  Action/Adventure
This week: Briefly, It's a Newsletter Edited by: Leger~  
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The purpose of this newsletter is to help the Writing.com author hone their craft and improve their skills. Along with that I would like to inform, advocate, and create new, fresh ideas for the author. Write to me if you have an idea you would like presented.
This week's Action / Adventure Editor
Leger~
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Don't Let Brief Be Too Brief
When creating an item in your portfolio, such as a Static Item, part of the creation process is a brief description. You get 90 characters to describe your item. Too often I see this area skipped over with something minimal typed in so the item is created. You're cheating yourself here if you type something like "Blah, Blah" there. It's true, I've seen Blah, Blah in that field.
You want readers to be intrigued and click to explore further, don't you? So this area becomes an area for a hook. Sure it's only 90 characters but it's a great spot to promote your item. When your piece shows up on the public listings with EVERYONE else's items recently created, don't you want potential reviewers to click YOURS?
So consider the things potential readers are looking for, they already have the rating and the genre shown to them, what more do you want them to know? Some of my brief descriptions say the writing is an entry in a contest. Some are just a teaser sentence or two. Some note that the item is a "WIP", work in progress. If my poetry uses a specific form, I often note it there.
Also, as a side note, be sure to choose all the genres, so your item shows up in more listings.  Keywords are also important, not only for reviewers but for editors looking for items to feature in our newsletters. (Did you submit your item to the newsletter for feature?) Keywords are words that relate to the story and help searchers find your item. If your story is about someone's birthday, and you keyword "birthday", someone looking for stories about birthdays will find yours.
In the end, take the time to really fill out the fields when creating an item, use all the space available for brief description and keywords, they can really help get your item on more lists and ultimately bring more reviews to your inbox. As always, fill in and Write On!
This month's question: How do you use your Brief Description area?
How do you choose keywords to expand your audience?
Answer below  Editors love feedback! 
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| |  | Invalid Item
This item number is not valid.
#1843406 by Not Available. |
Excerpt: The old African cocked his head slightly, scratching his scalp through greying woolly hair; his eyes screwed up in a slant, in a dark wrinkled face―as a man does when his sight begins to fade with old age―staring out across the countryside that was so familiar to him in every line and contour; stretching away into the distance until obscured by the entangled African bush, where no white man had cause to make his way.
| | | Invalid Item
This item number is not valid.
#2090099 by Not Available. |
Excerpt: I would give anything to be able to see how a man who, left a week ago for a three day trip to the city, could be called a hero. He had promised, as he kissed my mother and myself good-by that he would be back in three days with good news for everyone.
| | | Invalid Item
This item number is not valid.
#2093911 by Not Available. |
Excerpt: Sara frowned, being a wizard's apprentice was never boring, and today was no exception in spades. Qufoile was losing his mind, literally. If a wizard lived three hundred years, they were old. At one thousand, Q was ancient, and his spells were unreliable. When she first apprenticed herself to him, she believed she could learn spells no one else knew about. Little did she realize how little Q still remembered.
Excerpt: Evaluations of the branch manager’s department heads and their assistants were due in the morning. Her own assistant’s review was taking up much of her time. Billy Barnes was new to the bank and had transferred from a branch in Upper Manhattan six months ago. He was efficient enough, but something was off about him, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on.
| |  | Chosen (13+)
Falcon meets Arcagoffs; Half demon/Half angels. And is told she has to save the world.
#2093076 by aunnakristie  |
Excerpt: FALCON HAD A HARD TIME SLEEPING THAT NIGHT. EVERY TIME closed her eyes, she could see them, these things with giant black wings on their backs that made them look as though they were ginormous birds. Falcon always counted thirteen of them- which in her mind was considered to be even worse luck.
She'd been having the same dream for nearly a month. Anytime Falcon had heard them, she'd been sure her ears had begun to bleed.
| | | The Bug (13+)
Insects spread a virus creating a pandemic of vampires.
#888872 by Kotaro  |
Excerpt: Like everyone else I need sleep. Sometimes I can get some on the Chuo train going to work, but today I’m standing and looking into the gaping mouth of a snoozer. The train has become packed as usual, and people are unavoidably in physical contact. Every time we come to a station, bodies getting on or off rub against mine, but because of the strap I keep my position. I usually pass some time trying to decipher the ads hanging on the walls and from the ceiling, but today all of them are variations on the same topic; the way to polite smoking in public, courtesy of Japan Tobacco.
Excerpt: “Easy Pen,” I said. “You’ll sink us." I grabbed her hand until the dock steadied itself. "He’s dead, he can’t hurt us.”
Excerpt: Top Hat, a spotted mule foal, hit the ground running, on the Fourth of July, 1983. He was on his feet unlike the wobbly coordination of a horse foal. Being the hybrid of a horse mother and donkey father, somehow the mule’s nervous system is better developed.
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This month's question: How do you use your Brief Description area?
How do you choose keywords to expand your audience?
Answer below Editors love feedback!
Last month's question: Have you ever been forced to use your non-dominant hand for a length of time? How did it make you feel? How do you use that in your writing?
SkyHawk - Into The Music responded: Back in college, spring semester of 1988, I had to use my left hand for the first several weeks / months. That was because of surgery on my right shoulder (my dominant hand side) for recurring dislocations. I managed to use my right hand, after a fashion, to write class notes. Typing was interesting as I had to kind of corkscrew myself into a position that would let both hands use the keyboard (luckily, my electric typewriter was light and easily moveable, and computer keyboards could be wedged around). The funniest was trying to play ping-pong with my left hand -- and I actually played better! I've never really used that in my writing (I wasn't creatively writing back then), but I think I could apply it to a new story or even a current one. I sometimes wonder if I was one of those lefties that got "converted" in grade school.
Monty  replied: I like the last question. The Lord gave me my left hand just to help my right out but I have a Son that can use both equally well. Thank you for a good N/L.
scooter sent: one of the characters i have created is ambidextrous - it is actually an important character trait.
i played basketball in school so i was always practicing with my non-dominant hand to get better at it, and in softball i tried to switch hit, but other than that i have always stayed righty. i broke my left wrist when i was younger and could only use my right hand and that was a struggle despite the fact that i still had use of my dominant hand. it is hard to change what we are used to!
SB Musing  answered: I am totally a cross-dominant handed person. I can throw with either my left or my right hand. I can do a lot more and throw stronger with my left side. I seem to be able to do both and maybe was a left-handed person who was trained out of it. Fortunately, it's more accepted being left handed but I had it worked out of me. So, anything ball related I can do either and I don't even think about it. I can bat on both sides. This was a neat newsletter and I like how you went into also those cross dominant people.
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Amazon's Price: $ 13.99
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Action/Adventure: August 31, 2016 Issue [#7839]
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