First Words Make (or Break) First Impressions “Next!”“Checking in…?”“Here or To-Go?” Isn’t it frustrating when those are the first words that come out of a front line employee’s mouth? As if they didn’t want to take the time, or couldn’t care less about offering a friendly, approachable greeting to the customer. Meanwhile, the next guy waiting in line thinks to himself, “Gee, thanks for the war...

Fire Up Your Organization through Storytelling “Symbols, dramas, stories, vision and love–these are the stuff of effective leadership, much more so than formal processes or structures. When you involve people, they feel ownership and perform up to 1,000% better.”– Tom Peters, A Passion for Excellence The speed of change in today’s world is so disorienting, people are struggling to maintain their...

Finding Your Unique Voice A writer friend asked me the other day, “When I read, I find I’m influenced by other authors. Depending on who I’m reading, my writing style is either playful, deep sounding or whatever. How can I stop writing like other writers and find my own voice?” (She also added that I might want to write an article based on my response – hence what you’re reading now!) Before we...

Finding the Genius Within – A Writer’s Guide This is a three-stage process. First, you need to break down your preconceptions about what you think being a genius is. When you call someone a genius, what do you mean? That they display characteristics that seem to be above the common herd? That they think ahead of their time? That they seem to be able to create perfect art with little or no effo...

Finding Key Influencers With Your "VIP" List Of all the strategies available for marketing yourself and your work, this one can be the most powerful. Ironically, it’s the most underused. Who do you know that can help you with your marketing efforts? Very often, sending a few signed (and personalized) books to a few key “gatekeepers” can do more than ten great publicity strategies combined. This ...

Finding a Book Publisher Recently, a few writer-friends on the Absolute Write message boards and I were lamenting the fact that many inexperienced writers get tricked into believing that vanity presses and borderline-vanity presses are traditional publishers. We were talking about the numbers, mostly—how did so many new writers even find these publishers? It all became shockingly clear: search e...

Fiction Writing Lessons from Shakespeare Common advice in all fields of study is for the student to take lessons from a master. Unfortunately for those who wish to write fiction — either in plays or stories — the most renowned and highest authority in the art of fiction-making is long dead. Few would argue William Shakespeare’s supremacy in the art of creating a compelling story. And since he ne...

For Successful Fiction, Add Conflict — Twice Previously in the pages of CBI I have often written about the basic structure for children’s fiction: a character encounters an obstacle or conflict of some kind, and then resolves it through his or her own purposeful action. This makes up the events of the story, or the plot. How the character changes as a person through this conflict and resolution p...

Family Storytelling Storytelling is an effective way to build quality time together with members of your family. It is also a terrific way to collect family memories, lore and folktales to save and pass from generation to generation… Through stories, you can convey love, care, and traditions that make your family unique. The best time to begin this activity is while the family is sitting down to...