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If a story’s central purpose is to show a certain kind of person in a particular kind of situation it will have something revealing to say about the nature of all men or the relationship of human beings to each other or nature. That generalization that arises from the specifics of the story is the theme.

The theme is like a plot. It may be stated at great length or briefly. The theme can be stated in a single sentence or it may need a chapter for more clarity. In a short story you can use one sentence, but pick the central insight that explains the greatest number of elements in the story and relates them to one another. However, using a one sentence statement will necessarily leave out a great part of the story’s meaning.

A good story will give us many insights into life and the object of the interpretive writer is not to state but to show and make the theme vivid to the reader. The author delivers to the senses, emotions,and our imagination. Unvisualized it is a dry desert without water or life. The writers first duty is to reveal life. He is wary of “explaining” to the reader, as some people spoil a good joke by explaining it. The author writes to interpret some segment of humanity to his readers.

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Some people, especially students look for a “moral” in everything they read. And occasionally a theme of a story can be expressed as a moral principle without doing damage to the story. However, the word “moral” is too narrow to fit the kind of insight provided by a first rate story. The word “moral” is better avoided in a story that displays human character. The word “theme” is better for several reasons. It is less likely to cloud the fact that the story is not a preachy sermon.

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The person who seeks a moral in every story is likely to simplify the theme by reducing it to some platitude like, ” Be kind to animals.” or “Look before you leap.” The purpose of the interpretive writer is to give us a greater awareness and understanding of life and insight into our existence as human beings. In getting to the message of the story, it is better not to ask, What does this story teach? but What does this story reveal? The story may reveal some insight that we had not had before and expand our horizons, or it may make us feel some truth that we know but have not felt emotionally. The writer performs a service for us-interprets life for us-whether he gives us new insights or merely refreshes old ones.

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The structure of the short story has not changed for hundreds of years: beginning, middle and end; the form has remained a significant event given closure.  The variations that can be created from this structure and form are nearly infinite.  How is this possible?  Let’s just explore the variations in one significant event.

I’m sure we can all agree that the end of a relationship is a significant event.  My argument is that this one significant event can yield numerous ideas for the writing of several short stories, all of them different.  How?  Let’s list a few. 

The end of a marriage.  The end of a friendship.  The end of employment.  The end of a firmly held belief.  The end of a political association.  The end of a love affair.  The death of a parent.  In essence, these can all be seen as relationship stories.

And to add even more variations, each one of these stories could have a happy ending.  Or a sad ending.  Or an inspiring ending. 

It all depends on your imagination and skill as a writer.  Remember, we got all these writing ideas from one significant event: the end of a relationship.

That’s how for a writer a little can go a long way.  You feel you don’t have enough ideas to write about.  Surely you have ten basic ideas.  That’s all you need.  Ten will keep you busy writing for a life time.

Whenever you feel short of ideas for writing articles, read. Read old Triond articles from your friends, their friends, or those you might find using the Explore feature provided on the Triond menu. Once you start reading, you will notice that every article is brim full with ideas. Reading a single article gives me so many ideas, I usually have to make a list to keep track of them.

Just as obviously, many of those ideas will never be realized by me, maybe because I find an article has already covered that special item and there is not a lot or even nothing to add to that. Sometimes, I find a theme needs so much explaining that is has to be split down into manageable chunks. And sometimes I am just not happy to find all the information I find is necessary to do justice to what I want to write about.

And an article doesn’t necessarily have to be about the newest book or publication. A good article may be written about our best poets or authors from centuries past and still be a valuable read with a relevant message. One such article is The Choices of Romeo and Juliet: It Was Not Fate But Human Error by Routledge.

My second choice is again an example to show that an article doesn’t have to contain the newest news, but solid information is a help: Pascal’s Triangle Created by Blaise Pascal by larcha 51. Writing about science may seem to be less creative (which it isn’t) than writing poetry, but it certainly has the advantage that your article is timelessly interesting to anybody researching a theme.

If you are a cook, there are so many possibilities what you could write about. Take this example: Affordable Fall Meals by Laurie Byrne Smith.

There are articles that will attract readers in a revolving yearly fashion: Writing about seasonal goods or festivals means they’ll lay dormant until they are in season again: Too Old for Trick-or-treating? by Holly Sendy. When you write about seasonal events, browsing with the Explore button will be very rewarding and you’ll end up with many links you might want to include in your article.

Finally, the very first poem of one of my favourite writers, a person who astonishes me time and again with her articles, stories, and poems: My Love by lindalulu. Her portfolio is well worth your time and energy to browse and read.

What it all comes down to: Triond is family; therefore make use of all the information that has already been stored. Use the site’s many features, link to your friends to make it easier for readers to follow up on information, and get inspired by what everybody has been writing so far. Taking your ideas from articles written earlier is no crime, and these articles will inspire you to write new and interesting stuff for people to read.

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Timothy Dumont Jr. published with Triond some fine horror short stories and flash fiction, but his greatest achievement until today is the paranormal horror story he is publishing currently on his blog Unusual Circumstance. The author, as a real “composer of content”, tells his online story in blog posts, in a documentary style that reminds us of The Blair Witch Project, merging facts and fiction into “faction”, blurring the edges of reality and the paranormal, using only words and illustrations, pictures, fake newspaper articles – but all in a very clever way.

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His main character is Benjamin, a paranormal investigator, who is attempting to debunk or prove the existence of all sorts of paranormal phenomena. In his first post Benjamin tells us that he had to start this blog because people needed to know what he had seen in an old abandoned house in the forest.

There are rumours about a woman who was once living there with her two year old daughter; when the mother died of measles, the baby was left alone to starve.

Apparently some kids had broken into the house… and suddenly collapsed, or were attacked by the image of a young lady.

Later, the bodies of the kids were found. They died of measles…

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Benjamin packed his camera, tape recorder and EMF detector (to perceive electromagnetic fields generated by supernatural entities) and started his investigation in the creepy abandoned house, where all things were covered with cobwebs and dust… Laying on the top shelf of a small cabinet was a small leather bound book with crumpled edges…

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Want to read more? Then you definitely have to follow the Blog Unusual Circumstance. The story starts here.

The Blog Murder & Mystery Games, dedicated to Murder & Mystery games, Fiction & Non Fiction, True Crime, Interactive and Online Storytelling is following Unusual Circumstance already!

You might be interested too in the SuperNatural ParaNormalities Blog and in the GhostWritings Blog.

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Marking is a laborious chore teachers often complain about so the process of automating it probably sounds quite appealing. Usually automated programs are used to check for plagiarism and marking multiple choice exams.

When it comes to emotion in writing, the computer just can’t deal with it. The program flagged Churchill’s speech as repetitive and incorrect wording. Even Ernest Hemingway’s work was flagged as a lack of vocabulary and writing style. Great writers being failed by a computer program.

The software was designed in the US but similar attempts have been made in the UK. Trials there have been localized to exam samples, not great writers.

Automated marking is very limited to multiple choice or short answer questions. Computers do not get bored; they have no problem comparing one answer to the real answer hundreds of times over. They won’t tire and they won’t make mistakes.

Computers marking exam papers would also mean students can get their results faster and universities have more time to select their applicants before term starts. The opportunity is also there for online exams although the question of cheating would be overcome first.

They cannot however, understand the subtleties and complexities of the English language. Just like your spell checker isn’t always right, the program has limitations. Computers don’t really ‘read’ they just compare what’s in front of them, to the rules they’ve been given. I can see them reaching this point in the future but we’re not quite yet.

It’s weird to think of a computer marking great works of literature but it makes sense. If you want to test the understanding of emotion in the English language, Churchill is the way to go.

For now the work of Hemingway and Churchill can be critiqued by high school students in English class and exam results marked by grumbling teachers.

I’m not talking about manufacturing shoes or footballs; I’m talking about publishers hiring free-lancers to produce content for them at a fraction of the profit they make from Associated Content.

The first rule of Associated Content’s Submission Guideline states ‘All content must be created by you. No exceptions.’ by outsourcing to a freelancer you may own the rights to the content, but by submitting it to Associated Content you are essentially breaking this rule.

The internet marketer can feed specific keywords to the freelancer and pay less than a dollar for 400 words or more. Worse than that, they can take successful articles from Associated Content and other sites and have them rewritten. Some will take it even further, and not pay the freelancer after receiving the articles.

The freelancer writer likely does not know about Associated Content. That’s how I started. I was looking for freelance work on and was offered $5 for 5 400 word articles. The marketer made more than this but at least I got an initial payment, which I can’t do otherwise considering I’m outside the US.

If the freelancer, as I did, pastes a line or two of their articles into Google the results will lead them to their article on Associated Content and they can make a lot more money from their work…

The problem is this can be hard to spot, the only real way Associated Content could do anything about it would be to pose as a freelancer looking for work and ban the account which submitted those articles. That would be a pretty big time investment.

In the end, the marketer exploits the freelancer more than Associated Content. They get paid, Associated Content gets its content and in the end, the outsourced freelancer doesn’t know they missed out on anything.

Incidentally, if you’re looking for quick money from writing but you can’t get an instant payment from Associated Content you can be outsourced like this although you will be paid significantly less.

When you write for Associated Content the only thing you need is the URL and your login details. Even I can remember at least one of these. When you want to get published with a publication, you need a contact point to begin with.

I present, for your consideration, the Writer’s Handbook 2010. Edited by Barry Turner and described by The Times as ‘The book no writer should be without’.

The book describes itself as ‘The complete guide for all writers, publishers, editors, agents and broadcasters’ it contains an extensive directory of publishers, literary agents, magazines, poetry presses, broadcasters and many more. It also lists various competitions and educational courses.

The index is easy to search by genre or by name. With a list this large, you’re likely to find the publication or organisation you look for and several more in that genre. The more you talk to the better your chances of getting published.

For each listing there is a contact point for submitting articles and most have some background information on the publication or organization itself. Many have advice for the kind of content to submit and how to go about it; you can even find information on payment.

The beginning of the book features an introduction by Barry Turner and nine more informative articles of advice for the budding or established writer. The articles themselves are done by winners of a competition from the previous edition. By buying this edition, you have the chance to be published in the next edition.

By buying the book you also get access to the website which gives you more resources, news and a digital version of the listings. On that note, Associated Content is not included in the list of online resources.

It’s not that you can’t find this stuff online or in the publications themselves. But this can save you a lot of legwork, give you some great advice and maybe even some inspiration.

At $29.95 RRP it may be the best investment you make as a writer, besides perhaps a notebook and pen.

It seems to me that written language allows writers to not only identify our joys and hopes but also our fears and demons.  I really don’t know if this is true.  I’m just doing some thinking on the page.

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I always tell people that I suffered two traumas in life: my father beating my mother and Vietnam.  By the time I was 18 and able to sign myself into the army my father had not hit my mother in maybe five years.  I still didn’t want to be around him.  Children don’t forget.

Back in the USA, after Vietnam and living on my own, I would find myself up at 2:00 AM drinking beer and writing furiously with one of several pencils in one of my many notebooks.  I wanted desperately to be a writer and to get published.  I wrote about war and domestic violence among other things.  You know, what you would expect a male in his early twenties in the late 60s and early 70s to write about: booze, sex and rock and roll.  I didn’t do drugs.

What I’m trying to get at is that I think very often we writers use writing to identify those things in our lives that we need to grapple with.  Writing allows us to do this.  It comes out in the articles we write, in the content we produce.  No matter how we try, we cannot fake what is bothering us.

My argument is, we writers are not just putting words down on paper.  Obviously, it can go much deeper than that.  Not always.  But enough times where we may even help to heal the reader.

I’ve taken a bit of a hiatus from Triond to explore some other online writing opportunities. Of all the sites that I’ve dabbled with so far, I believe Suite101 has the most to offer in terms of what a writer gets out of the experience monetarily and otherwise.

Application Process at Suite101

To be a writer at Suite101, you must apply. The application process requires that you describe yourself and then submit two writing samples of 600 words maximum.

It appears that the application has been simplified a bit since I applied. When I applied, I had to also list my publication credits and what topics I was interested in writing about for Suite101. I had to describe how how my experience qualified me to write on these topics.

Tips for Being Accepted as a Suite101 Writer

I’m a newbie on Suite101, but from hanging out a bit on the site, I have some unofficial recommendations for being accepted as a Suite101 writer.

Suite101 does not accept every writer who applies, so some strategizing is in order. I would suggest that you include your publication credits in your application. Suite101 loves to see professional writing experience. They also tend to favor writers who are working on or have earned a degree. List any schooling you have.

For your writing samples, I would include professional samples written in the third person (no “I,” “you,” “we”). Suite101 articles are all written in the third person. It would also be good to include articles in which you cite your sources since Suite101 requires that all Suite articles include sources.

Writing the First Article for Suite101

I found writing my first article for Suite101 to be a bit daunting. I think I spent about 10 hours on it. It took me so long because I was trying to learn and apply the principles from the Suite101 handbook that all writers must follow.

Your first article at Suite101 is carefully reviewed by an editor. The editor flags the article for issues that you must resolve before the article goes live. My first article was flagged because it was too long. The editor suggested I break it into two articles. She also suggested improvements for my use of keywords and asked me to cite my sources. Suite101 likes all articles to link to two external sources (other credible websites, books, and so on) and two internal sources (Suite101 articles).

After your first article goes live, your subsequent articles go live immediately. The editors review these subsequent articles after they have been published. If they find problems, they will flag them and you will have to go back and revise them. So far I’ve written 12 articles for Suite101. In addition to the flags on my first article, I’ve had one other article flagged. I’ve found that the editorial flags have been worthwhile and have helped me improve my online writing.

Suite101, a Professional Site with High Standards

I am very impressed with the professionalism of Suite101, and I wholeheartedly recommend them first and foremost because of this. Suite101 takes online writing very seriously and has high standards. They employ professional editors, who take an active interest in writers and help them to improve their skills. Suite101 also has a great community of writers, who are passionate about writing and about helping one another. I have learned more at Suite101 in a few months about being a successful online freelance writer than in my previous six months of writing online by sort of winging it.

Learning the Art of Writing Online at Suite101

Suite101 has many resources to help new Suite writers. There is an extensive Learning Hub, with tutorials on where to find images, how to write SEO keyword phrases, how to write good titles for articles, how to generate revenue, how to promote articles, and so on. The Suite101 forums are also especially useful for new online writers to get tips and advice from seasoned writers.

Payment at Suite101, Pros and Cons

Now on to what most writers who apply to write for Suite101 want to know: how much does the site pay? Well, payment on Suite101 isn’t quite as straightforward as pay-per-page-view sites. Suite101 pays solely on ad clicks. In other words, it doesn’t matter how many people read your article; it only matters how many ad clicks your articles get.

Payment by ad click alone has its pros and cons. Writers do not necessarily have to get a high volume of traffic to their articles to earn money on Suite101. However, writers must be cognizant of what types of articles generate ad clicks. For instance, articles that do well on Triond might not do so well on Suite101 because of the way payment work. My cat humor articles do well on Triond, but probably would not fair well on Suite101 because people looking for a laugh probably aren’t looking to click on an ad to buy something.

To do well on Suite101, it is imperative to use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool to research keywords, research that includes the competition for ads, CPC (cost per click) for ads, number of monthly searches, and so on. There is a big learning curve. However, the skills that you learn on Suite101 can translate into your writing on other sites. This knowledge can come in especially handy on Triond since Triond has now integrated with Google AdSense.

The Bottom Line About Suite101

Some writers on Suite101 are doing very well. It was recently disclosed that one writer, Lena Gott, recently earned $5,000 in one month. Other writers are earning enough to pay for their mortgages each month. The site has great potential for those who stick with it and pour in the time and energy needed to learn the ropes of successful online writing.

Suite101 also offers perks for writers who stick with them. All writers must sign a contract to produce 10 articles every three months. Writers earn a 10 percent bonus on all earnings after they publish 50 articles. Writers who are promoted to Feature Writer status earn an additional 20 percent bonus on all earnings. Feature writers specialize in one particular topic area, and must produce a certain amount of content for that area, but are also free to publish in other topic areas.

I definitely recommend Suite101. Nevertheless, time will tell if I will reach the level of success on the site I would like to. For now, I’m content increasing my earnings by a few pennies each week, and I’m anxiously awaiting the day I will reach the $10 payment threshold.

If you write for Suite101, please post a comment sharing your experience.

Readers may also enjoy reading about my experience on Associated Content, Constant Content, and Demand Studios.

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Without inspiration a writer is as good as an empty keg of beer at a frat party.  If a writer writes only when inspiration strikes that writer won’t write much.  That’s because if a writer writes long enough a bad idea may turn into another, better idea.  Do you see where this article is going?

Online writing is tough.  Especially online writing for money.  But a writer won’t have much online success if the writer doesn’t keep writing.

It’s a good feeling to feel creative.  It’s a good feeling to produce content that someone else wants to read.  Making a long term commitment to writing has benefits.  Making money from writing is just one of the benefits.

Money is mentioned a lot in this article.  I think about money a lot.  But if money had been my reason for writing I would have given up being a writer years ago.  So I guess I don’t write for money, but I sure like it when my writing makes money. 

Do what you have to do to keep writing.