Saturday, June 7, 2008

SHOULD I CONFESS IN THE TITLE? CREATIVE WRITING IDEAS


As you know, today it is common to write various help-articles 'How-to'. There are 1,140,000,000 (yes, one billion) search results on Google about 'how to'.
I am thinking now how to title such an article 'How to?'? Because the standard title 'How to' is too common.
And now I see the same question at 'Yahoo Answers': Jessica needs a creative title for her essay on 'how to put a baby to sleep?'.
See the problem? How to title the essay about 'how to'? We need some creative writing ideas.

Fortunately, we have a prompt: the author acknowledges / admits / confesses she/he has similar problems during her/his own life.
As this great example of the famous author and child pedagogue Janusz Korczak: "My greatest fault is that I am no longer a child".

Here you see Seth Godin is not ashamed to confess about his 'IDEAS THAT DIDN'T WORK':
That makes Seth a great blogger!

Now I remember how in a public admission in July 2007, Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (= Lula) confessed that he fears for his life when flying under the current safety conditions at the Brazilian aviation.

Let us agree on a few points:
The title should contain a question.
The title not necessary needs to imply the word 'how'.
Let the title imply some confession of mine.

Beyond that I don't know exactly (yes, I confess to not knowing everything).
Have more good examples of great authors for creative writing ideas? Share them.

2 comments:

  1. Jacob,
    what's your point? Should I begin the title with 'how' or should I not?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Odelia,
    this is not the point.
    The point is you have several possible ways to begin your question in the title: who? when? where? etc.

    ReplyDelete