2. The episodes of a tale shall be necessary parts of
the tale, and shall help develop it.

3. The personages in a tale shall be alive, except in
the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell
the corpses from the others.

4. The personages in a tale, both dead and alive,
shall exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there.

5. When the personages of a tale deal in
conversation, the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such as
human beings would be likely to talk in the given circumstances, and
have a discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a show of
relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject in hand, and be
interesting to the reader, and help out the tale, and stop when the
people cannot think of anything more to say.

6. When the author describes the character of a
personage in his tale, the conduct and conversation of that personage
shall justify said description.

7. When a personage talks like an illustrated,
gilt-edged, tree-calf, hand-tooled, seven-dollar Friendship's Offering
in the beginning of a paragraph, he shall not talk like a Negro minstrel
at the end of it.

8. Crass stupidities shall not be played upon the
reader by either the author or the people in the tale.

9. The personages of a tale shall confine themselves
to possibilities and let miracles alone; or, if they venture a miracle,
the author must so plausably set it forth as to make it look possible
and reasonable.

10. The author shall make the reader feel a deep
interest in the personages of his tale and their fate; and that he shall
make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad ones.

11. The characters in tale be so clearly defined that
the reader can tell beforehand what each will do in a given emergency.

Dan Roam’s “The Back of the Napkin” invites its readers to give up slides altogether, and use flipcharts and blackboards instead. The central idea is visual thinking, drawing graphics as you explain them, rather than taking audiences through endless bullet points. The book is full of practical advice for doing this. A must read.

Garr Reynold’s “Presentationzen” is a plea for preparing your presentation offline. Rather than a method, it introduces a presentation philosophy, heavily influenced by Asian culture. The central idea is simplicity. While obviously influencing many of today’s speakers, the concept of presentationzen is relatively unproven for complex subjects, such as science or technology. Nevertheless, a must read.

But what does Rejaw have the Twitter and Plurk doesn’t. Let’s take a look at some of ReJaw’s features.

Top selling points:

• Real time chat - This is one of it’s top selling points


• Images and movies - Just like in Plurk
  
  


• Guests - Guests can comment on shouts without having an account

It goes without saying that learning how to create compelling content is a part of one’s success as an online publisher. Reading widely and deeply while consistently honing your writing skills helps a great deal in bettering your prose. Sometimes, it doesn’t hurt to read a few stylebooks/essays on writing by professional teachers or authors.

One of these essays on writing is Paul McHenry Roberts’s How to Say Nothing in Five Hundred Words, a brilliantly humorous introduction on writing college compositions. I discovered this essay today and read though easily in one sitting, possibly because it was so well-written and entertaining. It’s a perfect example of the writing techniques listed within.

In this quick and easy 22-page report (or optional audio recording), you'll learn:

• Whether blogging is dead or not


• How to avoid the tyranny of Google


• Why you should forget the "Long Tail"


• How to truly leverage Web 2.0


• Why you're not normal, and why that's a good thing


• How the true power of the Internet is being missed


• What "teaching sells" means to you