How To Write Successful Best Man Speeches By: Steve Robbins | - Best man speeches are an integral part of any marriage ceremony. It includes its unique design and style and it is not difficult to write best man speeches in case the creator knows how and when make use of wit and joy. The speeches have their relevancy and loved by the husbands and wives long after their wedding. These speeches are designed to merit the groom and the speech bride also need to be recognized. Apart from that, the speech also congratulates them and wishes them luck in their marrie ... Tags:best man speeches, funny best man speech, best man speech joke
Help To Make Your Personal Best Man Speeches Brilliant By: Steve Robbins | -
In case you are chosen as best man in your friends marriage ceremony then you will need to prepare the Best Man Speeches for the big event. On the other hand, experts recommend that you should certainly not help make lengthy speech and the speech you might prepare should not be tough to realize. Additionally, the first thing you need to do is to prepare a speech that you can speak publicly. Today, there are many web sites around online from where one can takes help to prepare your spee ... Tags:Best Man Speeches, Funny Best Man Speech, Best Man Speech
Startle Your Readers By Beginning Your Sentences With Correlative Conjunctions By: Marciano Guerrero | - What makes writers master (or successful) writers is one not well guarded secret: their use of correlative conjunctions. By choosing to start his long novel David Copperfield with the correlative conjunction 'whether/or,' Charles Dickens signals the reader that perhaps we should search of more than one hero in the story. This is a startling beginning:
A Fading Fad: Show, Don't Tell By: Marciano Guerrero | - As old as the hills is the distinction between narration and representation. Reviving Plato's account of narration and representation, Percy Lubbock (an authority on Henry James' novels and narrative innovations), started a new trend for writers of fiction: the technique of "show, don't tell."
Although Lubbock's book The Craft of Fiction is seldom read today, the aphorism "show, don't tell" remains unchallenged. But what was once fresh and new then has become in turn a new orthodoxy ... Tags:show don't tell, percy lubbock, henry james
George Orwell: Writing English Well By: Marciano Guerrero | - While many academicians and masters of the English language will expound on mixed constructions, dangling modifiers, tense shifts, variety, and other topics, George will give you the indispensable rules to write standard English.
Because I fear that the sands of oblivion will inevitably bury this master of the English language, I want to show come courage and revive for the younger generations George Orwell's practical --if not indispensable-- rules for writing.
Good Friends: The Most Precious Treasure By: Marciano Guerrero | - According to Aristotle a tragedy must happen to a high personage to be truly a tragedy. The rapid fall from power that happened to Boethius fits the Aristotelian definition. Boethius (480 - 524/6), born in Rome of an ancient family, served as the head of all government in the kingdom of Theodoric—Ostrogoth king of Italy.
The work of a polymath is always daunting, and for that reason I will focus on only one book and within that book (The Consolation of Philosophy) on the theme ... Tags:boethius, consolation of philosophy
Are You Sabotaging Yourself With The Inferiority Complex? By: Marciano Guerrero | - Fears, insecurities, dread, and uncertainty pray on most of us on a daily basis. Who hasn't had butterflies in his stomach, sweaty palms, and a creaky voice when called upon to speak in public? Who hasn't forfeited good opportunities for advancement or closing good deals simply because of unfounded insecurities? No one, I am almost sure.
The fact is that most of us tend to second-guess ourselves and in the process --by bringing about an irrational fear-- we sabotage ourselves. ... Tags:inferiority complex, alfred adler
The Soulful Persona: Love, Fidelity, By: Marciano Guerrero | - In his Pensees, Pascal, expounding on the virtue of fidelity writes: "He no longer loves the person whom he loved ten years ago. I quite believe it. She is no longer the same, nor is he. He was young and she also; she is quite different. He would perhaps love her yet, if she were what she was then."
Far be it from me to disagree with Pascal, or much less criticize him, but I do want to add my own very personal interpretation. As it is, the above excerpt may on first appearance leave ... Tags:pascal, pensees
Insomnia Cures: Count Your Blessings By: Marciano Guerrero | - Snow-white hair, strong jaw, aquiline nose, a six-footer, soft-spoken, barrel-chested, and as handsome as they come. Yes, that is my friend Joe. My friend Joe Templeton, a crusty Army veteran, is now in his early 70s, yet he looks a young 50! Over the years I've learned about his war experiences, and how difficult his return to civilian life was, since he had lost half of his hearing and vision.
The Unexamined Life Isn't Worth Living By: Marciano Guerrero | - For many years I've followed Socrates maxim: The unexamined life isn't worth living. And being fond of Samuel Johnson's Essays, which I often read and re-read, one fated day I found some valuable remarks that complemented Socrates' maxim.
Johnson a most versatile Augustan writer, besides writing the first English dictionary was a superb essayist. His sentence openers are impeccable.
Edith Wharton: Lily Bart's Fall From Fortune And Beauty By: Marciano Guerrero | - Reading Edgar Allan Poe's Gothic tale "Ligeia," which is a study of the supernatural and of feminine beauty, I noticed that Poe quoted Elizabethan politician and scholar Francis Bacon: "There's no exquisite beauty," says Bacon, Lord Verulam, speaking truly of all the forms and genera of beauty "without some strangeness in the proportion." Is this really true? I asked myself.
Rousseau: Rascal, Vagabond, Genius By: Marciano Guerrero | - Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 - 1778), besides being a genius was a musician, vagabond, philosopher, prose stylist, novelist, educator, and acknowledged father of the French Revolution and Romanticism. Today he remains a colorful character --both derided and revered; yet unacknowledged as an original thinker.
In this article I will focus on his Confessions to explore his contribution not only to the genre, but also to writing. While Rousseau was a serious writer, deep as an ocean in h ... Tags:rousseau, jean jacques rousseau, who is jean jacques rousseau, writing
The Power To Change Us: Stendhal By: Marciano Guerrero | - Literary schools and movements come and go. And while critics, philosophers, writers, and theorists will go on debating what 'literature' is, I will simply assume that it exists and that is has many functions.
For this article I am concerning myself with literature not as a science, nor an art, much less a discipline, but as a transformative force in human affairs—the power to change people.
Is Deconstruction And Its Founder Derrida Both Dead? By: Marciano Guerrero | - Although Jacques Derrida (1930 - 2007, born in Algiers), is the founder of the philosophical movement Deconstructionism, his work goes beyond that: logocentrism, binary oppositions, writing as a metaphysical system, philosophy of language, and theory.
Magic Realism In America: Nathaniel Hawthorne By: Marciano Guerrero | - Given the abundance of criticism labeled 'European' or 'Latin American' magic realism, one might think that the genre's provenance is either European or Latin American. Not So. Writers (of different generations) in the United States have a tradition of magic realism.
Being Easily Understood: Writing Essays By: marciano guerrero | - Martin Scorsese, Hollywood's great director, in accepting the Golden Globe Award said that he made his films in a way that they would be "easily understood." This extemporaneous remark caught my attention because in my own writing, that is what I strive for-to be easily understood.
Murakami's The Wind-up Bird Chronicle - Commentary By: marciano guerrero | - If you like quirky, vulgar, enigmatic, and yet lyrical and philosophical flashes-you'll like this novel. Listen to the sounds, for the sounds and mundane imagery of the very beginning of the novel will be give the reader a sample of the strange and surreal:
"When the phone rang I was in the kitchen, boiling a potful of spaghetti and whistling along with an FM broadcast of the overture to Rossini's The Thieving Magpie, which has to be the perfect music for cooking pasta"?
Dante And Writing A Daily Quota By: marciano guerrero | - When Dante set off to write The Divine Comedy, he had only one requirement on mind: to write every day. That is what writing is all about: to write daily. Just write and you will have production.
Studying the style of authors, reading 10 hours a days, imitating your favorite writers, or memorizing grammar rules and syntax patterns will not help you a great deal. A little yes-but not a lot. We all benefit from studying, but the crux of the matter is to write every day no matter what. ... Tags:Writing, writing fiction
Engaging The Reader By: marciano guerrero | - Whether you write fiction, essays, articles, e-mail, or straight narratives for blogs, you (the writer) have a tiny window -less than 10 seconds- to grab the reader's attention and hold him to the end of your text. This is easier said than done. But it's done all the time by experienced writers.
Is Jane Austen's Emma In In The Constitution? By: marciano guerrero | - Endowed with wealth, brains, and good looks, Emma Woodhouse (twenty-years old) busies herself with other peoples' lives as she -thinking herself worldly and clever- goes about scheming and conjuring up romantic liaisons. But it will turn out that she's neither worldly nor clever, but nave! And that in the end the only love match that really matters is her own.
Mcbain: The Gutter And The Grave - An Appreciation By: marciano guerrero | - Year after year I waited for Ed McBain's new books like a kid waits for Christmas, books that he produced with certain regularity. Not even once was I disappointed. This writer delivered the goods not because it was expected of him, but because he was a man born to write.
Evan Hunter or Ed McBain (October 15, 1926 - July 6, 2005) was a prolific writer-thank God! I will let others tell you about his life, his accolades, and other merits; for now I only want to comment on one of his e ... Tags:ed books, ed mcbain, ed mcbain books, mc bain, mcbain ed
Usage Of Words Or Figures To Express Numbers By: marciano guerrero | - Many times right in the heat of writing I come to an abrupt stop and find myself on the horns of a dilemma as to whether to use words or figures in expressing numbers.
In general, grammar. style and usage books can be confusing with their advice, so I just follow these simple directions:
I. Use figures or digits when the numbers fall between one and ten:
One can enjoy To The Lighthouse by its own merits (or demerits), so I won't much to say about the author Virginia Woolf, whose life was filled with drama.
Stream of consciousness
Stylistically, the novel belongs to the genre that today we know as "stream of consciousness." In this genre, the reader is expected to follow the voices, echoes, remembrances, and associations in the characters heads. Of course, if the reader has no clue as to what this new way o ... Tags:lily briscoe, mrs. ramsay, stream of consciousness, to the lighthouse, virginia woolf
How To Predict The Market - Price To Earnings Ratio (p/e) By: marciano guerrero | - How wonderful the world would be for investors if they had a crystal ball which would help them predict the future. Lacking this magic ball, investors have to be satisfied with a different type of predictor: the Price to Earnings Ratio (P/E).
What is the P/E Ratio?
The P/E is a mathematical ratio. The result will not be a dollar amount, but a mathematical ratio: the relationship between the stock price and the company's earnings. The company earnings is given by the EPS ... Tags:earnings per share, market p/e ratio, multiples, p/e ratio, Price to Earnings ratio
How To Use Twitter #hashtags By: marciano guerrero | - In our age of instant gratification and instant communication, nothing can be more gratifying than a wonderful service such what Twitter provides.
Here are a few basic tips:
Just what is a hashtag?
The pound symbol: #, is usually referred to as the pound symbol. Another name for it is the "Hash" symbol.
Mount Holyoke College - Sentence Openers In Friendship By: marciano guerrero | - Don't ask me how I ended up in New York City; all I know is that by the grace of God I am here, scratching a living and trying to be a man of right. I keep to myself, I am respectful, and I love my neighbor. Though I only went to school through the third grade, I have a thirst and hunger for knowledge.
Salman Rushdie - Parody In Midnight Children By: marciano guerrero | - In 1981, Salman Rushdie published Midnight Children, a novel that one can say belongs to the genre of magic realism. Though the genre has been totally dominated by Latin American writers -Garcia Marquez, Juan Rulfo, Isabel Allende, and Laura Esquivel- the Indian author Rushdie holds his own.
Though far from being a work immersed in social realism alone, Midnight Children, contains a great deal of parody and satire of India-but all done with artistry.
The Irishman Laurence Sterne published his bizarre novel in nine volumes, the first two appearing in 1759, and seven others following over the next 10 years. It is a humorous work, though some critics -Samuel Johnson among them- found it odd and predicted that it would not survive. When it comes to predictions it's wiser to keep mum and let people think we are slow and simple-minded, than to shoot our mouths and confirm that we are indeed so.
Write Essays By Using Rhetorical Tools: Climax By: marciano guerrero | - In Book IV of Cicero's Ad Herennium we find a discussion of a rhetorical figure -climax- that highlights a series of words that increment a particular situation, as in the following example:
"I did not conceive this without counseling it; I did not counsel it without at once undertaking it; I did not undertake it without completing it; nor did I complete it without winning approval of it."
The Dutch Renaissance humanist Erasmus in his book on rhetoric On Copia, called ... Tags:cicero, climax, erasmus, gradatio, rhetorical tools
A Writer Is Born - How To Write Fiction And Essays Every Day By: marciano guerrero | - Some people know from an early age what they want to become in life. In my case, I never knew till now, that I always wanted to become a writer. So, I went to college and got degrees in liberals arts, languages, and business--but something was missing in my life.
"ly" Sentence Openers - Campaign Against Adverbs By: marciano guerrero | - Lots of writers --even professional ones-- are fond of using an abundance of adverbs. The reason for this is that instead of searching for a precise verb they reach for a quick weak verb; it follows then that verb then will need to be buttressed by an adverb. If the adverb is of the kind that ends in 'ly,' then that is a signal of lazy writing.
Jess drove faster than the chief, so we made it to Port Angeles by four. It had been a while since I've had a girls' night out, and the estrogen rush was invigorating. We listened to whiny songs while Jessica jabbered on about the boys we hung out with. Jessica's dinner with Mike had gone very well, and she was hoping that by Saturday night they would have progressed to the first-kiss stage. I ... Tags:interview stephen king meyer, jk rowling, Stephen King, stephenie meyer, twilight
The Indispensable Pillar Of Writing: How To Use Phrases By: marciano guerrero | - A phrase is a group of words without a subject and a conjugated verb; some phrases may have a subject or a conjugated verb, but not both. Each phrase contains a "central" or predominant word or words which are often called the 'head of the phrase.'
Noun phrases function as subjects, direct object, indirect objects, or objects of prepositions:
My canary is sad.
[My canary is a noun phrase functioning as the subject of the sentence.]
Great Sentence Openers In Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre By: marciano guerrero | - In this admirable first-person narrative, Jane Eyre -a small, plain-faced, intelligent and honest English orphan- recounts her childhood and latter years leading to her marriage to the mysterious Edward Rochester.
What make the novel fast-paced, fascinating, and ultimately admirable are not the mundane events and incidents that happen to her, but the manner in which she tells them. Within a few pages it becomes obvious that the narrator is a character who is a master of the English ... Tags:charlotte bronte, Jane Eyre, mr. rochester, sentence openers
Well Written Sentence Openers In Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho By: marciano guerrero | - What can one say about a fine writer -Bret Easton Ellis- who chooses a vicious and violent theme? To me it seems like a waste of talent. But to each his own! Why lament the fact that Flaubert -another superb writer- chose to write about infidelity, adultery, the provinces, and a dunce of a heroine? Yet the fact remains that while Madame Bovary is a masterpiece regardless of its theme, American Psycho is a minor work.
How To Begin Your Fiction: Classic Sentence Openers By: marciano guerrero | - Let philosophers look for the substance that underlies all of creation. Let mathematicians and physicists construct axioms and build a cosmos and so interpret reality. Let linguists search for the Adamic language-but let master writers be free.
The novelist must be free to explore the depths of humanity. D. H. Lawrence said, "Being a novelist, I consider myself superior to the saint, the scientist, the philosopher and the poet. The novel is the one bright book of life."
Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
Tongue-twister
When writers combine stressed syllables that begin with the same consonant sound, they can achieve not only euphonious sounds, but also mark certain beats and cadence within the narrative's rhythm. For example:
Noise, nausea, and loneliness-but that's nothing really new.
Zeugma -rhetorical Device Used By Master Writers By: marciano guerrero | - What is a Zeugma?
Zeugma is a rhetorical device where a single word is made to refer to two or more words in a sentence, often playing on the words' literal and metaphorical meanings.
Smiling with a crooked smile that did little to hide his crooked intentions and crooked teeth, he said "Trust me."
Subjects In The English Sentence: Visible, Invisible By: marciano guerrero | - Subject as opposed to the predicate, is a grammatical unit consisting of a noun or pronoun which represents the entity performing the action. Example:
Jesus wept.
The noun 'Jesus' is the subject and the conjugated verb 'wept' is the predicate.
The definition of 'subject' stated above is a temporary definition, for as we are going to show, the English sentence permits other grammatical units -besides nouns or pronouns- to act as subjects.
Adjectives Are Coloring Words That Splash By: marciano guerrero | - Not long ago as I was re-reading Harper Lee's To King a Mockingbird, I noticed something that I had skipped over so many times in past readings: a grammatical lesson on the adjective, right from the narrator's mouth.
Scout says: "Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I'd have the facts."
While animals are fiercely territorial, humans are fiercely possessive. We compete so that we can win something, be that an asset or some abstraction such as fame and glory. In fact, Jacques Rousseau, in his Discourse in Inequality #2 affirms that, "The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying "This is mine," and found people simple enough t ... Tags:Jane Eyre, possessive nouns, Robert Louis Stevenson, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Writers Resources
Descartes And You: Journey To Success By: marciano guerrero | - A journalist asks the captain of an Olympic crew team, "How do you handle those huge waves, those slamming gusts of winds, and undercurrents?" The captain answered: "We don't worry about that. Those things are outside the boat. We concentrate on what happens in our boat."
Such anecdote reminded me of Descartes' Discourse on Method in which he sets some rules or precepts for knowing and accepting the true (rather than the false), and also some rules of ethics, or as he called them, " ... Tags:descartes argument, descartes mind, future success, journey to success, total success
Anthony Trollope's Autobiography By: marciano guerrero | - This is wonderful book, to own, to treasure, to read and re-read for a lifetime!
Trollope's Autobiography is a perennial source of wisdom--besides being inspirational--to writers, but in particular to fiction writers. The book in general is an ABC of perfect, round sentences, and sentence variation, which of course makes for agile prose.
Postmodern Model For Book Reviews By: marciano guerrero | - Most book reviewers use two traditional approaches. Either they take the bland way of simply being descriptive, or they present a vigorous-and often negative-critical angle.
Here is the traditional reviewer's approach:
1. Immediately mentions the full name of the author and the title of the book.
2. Isolates the theme of the book. A theme is the main topic which could possibly be reduced to a brief sentence; for example: "Billy Budd deals with good and evil," or " ... Tags:book chapter reviews, book reviews literature, nyt book reviews, review of books
To re-read a well written book is not only pleasant but also inspiring; especially to writers who are always searching for methods to improve their prose.
While the oeuvre of popular authors such as John O'Hara, Ernest Hemingway, and Norman Mailer, Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, John Fowles -who wrote so much in their lifetimes-- are by now buried in the dunes of oblivion, E Rice Burroughs' Tarzan remains vibrant and beloved. But ... Tags:e rice burroughs, literary prototypes, prototypes, tarzan of the apes
With that incredible sentence Jane Austen draws the reader into her story. Is she serious we ask? 'A truth universally acknowledged' is the language of mathematics, of science, of logic; it is like saying: "we are dealing with self-evident truths--axioms."
By choosing to start his long novel David Copperfield with the correlative conjunction 'whether/or,' Charles Dickens signals the readers that perhaps they should search for more than one hero in the story. What a startling beginning!
To Dazzle And Trap Your Reader Use Dazzling Sentence Openers By: marciano guerrero | - Americans' speech, or to be more precise, speech habits that most use from cradle to grave, follow a strong pattern that often impedes them from writing well crafted sentences.
"Kay shaved her hair."
Subject (Kay), verb (shaved), and Object (her hair): S-V-O
When people write, they bring their speech habits into writing. That is why so much of the English newspaper articles, essays, journals, legal briefs, and fiction that we read today are so soporific, even thou ... Tags:beginning sentences, derrida, grammar, sentence openers, socrate on writing
From the examples that follow -culled from Ian Fleming's novel Doctor No--you will realize that in all cases, Fleming uses an abundance of intransitive verbs, and many of them as sentence openers.
In a novel where the hero is an action hero, this is understandable. By definition, 'intransitive verbs' express a doable action. And the action hero is always doing something--never inactive.
