that they will never write $3 or $5 articles (see my article on this controversial subject at

http://100grandonlinewriters.blogspot.com/2005/06/
lots-of-extra-money-waiting-to-be-made.html

Yet the same writers had no problem starting off their careers writing 10-cents-per-word articles in the old days. Some even wrote for publications that pay in copies and others that don’t even pay (just to get clippings of their published work. And yet those clippings were not anywhere near as effective as “online writing clippings” – that is your articles posted free at article sites, can be today).

But for you to succeed as an online writer you must first understand that all online writing is business writing. In the bricks and mortar world business writing is writing about boring stocks and sometimes boring companies and trying to explain why they are so successful or why they have failed. Incidentally I personally find such writing fascinating.

In online writing, the business writing is different. You can write on any subject, giving a lot of useful details and advice but in the end, you must find a way of getting readers to do what you want them to do. Your objective could be to get them to visit your website or blog for more information and this win higher traffic, which gives you many possibilities. Or your objective could be to get them to head straight to your affiliate website.

In other words your writing is always business writing because the end objective is to sell something, even if it is just ideas. And yet the moment your writing looks like it is selling, it will be shunned and people will not want to come anywhere near your writing. A good example is this article that you are reading so eagerly. It is actually selling something. Get my point? The kind of writing articles do online is very different.

Any writer who understands that all online writing is business writing puts themselves in a very good position to make a fortune from their online business writing.

For example it will become much easier to attract clients because no website will assign you to write something that does not help them sell something.

This business writing that is done online has become even more interesting in recent times because a huge market has developed for writers who can write content to attract specific Google adsense advertisements. Let me explain in a little more detail for the sake of the uninitiated. Most people who carry Google adsense advertisements quickly notice that it is extremely important to attract higher paying ads. The way to do this is by using certain keywords. Usually common keywords in most subjects will attract low bids (because there are numerous sites where these ads can be successfully posted) meaning that the revenue Google shares with the site owner carrying their ads, for clicks will tend to be low. More unique and rare keywords will tend to attract ads that have much higher bids on them. There are actually certain Google ads that pay as much as $100 per click.

The kind of business writing required here is where unique keywords will be used without the content losing its’ original value and meaning. There are probably hundreds of thousands of sites that carry Google ads and many of them are not happy with their earnings and would like to earn more. Business writing from online writers who understand exactly what the client wants is in very high demand. By the way it is very easy for an online writer to quickly become an expert in this sort of business writing by simply setting up their own blog and applying to post Google ads and then learning and practicing their online business writing skills on their own site to start with. They can even use the same site to attract clients and writing business.

Christopher Kyalo earns a living writing for various online clients. Visit his blog http://100grandonlinewriters.blogspot.com to read the following article; How to get lots of business writing online articles. He can be reached at strongwallafrica at yahoo.com

Many big selling authors and writers sell totally trashy romance novels and they pump them out faster than their fictitious characters pump them. There are so many trashy romance novels and it appears that there is a big following for this sort of garbage out there and it is sure growing too. So many indeed.

Do you consider Trashy Romance Novels literature? How about someone who writes them do you consider them an author or a writer? Yes or No? If YES, then writers like that are destroying literature in the present period and the long tradition of literary work which makes writing so important to human history and education. These romance novels are in my opinion; NOT professional, it is akin to selling soft porn.

That is my opinion, without malice or making the porn industry look bad on these trashy romance novelist’s account. So if this is someone’s idea of a professional writer then I am hereby under whelmed no matter how many pesky cats someone has in their family. We should not allow the words; Professional Writer; to ever mix with the words romance novels. These authors are not selling literature, as it is merely smut with no pictures and toned down a little bit just below indecency. Consider this in 2006.

“Lance Winslow” – Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; http://www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs/

Because I have some acting and directing background, I used to be in the habit of going to a play and as I would hear certain performers recite their lines, I’d repeat them, silently, with different, and what I thought were improved inflections.

I didn’t do this with the greats, Anthony Hopkins, Vanessa Redgrave, Ian McKellan, and Paul Scofield, to name a few. But with lesser actors, this impulse to superimpose my act on theirs was irresistible.

Flying from LA to San Francisco one evening, I got a chance to chat extensively with Eric Roberts, an actor with some classical training, and I asked if he did the same thing.

He shot me a look that said, “I’ve never even heard of that!”

I share this with you because as writers or artists of any kind, I believe there is the temptation to re-do other people’s work, unconsciously if not deliberately.

The question comes to mind: Is this worthwhile? Moreover, is it right?

Budding painters throughout history have tried to copy the classics to understand and to improve technique, so in a sense, I believe this can be a useful exercise in any art.

It adds tools, possibilities, and it forces us to develop latent talents.

But should you try to write like Hemingway or T.S. Eliot or even Napoleon Hill?

Why, not?

There is an adage, perhaps you’ve come across it, that says: “Every story has been told, but every new writer thinks he or she can tell it better.”

Part of a classical education is to fill oneself with the wisdom and perspectives of the greats, because then we’ll know what “great” is, and with that foundation, we can more capably originate, knowing exactly how and when we are breaking with tradition.

I’m finding, by writing articles in various subject areas I’m adopting styles suitable to the material. My sports pieces sound “punchy” and have a ringside air to them, and my martial arts offerings have a trace of mysticism in them.

Probably, I’m imitating someone or some model that I’ve internalized.

Is this right? Is it effective?

Eric Roberts might take a different path to creating, and that’s fine, but a certain amount of mimicry works for me.

By the way, have you heard my Sean Connery impersonation?

Dr. Gary S. Goodman, President of http://www.Customersatisfaction.com, is a popular keynote speaker, management consultant, and seminar leader and the best-selling author of 12 books, including Reach Out & Sell Someone and Monitoring, Measuring & Managing Customer Service, and the audio program, “The Law of Large Numbers: How To Make Success Inevitable,” published by Nightingale-Conant. He is a frequent guest on radio and television, worldwide. A Ph.D. from USC’s Annenberg School, a Loyola lawyer, and an MBA from the Peter F. Drucker School at Claremont Graduate University, Gary offers programs through UCLA Extension and numerous universities, trade associations, and other organizations from Santa Monica to South Africa. He holds the rank of Shodan, 1st Degree Black Belt in Kenpo Karate. He is headquartered in Glendale, California, and he can be reached at (818) 243-7338 or at: gary@customersatisfaction.com

For information about coaching, consulting, training, books, videos and audios, please go to http://www.customersatisfaction.com

Are you ready to sign off on your first project or publish more of what you have already written? Have you been wondering who will publish your work? The publishing industy is changing in the new millineum and doesn’t appear ready to stop changing. It is estimated that in the next 10 years, 50 percent of all books will be self-published or published by smaller presses.

Even so, it should not exempt us from the pursuit of excellence in our craft through sound writing rules and business etiquette.

With that said the way to more published writing credits is basically the same as Anne Wayman says, “Write well and write often.” If you want to get published more by industry respected magazines and even enter into the competition for the attention of traditional book publishers, you may want to examine some of your writing habits. There are some habits those writers who consistently get published share. If you want to join the winner’s circle of frequently published writers develop these habits:

Habit 6 Do your own dirty work; make your editor’s life easy

Professional minded authors don’t expect the editor to do all of their editing, rewriting and spell checking their work. Many authors seem to think their writing talent should out-weigh ever having to rewrite, fix grammar or spelling errors. Remember you are forming your trust factor and creditability from day one. If you make an editor feel as though she has to triple-check your facts and rewrite portions of your work because its always turned in sloppy she won’t favorably anticipate your next project. Do your own dirty work and make your editor expect excellent work when your projects come across her desk.

Habit #7 Read avidly

Winning writers are avid readers. It’s a scientific fact that most avid readers are prolific writers. Well maybe not scientific but it’s a known fact that reading other people’s work makes you a better writer. If you want to become a better writer or better yet a frequently published one make reading one of your habits. For sure read what you enjoy and are most interested in but don’t forget to expand your horizons; read a broad range of literature. Read non-fiction, stories, read poetry, read newspapers. I read a couple of marketing and internet related articles per day. But I also fit novels, magazines and newspapers somewhere in there during the week. Don’t feel you have the time? Take a book or magazine along with you to your sitting/waiting appointments. Long commute? What else is there to do with your mind but read? Fit more reading in your schedule and become a successful writer that editors are looking for.

Habit 8 Cultivate your skills, forever

Frequently published authors are life long learners. They have a strong desire to develop and cultivate their skills. They believe in forever learning and improving their craft. With this attitude you receive a lot more of the ‘Yes, let’s publish it!’ Start building your writer’s library with the basic style book such as The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White (Allyn & Bacon). Then make it an annual tradition to read and brush up on your basics to keep improving. Remember excellence is a habit. Glean from the field of writing and your colleagues who are improving. Subscribe to writer magazines like Writer’s Digest, attend conferences, take a class, and be active in your writing group. Make it a habit to develop your craft and enter the circle of frequently published writers sooner.

Habit 9 Think investment

A lot of writers wish these two responsibilities would go away or at least someone else take up the task of doing it for them. The truth is you have to submit and you have to promote. Consider it an investment of your time and effort with rewards waiting just around the corner. You have the most passion and interest in your work. So accept it, relax, submit and promote to enjoy the journey of seeing your name in print more and more. Regularly published writers submit their work and if it comes back with a rejection letter, they look for improvements and send it out again. They develop a cycle – a habit of while one article, short story, book project is out, they write something else and send it. They keep sending until they have 5, 10, and 20 circulating.

Habit 10 Target your reader and audience

Learn as much as you can about the demographics of the potential reader for whatever it is you are writing. Widely published writers study their potential reader. Some even sketch their reader in word or drawing and post it on their computer so they can write directly to them. The widely published writer find out what gender is she or he? What education level? They try to discover if they are conservative or liberal? What do they like and dislike? What will this person enjoy reading? What other interests will they likely have? Keep this reader in mind as you pitch your idea to the editor and especially when you write your project.

In the beginning, the acceptances are slow and sporadic for the successful and unsuccessful writer alike. But the difference is the successful writer keeps submitting. On a regular basic they see their work published because of their investment and persistence. Start with 1-3, keep submitting, and be persistent until you are invited into the winner’s circle of frequently published writers.

© Earma Brown, 11 year author and business owner
helps small business owners and writers who want to write their best book now! Author of ‘Write Your Best Book Now’, she mentors other writers and business professionals through her monthly ezine ‘iScribe’ Subscribe now at
iscribe@writetowin.org for FREE mini-course ‘Jumpstart Writing Your Best Book’ or visit WritetoWin.org

Doing research and writing research papers does not actually have to be as horrible as everyone makes it out to be. I have learned to enjoy the process of research from start to finish. Call me crazy if you will, but I guarentee that the future of your educational career can be much more enjoyable if you learn now to enjoy research. For me, enjoying it started with choosing the right research topics.

Whether you are in high school, college, gradudate school or are writing for your doctorate degree, research is an inevitable part of education. For me, it wasn’t until I was nearly finished with my undergraduate college degree that I had a revelation about research that changed my whole perspective. These are the simple and somewhat obvious things that came to me. First, I had to do research projects and papers to make it through school. There was no way around it. Second, I knew from experience that everything in life is harder when you do not enjoy what you’re doing. I determined to find a way to make researching enjoyable for me. Third, I made researching enjoyable by deciding to only research about things that I really cared about. The transformation came when I decided that no matter what, I was only going to choose research topics that I really cared about, even if it made my projects harder or longer.

As soon as I started choosing great research topics I found that the entire process of creating a research project or writing a research paper was easier, more enjoyable, and less stressful for me. I no longer spent hours trying to learn about the ancient history of tribes I knew or cared nothing about. Instead, I began to choose research topics such as the history of soccer or the development of education in Africa. Of course, the things that excite me will likely be things that bore other people to death. But, you see, that is the beauty of it. If everyone destined to write research papers commits to choosing only research topics that they love, everyone will learn from each other and enjoy the process.

So, my advice to you, fellow student, is simple. Never let yourself start the long process of research with a research topic that you could care less about. Commit in advance to finding a research topic that excites you and begin from there. You will be so glad you did, and your projects and papers will probably be better off as well.

Denton Krypps wrote many research papers in both college and graduate school on his way to being a writer. Choosing great research topics is the best advice he gives to students everywhere. See more at www.coolresearchtopics.info

You maybe know how great distributing your businesses online video clip is. For a businesses online marketing director, Internet video is a helpful instrument that can easily capture your customers’ attention and considerably enhance traffic to your businesses website. Videos are enormously successful in maintaining the target consumers’ reasonably short attention. What’s more, if codes are included and video sharing is endorsed, short format promotional videos can be an outstanding way to get one-way external links. & thereby positively affect your sites rankings on the search engines.

In actual fact, short format professional videos have become a valuable media for business or self advertising. The following are a few tips to circulating your own promotional videos.

Firstly, you can post your short format promotional videos on your own site; although this would require you to find your own video hosting arrangements. Instead, ask your online hosting solutions merchant if video downloading or video streaming services are supported.

Video downloading is where your visitors are required to download your short format professional video to their hard disk. They need to download the online video clip to their own PC before they can play it using their PC’s video player or a downloadable video player application. There are hundreds video downloading service merchants that cost very little. There’s also a progressive downloading mechanism where your web viewers can play the video commercials whilst downloading them.

Whereas video streaming on the other hand totally does away with the demand to download the Web video clips & allows instantaneous playback so it offers the most convenience to your users. Obviously, getting a video hosting business that supports video streaming can cost you a pretty penny. If you are searching for corporate video production companies in London then talk to Vidify.

And finally, the more fashionable way to circulate short format video commercials is posting your sites to video distribution sites which have their very own video hosting infrastructure. These websites cost you nothing at all to log on & will at times give you money post video content. What’s more, also have a large audience base and grasp; for instance, YouTube gets in the region of 12 million Internet users every month.

Videos on the Internet are a constructive way to promote your business. There is no doubt that there are many other kinds of marketing methods available from article writing to blogging, from PR to RSS. But nothing says “cool, connection, and creative” like a professional video.

More and more businesses of all sizes are producing professional videos about their products. They are not only just putting them on their sites, but they are putting them on their blogs. To gain universal twenty four seven publicity, video commercials are being added to various video-sharing websites like that of You Tube & Metacafe. And why not ? it is economical, easy to undertake, and can have a vast impact, in some cases, on the traffic it drives to your firm’s site.

There are many more reasons why short format videos are a successful way to advertise your organisation. Improve your businesses revenue online with promotional video production from Vidify.

Commercial videos benefit from a large distribution channel: Videos by their own nature are straightforward to “package” which means they are ideal to slot into a variety of different distribution channels. You can post them on your companies website or blog, you can put them onto your desktop computer and show them time after time at a selected event. You can post them to dozens and dozens of Web video-sharing sites. You can burn them onto CDs & give them away or sell them. You can even forward them by email.

Online videos are a superb way to communicate. As our knowledge of technology evolves, so do the ways in which business like to cooperate with others. Most individuals are visually oriented meaning that is how they best understand and interact with their world. This makes short format videos the ideal company strategy to speak to today’s clients.

These are just one or two of the countless reasons why online videos might be a successful way to promote your company’s products and services. Discover more about this area to see how you could exploit your precious time, finances, & energy to talk to your target audience in an innovative & attractive way.

When you finally decided to start your own business, and you
built your website for the purpose of developing your business,
your goal was clear. You wanted to make lots of money and to be
in business for a very long time.

Who can blame you? The thought of going to a job everyday for
the rest of my life kills me too.

THE BASIC CHALLENGES OF INTERNET MARKETING

Links, links and more links.

Whether we are talking search engine results, ezines, articles,
classified advertising, or other types of advertising, the link
is the method used to bring your targeted customer on the
Internet to your website. They click the link and visit your
website to learn more.

Placing the link is often the simple part of the equation. The
eyes seeing your link and the mouse clicking your link is the
real challenge in this Internet promotion game.

See, it is possible through FFA link sites and the such to get
your link posted on hundreds or thousands of pages on the
Internet. But, just because your link appears on these pages
does not mean that anyone will actually see your link.

The same applies to search engines. Your site might be listed
in Google, AlltheWeb, AltaVista, ExactSeek or dozens of other
search engines. But just because your site is listed in their
database, does not mean that the searcher will use the right
keyword combination or click through the results deep enough
to actually see your links.

The first challenge is to get your link seen. The second
challenge is to get your link clicked.

You know as well as I do that not every link provides the
proper enticement to get you to click the link. Why should
you believe that everyone else is different from you? You
shouldn’t. The challenge for you is to properly entice your
potential visitors to click your link and visit your website.

SECOND CHALLENGE, FIRST — The Lure

Getting people to click your link is as simple as writing good
copy.

Depending on the placement location of your actual ad copy, you
may have only ten words, seventy words, or one thousand words
to seduce people to visit your website.

Let me make one point very clear. Even if you have one thousand
words to make your plea, the first ten words are always the most
important words you will write.

Press releases should always have the information top-loaded —
you must place your most important information in the first
couple of paragraphs.

With straight advertising copy, you should expend a great deal
of time and thought to your first ten words. Those ten words
are the ones that will draw people into your actual copy. Unless
you can lure people into reading your copy, the value of the
copy itself serves no useful purpose.

Just as it was with this article, you were drawn into the actual
copy by the first ten words of the article, aka. the title of
the article.

Note that I have used the words *entice*, *seduce* and *lure*
in this article. These words are essential to writing good
copy. You must be able to touch on the desires of the reader,
to peak their interest, and then you must leave them wanting
more. In order to get more of what they want, the reader must
visit your website. Master this paragraph, and you will master
the art of writing good copy.

FIRST CHALLENGE, SECOND — Geting Seen

Let me say this again. FFA submissions are worthless. Don’t
waste your time. One of the most common deceptions on the web
is the promise to have your site submitted to thousands of
search engines. Most of these so-called search engines are
actually FFA sites! Yahoo! only lists 262 search engines. At
one time, I had read on About.com that there were fewer than
500 search engines. Beware the fox in sheep’s clothing.

Many people utilize Search Engine Optimization for use with the
real search engines. But, keep in mind, the search companies
are always changing and tweaking the algorythms used to produce
their results. You might use SEO now and get a top 10 ranking,
but there is no assurance that your top listing will stand the
long-term. I have often impressed upon people to do the basics
well, and the results will fall into place just fine.

Sponsor ads on websites do very well when the site caters
specifically to people in your target market.

Ezine publishing and advertising has always been touted as
the best way of drawing traffic and sales to your website.
There is a lot of truth in this statement.

IMPORTANT NOTES ABOUT EZINE PUBLISHING AND ADVERTISING

As a publisher, the road is a long and hard one. It takes a
lot of time, effort and hard work, in addition to a certain
amount of effective advertising to build the ezine list. Of
course, when it is done well, the rewards of ezine publishing
can be phenomenal in the long-term.

As an advertiser, you can employ the publisher who has already
done the hard work, to help you to promote your business.

For the creative marketer, writing free-reprint articles and
getting them into the hands of ezine publishers can be an
exceptional method of developing more long-term traffic and
sales for their website. Publishers and webmasters are always
looking for good, informative content to share with their
readers. Some of these ezines are archived on the Internet
giving rise to the long-term effectiveness of the articles
that have been published.

For the creative marketer who is using free-reprint articles
to promote their business, the resource box which appears at
the end of every article, is the ad copy and link that will
take the reader directly to the writer’s site. The article
itself often serves as the greatest lure to bring the reader
to the writer’s website. The article creates the desire to
learn more about the writer, and the resource box tells the
reader what to expect when they get there.

The neat thing about free-reprint articles is that between
archived ezines and websites who publish your articles, it
becomes fairly easy to get your copy and links on hundreds
or thousands of websites, and those links will likely remain
there for years to come.

IN CONCLUSION…

If you are paying for link placement, you need to track your
click through’s (CTR’s) from those links. If the links are not
generating traffic for you, examine the reasons why. Maybe the
reason is your copy and maybe it is the link location. Make
the changes necessary to permit the link to pay for itself or
get rid of it.

If you are writing articles for reprint, track those links also
and look at their total success rate over the long-haul. Figure
out which articles provided you the best results, and make a
determination as to why. Once you know why a particular article
or ad is successful, then you can make good decisions about how
to get the best results from your future efforts.

Copyright Bill Platt – All Rights Reserved. Reprints allowed with article and resource box unedited. If you post this article on a website, you must set the links up as hyperlinks.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Bill Platt is the owner of http://www.LinksAndTraffic.com

• When you are tired of the struggle of the link building process,
  it might be time to consider our “Links And Traffic” services.

• When you are ready to employ more Natural Linking Strategies in
  increasing your link popularity, “Links And Traffic” can help.

• When you are ready for your links to actually generate
  click-through traffic, we are here.

This is not a link rental
system or a reciprocal linking scam. We Guarantee our results.

When it comes to writing and delivering a speech, many individuals become increasingly intimidated. This feeling of dread is only worsened if the presentation hosts higher ranking company officials that can potential make or break your career.

Instead of writing a dull, dry, and boring speech, challenge yourself to think outside the box! Read your speech out loud to in front of the mirror. If you’re falling asleep, so will your audience. If your own words aren’t provocative or interesting enough, consider using some well placed quotes to provide more interest and drive your point across.

Quotes are an excellent way to break the ice at the beginning of a speech or to emphasize a point or thought well into your spiel. Remember, when using quotes you should be sure to credit the source. For example, “Gandhi famously remarked” or “As Mark Twain once said” are excellent introductions into the body of the quote itself. If someone important said it, it must be valuable!

If you are at a loss for the perfect quote to include in your speech, look to popular quote books that house a plethora of famous phrases. Michael Ruge’s Quote-A-Quote book immediately comes to mind, as it’s packed with quotes appropriate for all types of business ventures. Or for something a little more formal, try the famous Bartlett’s Book of Familiar Quotations.

Consider using quotes in your presentation materials as well. Having words displayed in a presentation or on a screen will allow the audience to further understand their impact. Use particular quotes on presentation covers or the first slide of your presentation to provide the audience with a starting point for your speech.

Using quotes is an excellent way to make your speech more interesting while also making yourself look well read or well cultured. It’s a win-win.

Remember, limit the number of quotes you use in order to provide the most emphasis on key phrases and include quotes that are appropriate for the context of your speech. Sorry, you’ll have to do some writing yourself!

Nicolas Gremion is a business consultant, entrepreneur and apparently part-time writer. His latest venture is a Canadian mineral exploration company (http://www.IQmining.com).