Recently, several people have sent me personal messages at once asking about the best way to write articles for the press. Like, you write one article a day for sure, and for many years. And you don't get bored, and your materials don't get worse. I would like to try it myself, but I doubt that I can. In addition, any business has its own specifics. It is clear that there are "professional secrets", but maybe you can share at least a little …
"Historical Document". This album was started by ambassadors of the release of his first article in 1977. It ended in 1984 …
What can I say about this? In James Claywell's novel "Shogun," the Jesuit Father Alvito gives the Protestant, that is, heretic, Captain Blackthorn a Japanese dictionary - a book of great value and says that knowledge belongs to God, not to man. That is, in any case, it is a godly and useful thing to spread it, but to hide knowledge is a great sin. And although I am an unbeliever, I completely agree that this is so. There was another funny case when my student asked me if I was hiding something from them in my stories about PR and advertising? Like, not all of you say, because … and you need to leave something for yourself? I had to explain to him that it was pointless and that everything had to be said. Because otherwise, when a person finds out what is not agreed upon, he will treat you badly, and besides, I have nothing to fear from competing with young people, because in addition to knowledge there is also experience, life experience, but it cannot be conveyed in any way.
My article from the newspaper "Penzenskaya Pravda" in 1984. The editors asked to write. And what to write about when there are bread, vodka and Afghan olives in stores? And three-liter cans of tomato juice and pickled squash. But … "we are great, we are powerful, more sun, higher than clouds!" I found something to write about, so that it really was, and … a good impression! Some citizens then came and asked: "Where is your ramp here!"
So, let's begin. First of all, a few memories. Until the end of the first grade, I myself did not read books. My mother, grandfather and grandmother read them to me, but the latter is not enough. And then and then I was often sick, and my mother read me such wonderful books at night as "The Head of Professor Dowell", "The Last Man from Atlantis" "The Invisible Man", "War of the Worlds", and from children's books they read me except perhaps "The Little Humpbacked Horse", "Buratino" and "Cat's House" … At school, already in May, I was forcibly enrolled in the library, and I discovered thin children's books for myself. I read one and … immediately decided that I would become a writer (the volume stopped scaring!). And he began by rewriting it all, replacing the names of the characters, and some details. The plot - the rescue of a boy who has stupidly got into a swamp remains the same. Mom read and told me a terrible story about plagiarism, pointed out the mistakes and added that I would not be a writer. Then I became convinced that everything was not so bad. But I thought about writing somewhere only at the institute, when I prepared the first article for the magazine "Modelist-Constructor". It taught how to make model ships (floating) out of plasticine! Then this story was included in my first book "From everything at hand", but the editors refused it, "we will give it for review" - they wrote to me and "gave it to me."
The very first articles from the local Kondol newspaper. Once I was very proud of them …
And then our whole family found ourselves in a village, where we were surrounded by steppe to the horizon, dirt up to our knees and wildness (natural) in all respects. I remember that I kept repeating to myself the words of the foreman Pugovkin from the movie "Operation y" … - "While our spaceships plow the vastness of the Universe" and further - your mother, mother, mother …
Among other things, it was also very boring there. So the first thing I did was buy a Moscow typewriter and decided to write science fiction stories. But the school head teacher told me that her father constantly writes to the local newspaper “Kondolskaya Pravda” and receives “a lot of money” - four rubles 50 kopecks per piece! Even then, I personally did not have enough money, and I never understood those who say that in Soviet times it was possible to live well on 125 rubles. Live - yes! But "good" - I strongly doubt it, although I received twice, and the second against it. But still, for some reason, it was not enough.
Nobody asked me what difficulties one has to face in the work of the school technical circle. "Based on local conditions!" - said the chiefs of all levels. But the articles about the results obtained were passed with a bang!
So I took the opportunity to earn extra money with enthusiasm and began to write articles for this newspaper. Moreover, the amount of 4, 50 seemed to me insufficient, since a duck in live weight in that village cost six rubles. Therefore, I tried to write articles at the limit of the newspaper's capabilities and even got myself a special album where I pasted them. The first article was published in November 1977, so today I have a kind of anniversary - 40 years from the date of the first publication.
It is not surprising that then I wrote the book "From everything at hand." On this model of a missile boat, the gun turret is made of a needle bed, the radar is a deodorant cover, and the missile containers are pipes from the model of the battleship Potemkin, since it could be bought for “creativity” by bank transfer. Well, the story of local looped carpets has fed me for years!
Then he realized that what the Kondol residents were interested in might also be of interest to the readers of Penzenskaya Pravda, and he began to write to the regional newspaper, and then to Sovetskaya Mordovia and Sovetskaya Rossiya. I swung at the magazine only in 1980, when my toy was put into mass production, which I wrote about in the magazine "Modelist-Constructor". This was followed by articles in the magazines "Club and Amateur Art", "School and Production", "Family and School", "Bonfire", "Young Technician", "Technology-Youth". In 1987, the first book was published, where many of the published articles were included in separate chapters. Well, after 1989 articles were published in England, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Australia, Japan and the USA. The last article abroad was published in 2012 in England in the "Battleplace" magazine, and it was devoted to the current state of the Borodino field in this jubilee year.
And this is work for PenzOblSYUT. Although I made an electronic examiner at my Pokrovo-Berezovskaya school. It was something impressive! Panel with five rows of toggle switches in each row of five pieces and five bulbs on the side. Above there are places for questions. Against toggle switches - answers. By turning the toggle switch, you choose the answer. If correct - the light was on! To whom they just did not show it. But workers were reluctantly tested on it. It was used in the lessons of history, physics, mathematics, chemistry and even the Russian language. Almost the first rapid testing system. In the bottom photo my boys with their vibro-walkers, for the first time in the history of Penza, received gold medals of the USSR Exhibition of Economic Achievements. The vibrating rover in my hands was intended for the study of Venus. It was demonstrated at the Cosmos competition in 1982 and … has not lost its relevance today. It was told about him in the book "For those who like to craft".
In 1991 I began to publish my own magazine "Tankomaster", then to cooperate with the magazines "Technics and Arms", "World of Technology for Children", "Science and Technology" (Ukraine), "Secrets of the XX century" and a number of others, as well as five Internet publications, of which only one - "Voennoye Obozreniye" (Voennoye Obozreniye) has survived to this day (Loud knock on wood!). How many articles were published during this time? Only from 2012 to the present day - 1250, but it is impossible to calculate for all the time. Several thousand, I guess. So it is simply necessary to share experience, not everyone has it like that …
Well, the "lesson" itself should start with the rule of "good writing", which is: "THERE ARE NO TWO SAME WORDS ON ONE PAGE." No nouns, no adjectives, no pronouns … Identical words must be mercilessly deleted and replaced, unless a certain meaning is embedded in their repetition (“Learn, learn, learn!”). In books they write that you need to develop a plan, think over the composition, and so you did all this and got "g … on a stick", because the eye clings to the same words and the consciousness rejects the text. There was an article "Fog index - as an effective weapon of influence on mass audiences" (https://topwar.ru/110669-fog-indeks-kak-effektivnoe-oruzhie-vozdeystviya-na-massovye-auditorii.html), and so it described in detail how such sloppy text can be used in the work of public relations specialists and how to avoid such repetitions.
It's funny that this requirement in itself is IMPOSSIBLE !!! But this is the ideal to strive for. Well, the Pareto principle tells us the following: for 80% of readers it is not so important what is written, but it is very important how. This is what we must proceed from! Then you should look at how the articles of other authors published in this journal are written. And … write about the same! You should avoid both very long sentences - “read to the end, forgot the beginning”, and “chopped phrases”. Of course, the novel by A. N. Tolstoy "Aelita", but you and I are far from Tolstoy in any case, and therefore should not be taken as an example.
When writing the text, you need to pronounce it to yourself, as if you were telling it to your friend. The "story" is going well - you are great, something went wrong, "foggy" - take a break and start over. It is important to "fill your hand", which, by the way, is very easy. You need to write only two A4 pages a day. This is the advice of Arthur Haley, and he already knew a lot about writing "downhole texts". And I, for example, walk to work: 30 minutes there and the same amount back. At the same time, I pronounce almost the entire text to myself. I remember it. Then all that remains is to transfer it to the screen. The finished text should be postponed for three days and then viewed with fresh eyes. Style errors and mistakes will always surface.
Further, it is very important to remember the three rules of William Hirst, who is also called the "father of the yellow press". These rules are very simple. Since, as Hirst believed, human nature is imperfect, in materials intended for people of this nature, there should be three topics that excite them most. The first is the fear of death, how not to play the box yourself, how others have played there - that is, the theme of wars, crimes and accidents. Because the first thought of a person who reads about this is relief: "How good that this did not happen to me!" The second topic is reproduction! For this is the main business and goal of the human race - to multiply and extend itself in children. Therefore, everything related to love is interesting. And finally, the third theme is the theme of self-importance and dominance over others. "Well, they are stupid!" - exclaims Zadornov and everyone is happy. There is someone who is worse than us! That is why articles about digging the Black Sea, the superethnos of the Rus, ancient Hyperborea and the Egyptian pyramids - the graves of Russian princes - are so popular today. It would be necessary to write why in Germany, which lost the war, pensions of 1000 euros for men and 500 for women, but we, the winners, did not have an average pension, but how do you feel your importance? No way! And if you read about the significance, at least some, then adrenaline will stand out and happiness will be stupid. It is not surprising that they are ready to fight foaming at the mouth for this adrenaline rush. And it would also be nice to find out how the story about the collapsed water park ended, the boy who was sucked into the pipe in another water park, about the houses with cracks built in Siberia after the floods and fires, but only something about this “in the newspapers they write dully."
This is my first article in the magazine "Modelist-Constructor" was published in the spring of 1980. The photo is bad, but the toy turned out to be just amazing. Engines in red projectile-like containers were mounted on beautiful pylons. Vibrators are red plastic discs. The cosmonaut's cabin is “branded”. The car moved perfectly on a flat floor and even maneuvered like a tank. But … the Penza toy factory did not manage to master it!
In any case, the conclusion is this: if there is one such topic in an article - it is good, two - excellent, all three are present - wonderful.
Now a little about plagiarism, otherwise many people have an idea about it even from their lessons at school, and there many "teachers" were (and are!) Just C-students, who themselves had never written anything. So really this concept … does not exist. Plagiarism is not ideas and plots, imitations and parodies. Also, plagiarism should be distinguished by adherence to certain canons and traditions, work within the framework of stylistic standards and the use of literary templates. Ideological, artistic or scientific continuity, development or interpretation of works of creativity or intellectual activity should not be confused with plagiarism. It should be understood that all works of science and art to one degree or another are also based on previously created works. That is, the only type of plagiarism is text at the level of 100% borrowing and with someone else's surname instead of yours. But if you took someone else's article and redid it with a 92% novelty level according to the Antiplagiat system, then … what kind of plagiarism is this? You worked, you put your work, your thoughts into this material. Moreover, it will not be possible to “simply” rewrite the text with a high level of novelty. It is imperative to add something of your own to it - views, new facts, different from the author's, examples. As a result, this will already be your material. If the material contains quotations, then a reduction in the level of novelty to 75% is allowed. For example, it is this level of novelty that is accepted in many universities, including our Penza State University for FQP - the final qualifying work for a bachelor's degree. The same level of novelty is considered acceptable by some Russian publishers of popular science literature. But no less!
For those who are really interested in the topic of Internet journalism, I, together with my colleagues in the department, prepared a textbook “Internet journalism and Internet advertising”. The book has just come out of print and can be ordered without any problems. Among the authors there is one candidate of historical sciences with 22 years of experience in PR and advertising, a doctor of philosophy, a specialist in the field of everyday creation and a candidate of economic sciences, a specialist in the field of online advertising.
It is important to find a good title for your material. Of course, one cannot call the article “Putin was fined for driving fast,” and then write in the text that this is the president's namesake from the city of Zhmud. This is a typical tabloid trick. To stoop to this is to disrespect yourself. Titles should be meaningful, "speaking", but also not contain deception and not mislead the reader.
An article about the communist subbotnik was published on April 12, 1984. As a teacher in the Department of the History of the CPSU, I was simply obliged to write such articles and write. For such articles, the department was praised. For articles "about the store" scolded. They say that an assistant at the department of the history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union should not write about this. It is clear what kind of sausage it is. Well, so it was "for the sausage", but what's wrong with that? At that time, our regional newspaper paid 25 rubles for an article of this size. The money is decent. But they didn't take more than one such a month from a freelance writer.
Translations are also very beneficial. With translation, especially free translation, authorship is simply lost by itself. Due to the peculiarities of the English language, when translating into Russian, their sentences and texts need to be lengthened by 20%, and vice versa - shortened accordingly. As a result, the text changes dramatically. That is, the switch journalist is ideal in this case - "there" is our information, interesting to them, here is their information, interesting to us. The level of novelty is usually close to 100%.
That is, in fact, the whole technology. The rest is your knowledge and intelligence.
